Rensselaer Gazette, Volume 3, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 April 1860 — An Astronomer’s View of the Universe. [ARTICLE]

An Astronomer’s View of the Universe.

In wafting ourselves in imagination, to our own satelite, the Moon—the nearest of our celestial bodies—we have passed over a distance equal to thirty times the diameter of our globe. In advancing to the sun we travel over a distance equal to thirty times that of the moon; and before we reach Uranus. the remotest of the planets, %ve have traversed a space equal to twenty times the earth’s distance from the sun. Thus placed at the limits of a system in a circle of eighteen hundreds of millions of miles in radius, our appreciation of distance would appear to be e. v hausted, and we seem to be as on the margin ot an unfathomable abyss. The telescope, however, and the mural circle, enable us to span the void,*and the genius of man, proud of the achievement—and justly, if humbly proud—has crossed the gulf 12,000 times the radius of his own system, that he may study the nearest world in the firr nment of heaven. Beyond this frontier lies the whole universe of stars—their binary systems—their clusters, and their nebulous combinations. The observed parallax of onefourth of a second in a Lyra, carries us four times as far into the bosom of space: but though beyond this we have no positive measure of distance, it would he as unphilosophical to assign limits to creation, as to five it an infinite range. In this rapid Bight into space, we have traversed it but in one direction, and the lines which we have traced, is but a unit in tie scale of celestial distance. Creation in her wide panorama is still above us, beneath us and around us. The over-arching heavens still enclose us, and innumerable worlds sparkle in its canopy. If from this bourne, from which the astronomical traveler alone returns, we look upon our course, our own planetary system ceases/'to be perceived. Its sun is dim—itself bu|ian invisible point in the nebulous light that intervenes. Where, then, is our terrestrial bull —its oceans—its continents—its mountains—its empires—its.dynasties— its thrones! Where is our fa.therland —its factions—its Christian disunions—i:s slave crimes and its unholy wars! Where is our home—its peace—its endearments—its hopes and its fears! Where is man, the intellectual monad—the only atom of organic life that ,can pierce the depths, and interpret the enigma of the universe! and yet the only spark of a spiritual nature, which disclaims the Authority and resists the will of the universal King! They have all disappeared in the far-off perspective—the long vista of space, whose apex,were it a sun, the luighest telescope would fail to descry. No living thing here meets the eye, and no sentiment associated with life presses on the affections. The tiny organism of earth and ocean— everything that moves and breathes —that lives and dies —all are engulfed in the great conception of the universe. The straining mind cannot unite the immeasurable extremes. The infinite in space—the eternnl in duration—the omnipotent in power—the perfect in wisdom, alone fill the expanded soul, and portray in their awful combination—the Creator of the universe.— North British Review.