Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 December 1892 — GOD AMONG THE STARS. [ARTICLE]

GOD AMONG THE STARS.

The Heavens Declare His Glory and the Earth Shows His f Handiwork. Dr. Talmage Preaches the First of * Series • of Sermons on Divine Science—God , in the Natural World. Rev. Dr. Talmage preached at Brooklyn last Sunday. Subject, “The Astronomy of the Bible.” Text: Amos ix, 6, “It is he that buildeth his stories in the heaven.” He sad ; ’ My hearers, it is time that we widened out and heightened our religious thoughts. In our pulpits and Subbath classes and Christian work of all sorts we ring the changes on a few verses of Scripture until they excite no interest. Many of the best parts of the Bible have never yet been preached from, or indeed even noticed. Hence 1 to day begin a series of sermons, not for consecutive Subbath mornings, but as often as I think it best for variety’s sake, on the astronomy ofjthe Bible,or God among the stars; the geology Of the Bible, or God among the rocks; the ornithology of the Bible, or God among the birds; the ichthyology of the Bible, or God among the fishes; the pomology of the Bible, or God among the orchards; the precious stones *of the Bible, of God among the amethysts; the conchology of the Bible, or God among the shells; the botany of the Bible, or God among the flowers; chronology of the Bible, or God among the centuries. The fact is we have all spent too much itime on one story of the great mansion of God s universe. We need occasionally to go up stairs or down stairs in this mansion; down stairs and in the cellar study the rocks, or up stairs and see God in some of the higher stories and learn the meaning of the text when it says, “It is he that buildeth his stories in the heaven.” It takes whole pages for a man to extol the making of a telescope or microscope, or a magnetic telegraph, or a thrashing=machine, or to describe a fine painting or statue, but it was so easy for God to hang the celestial upboitery that the story is compassed in one verse: “God made f'O great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night. The stars also!” Astronomers have been trying to call the roll of them ever since, and they have counted multitudes of them passing in review before the observatories built at vast expense, and the size and number of those heavenly bodies have taxed to the utmost the scientists of all ages. But God finishes all he has to say about them in three words, “The stars also!” That is Mars, with its more than Gfty-five million square miles, and Venus, with its more than one hundred and ninety-one million square miles, and Saturn, with its more than nineteen billion square miles, and Jupiter, with its more than seventyeight billion square miles, and all the planets of our system, when compared with the stars of the other r parted with all the Rocky mountains and all the Alps. “The stars aLo!” For brevity, for ponderosity, for splendor, for suggestiveness, for sublimity piled on sublimity, these words excel all that human' speech ever uttered or human imagination ever soared after, “The stais also!” It is put in as you write a postscript —something you thought of afterward as hardly worth putting in the body of a letter. “The stars also!” Read on in your Bibles, and after awhile the Bible flashes with the aurora borealis, or northern lights, that strange illumination as mysterious and undefined) now as when in the book of Job it was written: “Men see not the bright light which is in the olouds. Fair weather cometh out of the north." While all the nations supposed that the earth was built on a foundation of some sort, and many supposed that it stood on a huge turtle or some great marine creature, Job knew enough of astronomy to say it had no foundation, but w suspended on the invisible arm of the Almighty, declaring that “he hangeth the earth upon nothing.” While all nations thought the earth was level, the sky spread over it like a tent over a flat surface, Isaiah declared the world to be globular, circular, saying of God, “He sitteth upon the circle of the earth.” While running your fingers among the leaves of your Bible with the astronomical thought in your mind you see two worlds stop—the sun and the moon. But what does that Christian know about that miracle who does uo‘ understand something of those two luminaries? Unless you watch modern astronomy put those two worlds in its steelyards and weigh them you are as ignorant as a Hottentot about the stupendousness of that scene in the life of Joshua. The sun, over three hundred thousand times as heavy as our earth and going thousands of miles the hour! Think of stopping that and starting Its again without the shipwreck of the universe! But I can easily believe it. What confounds me is not that he could stop and start again those two worlds in Joshua's time, but that he could have ' made the wheel of worlds of which the sun and moon are only, cogsand keep that wheel l olling for thousands of years —the flywheel of all eternity. If an engine r can start along train, it is not t urprising that he can stop it. I.’ God could make and move the universe, which is an express train drawn by an omnipotent engine. I nm not surprised that for a part of a day hfc could put down the brake? on two at the rotating machinery.

Infidelity is hard up for ground. of complaint against the Scriptures when it finds fault with that cessation of stellar and lunar travel. If astronomers can give a< name to a whole constellationor galaxy, they think they do well, but God has s name for each star in all immensity. Inspired David declared of God. “He telleth the number of the stars ; he calleth them all by their names.” They are not orphans that have never •been christened. They are not waifs of the night. They are not unknown ships on the high seas of immensity. They belong to a family of which God is the rather, and as you call your children Benjamin or Mary or Bertha or Addison or Josephine, so he calls all the adult worlds by their first name, and they know it as well as though there were only one child of light in all the divine family. Oh, the stars, those vestal fires kept burning on infinite altars; those light houses on the coast of eternity ; the hands and weights and pendulum of the .great clockof the ' universe; according to Herschel the so-called fixed stars are not fixed at all, but each one as sun with a mighty system of worlds rolling around it, and this whole system with all the other systems rolling on around some other great center! Millions and millions, billions and billions, trillions and trillions, quadrillions and quadrillions I But what gladdens me and at the same time overwhelms me is that those worlds are inhabited. The Bible says so, and what a small idea you must have of God and His dominion if you think it only extends across this chip of a world which you and I now inhabit. Have you taken this idea of all the worlds being inhabited as human guesswork? Read Isaiah, forty - fifth chapter, eighteenth verse: “Thus saith the Lord that created the heavens, God himself that formed the earth and made it: he hath established it; h&~ created it not in vain; he formed it to be inhabited." Now, if he, inhabited the earth so that it would not be created in vain, would he create worlds hundreds and thousands of times larger and not have them inhabited? Speaking of the inhabitants of this world, he says: “The Nations are as the drop of a bucket. 7 ’

If all the inhabitants of this world - are as a drop of a bucket, where are the other drops of the bucket? Again and again the Bible speaks of the hosts of heaven, and the word host means living creatures, not inert masses, and the expression “hosts of heaven” must mean inhabitants of other worlds. The psalmist cries out, “Thv mercy is great above the heavens?’ What could be the use of His goodness above the heavens if there .were no inhabitants to enjoy it? Again, the Bible says, “He has set thy glory above the heavens.” And here my text comes in with its idea of a mansion of many stories. “It is he that buildeth his stories in the heavens.” All around us in this world we see economy of omnipotence. If Christ was going to feed the hungry seven thousand in the wilderness, he made use of the boy’s five loaves and two fishes, expending no more creative power than was needed. “Waste not" God hath written all over this world. And do not suppose that God would waste world material in our solar system to the amount of what has been estimated as seven, hundred trillion miles of solid contents, and that only a small part as compared with other systems that go to make up this many stored mansion of the text where it says, “It is he that buildeth his stories In the heaven."

It has been estimated that in the worlds belonging to our solar system there is room for at least twenty-five trillion of population. And I believe it is all occupied or will be occupied by intelligent beings. God will not fill them with brutes. He would certainly put into those world's beings intelligent enough to appreciate the architecture, the coloring’ the grandeur, the beauty, the harmony of their surroundings. Yea, the inhabitants of those worlds have capacity of locomotion like ours, for they would not have had such spacious opportunity for movement if they had not power of motion.

Yes, they have sight, else why the light; and hearing, else how get on with necessary language and how clear themselves from advancing perils. Yea. as God made our human race in his own image he probably made the inhabitants of other world’s in his own image—-in other words, it is as near demonstration as I care to have it that while the inhabitants of other worlds have adaptations of bodily structure to the particular climate in which they dwell, there is yet similarity of mental aid spiritual characteristics among all the inhabitants of the universe of God, and made in his image they are made wonderfully alike. Now, what should be the practical result of this discussion founded on Scripture and common sense? It is first of all to enlarge our ideas of God, and so intensify our admiration and worship. Under such consideration, how much more graphic the Bible question which seems to roll back the sleeve of the Almighty and say, “Hast thou an arm like God?” The contemplation also encourages us with the thought that if God made all these worlds and populated them ft will not be very much of an undertaking for him to make our little world over again and reconstruct the character of its populations as by* grace they are to be reconstructed. What a manstrosity of ignorance that the majority of Christian people listen not to the voiced of other woriflsSj a'though the Book says “Theheavens declare the glory of God " and again, “The works of the Lord are great and to be sough tout.”

' How much have you sought them but? You have been satisfying your-elf with some things about Christ, but have you noticed that Paul calls you to consider Christ as the creator of other words, “bv whom also he made the words.” It is time you Christians start on a world hunt. That is the chief reason why God makes the night—that you may see‘other word?. I thank God that we have found out that our world is not half way between heaven and hell, bntisin a sisterhood of light, and that this sisterhood joins all the other sisterhoods of worlds, moving round some great homestead, which is no doubt heaven, where God is and our departed Christian friends are, and we ourselves through pardoning mercy expect to become permanent residents. Furthermore, I get now from all this an answer to the question which every intelligent man and woman since the ea-th has stood h?.s asked and received no answer. Why did -God letain-and sorrow come into the world when he could have prevented them from coming? I wish reverently to say I think I have found the reason. To keep the universe loyal to a holy God it was important in some world somewhere to demonstrate the gigantic disasters that would come upon any world that allowed sin to enter. Which world should it be? Well, the smaller the world the better, for less numbers would suffer. So our world was selected. The stage was plenty large enough for the enactment of the tragedy. Enter on the stage sin, followed by murder, pain, theft, fraud, impurity, falsehood, massacre, war, and all the abominations and horrors and agonies of centuries. Although we know comparatively little about the other worlds lest we become completely dissatisfied with our own, no doubt the other worlds have heard and are now hearing all world in the awful experiment of sin which the human race has been making. In some way interstellar communication is open and all worlds either by wing of flying spirits or by direct communication from God, are learning that dis loyalty and disobedience doom and damp' everything they touch, the s pectaclepraeticsdly Says to all othe r worlds, “Obey God, keep holy and stay in the orbit where you were intended to swintr, or you will suffer that which that recreant world out yonder has been suffering for thousands of years. ” It is no longer to me a mystery why so small a world as ours was chosen for the tragedy. A chemist can demonstrate all the laws of earth and heaven in a small laboratory, ten feet by five, and our world was not too small to demonstrate to the universe the awful chemistry of unrighteousness, its explosive and riving and consuming power. I do not believe there is a world that has been in existence from the time when Copernicus, the astronomer, knocked on the door of heaven, to the world that last week came in sight at the observatory at Greenwich,. but has heard of our terrific terrestial experiment, and the awful object lessen ha? thrilled the multimillions of stellar population, especially when they heard that m order to anest the disaster Of" ceri" turies the World Maker and the World Starter and the World Upholder must give up his on’y son to assassination to expiate and restore and save the victims of the planetary shipwreck. ———_