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Chapter II

The Material Creation

Glorious Reality. - Not Made in Vain. - The Physical Basis and the Intelligent Superstructure of God's Eternal Building. - The Eternal Power and Divinity Manifested in the Physical Creation. - Behold the Heavens. - An Astronomer's View. - Faith the Only Reasonable Conclusion. - Creation a Finished Work. - God's Oath by the Stability and Permanence of the Heavens. - God the Author of all Natural Law. -Man's Proper Attitude.

"The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork." Psa. 19:1

"Hearken, stand still, and consider the wondrous works of God." Job 37:14

When God said of this earth that he created it not in vain, but to be inhabited (Isa. 45:18) he was expressing a principle applicable to the whole material universe. This vast physical creation, the heavens and the earth, significantly linked together in the divine revelation as parts of one comprehensive whole, would indeed be a vain thing, a vast waste of mighty energy, except as means to a worthy end. And with a God of love and benevolence, that end cannot be narrow and self-centered, but must be broad and gracious. Consequently, upon the wide foundation of the physical creation God has built an intelligent creation. And it was in reference to this prospective intelligent creation that the marvelous design was conceived, and that, through ages and dispensations, it has been gradually developing.

But in this chapter we are considering, not the intelligent, but the physical creation; and here we would observe that the scale of the one must be commensurate with that of the other, as otherwise some portions of the physical universe must be created in vain. Hence would we learn the measure of the intelligent superstructure, let us look at the foundation in the physical creation.

The physical creation alone is presented to us as an all sufficient testimony of the power and divinity of its great Designer and Builder, leaving man without the slightest excuse for denying either the existence or the divine nature of such a being. Such a denial cannot be founded upon any basis of fact, nor can it be sustained by the natural operations of the human mind, and can therefore proceed only from a rebellious heart that foolishly deceives itself, thereby ignobly seeking to avoid the obligations which the recognition of God implies. "The fool has said in his heart, There is no God." "Because when they knew God they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools." Psa. 14:1; Rom.1:21, 22.

To the honest student of nature God reveals himself: "For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity." Rom. 1:20 RV* For this purpose God has opened the book of nature, as well as that of revelation, before our eyes so that all who will may read it. Even the most

*See also Emphatic Diaglott, Rotherham, Murdock and the Bible Commentary.

illiterate may read much of the open book, but the men of science bring wonderful things to our attention. Some, indeed, with foolish darkened heart, speculate adversely concerning the truths of nature, while others with reverent attitude , call men's attention to the glory of God's handiwork; yet all scientists bear testimony to the same facts of nature.

But after all, it is the factshat we need, and the comments upon them are of value to us only when inspired by "the spirit of a sound mind" - a mind at one with God. A mind which fails to catch the inspiration of the great Author of the book of nature can never aid us in rightly interpreting this wonderful book, any more than one who fails to receive the spirit of the divine written revelation can rightly interpret that to us.

If we could be sure that our readers would all secure and carefully read a small work by Rev. Enoch Fitch Burr, entitled Ecce Coelum (Behold the Heavens) we would have little more to say upon the subject of this chapter, preferring that they should have the full testimony of this devout student of the heavens. In lieu of such assurance we therefore make, by permission the following quotations from that work, our only apology for their length being that, in comparatively few words, they present a clear idea of the order of nature and the means of discovering it - a view so necessary to any intelligent comprehension of God's eternal purpose concerning it.

3 Feb. 1936

Dear Sir,

In reply to your request for information concerning "Ecce Coelum" by Burr, we wish to report that the book was published in 1867 by Lockwood, Brooks & Co. 381 Washington St., Boston. The firm is no longer in existence. It is probable that the copyright has expired.

Enoch Fitch Burr died in May, 1907

He was a lifelong resident of Hamburg, Conn. and the "Hartford

Courant" of Hartford, Conn. an obituary at his death. We suggest you write to the above mentioned paper for full information on the author. Yours truly,

David D Cadugan, Director Carnegie Free Library of Allegheny, NS Pittsburgh, PA

An Astronomer's View

Speaking first of the importance of the study of the heavens and of the means of investigation, our Author says: "The science of the stars does not limit itself to those bright points in the vault of evening which are commonly called stars, but treats of the sky with its whole star-like belongings - sun, moon, planets, comets - whatever of this general nature reveals itself in the entire round heavens.

"See where the sun, with face of insufferable splendor, goes swimming through the day; see where the soft and silver moon, with fleets of stars, goes swimming through the night. What an eloquent silence! There they shine and move, perhaps wonderfully achieve - hosts upon hosts; but there is no celebrating pomp of sounds, only an all embracing pomp of silence - not a whisper, not a rustle, through all the vasty dome. Our dimmed ears and hearts are soothed. Our petty cares and excitements are hushed. Both body and soul are insensibly calmed and refreshed as we gaze into the immeasurable stillness.

"Was ever so noble a sight! What kindly inter-weavings of the great and the lovely - what gorgeous competitions and combinations of the majestic and the beautiful - and all steeped in the grave glory of immemorial and supreme antiquity. The sky does not look old. Other books show sad marks of the passing years. Their pure white sullies. Their varnished sharp cut characters grow dull and vague. Scars and moulds and odors of decay gather upon them. Not so with this pageant book opened above us .... It shows a page as

delicately fair and fresh as if it had just come from the hands of its Author. And yet it is the world's and scientist heirloom, the issue of the eldest dawn: and as we look upon its broad and pictured page, we are reverently aware that the same shining scriptures met the gaze of famous empires long since dead and buried . .

..

"And then it is so accessible! Not like some rare old volume of price, hid away from the people at large in piles of granite architecture; railed off heavily from curious handling and close inspection;

.... permitted to unclasp only under the careful hands and cultured eyes of sages and princes - not such is this azure volume above, printed and pictured in silver and gold. It is a book for the people. Its outspread page invites study from all quarters, by day and by night .... If it has any valuable secrets, any precious wisdoms in

it, one is just as welcome as another to do what he can toward finding them. God permits no censorship. His printing is a true publishing. With both hands he has issued his astronomy; has put it into characters large and shining enough to be within the range of all eyes; has opened it as wide as wide can be, and laid it across the sky's fair face for all who choose to examine, stand they at palace gates, stand they at cabin doors, stand they in the silent domes of sky-piercing observatories, stand they on the rattling mid-road of affairs. All classes welcome to that divine calm, to that refined and exalting pleasure, to that jubilee of sight and poetry and art.

"And . . . the sky is not only an accessible book, but, in these last days, an interpreted one. It has been translated out of its aboriginal hieroglyphics, put into the world's vernacular, done into alphabet even, as to it's most essential facts. The interpretation was hard. Sometimes it seemed as if it would never be made. It actually took great men, and many of them, to make it; and many a long age crept away while the work was being done. But lo! done it is at last; and the results, though not the methods, are now level with the commonest men.

"And they are exceedingly serviceable results. Once men would not see an eclipse or a star with a tail to it without inferring pestilence and war; could not even see a bloody sun or shooting star without fearing national disaster and the fall of thrones. But now humanity no longer falls a-trembling at the signs of heaven. The progress of astronomical science has freed us from our superstitious terrors. We leave such panics to centuries ago and the heathen.

"To the science of the stars we owe the safety and audacity with which unlimited canvas now stretches across the widest seas and darkest nights. By the improvements it has been the means of introducing into mathematics and observation, it has raised the whole body of our art and science; in fact created large portions of each. Scarcely a branch of business or knowledge but is debtor in one way or another to astronomical investigations. Astronomers first taught men the art of questioning nature. They were the first interpreters of her that deserved the name, the first to give dazzling and triumphant examples of the way of extorting secrets from her close-fisted keeping.

"In education also astronomy has been of most material service .... Certainly if one would get just

ideas of the grandeur and possibilities of the human mind, in no way could he better accomplish his purpose than by noticing what great astronomical problems that mind has grappled with and conquered .... When we

look at the mighty secrets that men have wrested out of that starry page above us, we say softly and reverentially to ourselves, 'In the image of God made he them'.

"But, after all, the most interesting and useful thing about astronomy is the illustration it pours on the attributes and glory of the Supreme Being .... If one can thoughtfully pace up and down the star-sown fields

and not conceive a feeling of religious awe as in the presence of Incomprehensible Almightiness, he must be a rare man, a sinner above all the Galileans. The fullest force of the inspired statement, - 'for the invisible things of Him are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and godhead' - is only felt by him whose thoughts, leaving the diminutive objects of this world, have gone voyaging through the inexhaustible wonders of the firmament and gazed intelligently on the files of that infinite armada of luminaries which, in exquisite harmony and solemn pomp, cruise up and down yonder shoreless ocean of the heavens.

"Astronomy is universally admitted to be the most ancient of all the natural sciences.... At the time

when we get our first clear view of the science, viz., two or three thousand years before Christ, it had already made very considerable progress .... After all, the amount of real discovery in the heavens made up to this

time by all these illustrious men and schools of various nations for thousands of years was comparatively small. Many a single year since has done more. The fact is the old astronomers were destroyed by their theories and

visionary philosophies. Instead of carefully observing nature and drawing their systems from it, most of them first arbitrarily formed their systems and then endeavored to interpret nature in consistency with them .... It

was not till Prussian Copernicus and his immediate successors cast off the old theories and way of studying nature that Astronomy can be said to have fairly begun her triumphant career. The incubus once lifted, she then, under the lead of such men as Tycho Brahe, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, went forward with gigantic strides.

"Since Newton .... to none will a grateful posterity so freely decree triumphs as to the names of

Clairaut, Lagrange, La Place. Of the English speaking race . . . Flamstead, Halley, Bradley, Maskelyne and the two Hershels. Of Germany and Russia are the great names of Bessel, Argelander, Struve and Mädler ....

Altogether astronomers of the last three hundred years have given us the most extensive, sublime and complete science to be found in the world.

"And by what means were these grand results reached? The naked eye has done much .... Even to this

day the unaided eye has made discoveries in the heavens .... At the present time we have goniometers of

wonderful beauty and exactness .... enabling us to reach an accuracy ten thousand times greater than was

obtained by Tycho with his improved instruments three hundred years ago.

"But these exact instruments and their splendid contributions to astronomy are largely due to two other means of discovery viz., observatories and optical glasses. To secure firm support for instruments, to lift them above vapors and give them a large and unobstructed horizon, massive and lofty towers have been built.... On

such towers, numbered by hundreds and fitted up like palaces for every sort of celestial observation, a thousand astronomers now watch out the night all over Christendom - at Paris, at Greenwich, at Pulkova, at Washington.

"At Florence in the Grand Ducal palace there is a room called the Temple .... Here, in 1840, met the

Italian men of science to dedicate the proudest cabinet of the Medici to the great memory of Galileo Galilei....

With his simple instrument he created a new era in Astronomy. With it he poured on the age such a succession of wonders that foolish Rome feared that the immovable foundations of Holy Scripture would all be swept away by the deluge of innovations. As if her interpretations of the Bible were the Bible itself.

"Since then the telescope has been bravely plucking laurels from the sky. Made reflecting, made achromatic, enlarged from an object glass of two inches to one of eighteen, and from a speculum of six inches to one of six feet; equatorially mounted, with all appliances for easy motion, exact adjustment, and extremest nicety of measurement; planted in palatial observatories where all the heavens look in at the revolving dome, and where scarcely a tremor of storms can find its way through the solid masonry; supported on either hand by photography and telegraphy, .... the telescope of late years is still pushing incessant conquests in every

direction through the sky.

"Formerly the telescope was one, now it is e pluribus unum; and from thousands of observatories, public and private, the wonder-working tube is nightly run out against the sky .... and competing observers under the

spur of a generous emulation, almost nightly bring down some mighty truth by their voiceless celestial artillery.

"Not long after the invention of the telescope the means of astronomical investigation received another accession of at least quite as great importance. I refer to that branch of mathematics called by Newton, Fluxions, now known among scientific men under the name of the Differential and Integral Calculus .... No

one is now considered half equipped for astronomical research unless he can wield this splendid instrument ....

The Calculus has proved itself more than the lever of Archimedes, for that moves only one world, this moves all the heavens."

As to this aspect and disposition of the heavenly bodies, he says in part:

"What is this seeming immense hollow globe of the heavens? People once thought that the appearance was reality; that they were surrounded at a great distance by an immense shell of crystal

to which all the heavenly bodies were fastened. At a later period most scholars thought there were several of these spheres, each carrying heavenly bodies and each having a motion peculiar to itself. But now we know that there is nothing of the sort above and around us. The celestial sphere is nothing but indefinitely extended space, made to appear colored at times by the hue, and to appear rounded always by the shape of our atmosphere. There is nothing solid yonder to which the celestial bodies can be attached. They are absolutely "hung on nothing." (Job 26:7)

"Popularly speaking, this great space which environs us on all sides, and contains the heavenly bodies is empty. It is substantially a vacuum. There is no atmosphere pervading space: we could not breathe in its midintervals. As we ascend from the earth we find the air gradually becomes thinner; and La Place has shown that, after a few miles it must cease entirely. If we could visit mid-space it would seem a perfect void, also dreadfully cold and dark and silent. The higher we go into our atmosphere the colder it becomes. All mountain summits above a few thousand feet are covered with perpetual snow. Persons ascending in balloons at last reach a cold that is intolerable ....

"The starry spaces are also dark. Those who visit the higher regions of our atmosphere by mountains or balloons tell us that the pleasant blue gradually passes into an intense black. At last the stars glitter on a background of perfect jet.

"What are the heavenly bodies? Not lamps , not apertures through which glory shines, not personages, but immense masses unintelligent matter, some self-luminous, and the rest shining by reflected light. The sun and fixed stars and nebulae are found to be self-luminous; the moon, planets, comets and zodiacal light shine only by the light that comes from these .... If the moon is looked at through a telescope we see a rugged

surface of mountains and valleys .... The telescopic aspect of most of the planets gives none the less decidedly

the impression of an earth-like surface. The heavenly bodies are not only masses of earthy matter: they are masses of immense size .... They look very small, but so the earth would if we should go very far from it ....

The heavenly bodies are immensely remote from us and so of immense magnitude.

"How are these great masses of matter actually disposed in space? According to some principle of orderly arrangement, we should presume. The Supreme Cause is no friend to confusion. Still what the celestial order really is, is not easily discoverable. There is to first view, no system whatever in the distribution of large portions of the heavenly bodies. It is as if the genius of disorder had sown them..... There was no small

difficulty in ascertaining the real plan among the celestial bodies; and, in fact, it was not ascertained till after long ages of observation and study. But persuaded, as thinking men were, that there must be system everywhere within the domains of the Supreme Wisdom; well aware, as most of them were, that apparent confusion from unfavorable points of view, often covers a system of exactest order, they did not give over to inquire.

"At last they found the favorable standpoint which laid open the whole mystery of the celestial arrangement. The lamps of a city, as one approaches it some evening, appear a mere chaos of bright points; and yet that city is Philadelphia, where streets cut streets desperately at right angles and all the lights gleam on the sides of perfect squares. And they seem so to the same man when, turned aeronaut, his balloon has shot him up thousands of feet over the center of the city. He has now the true point of view.

"An army engaged in battle seems an inextricable maze to a looker-on from the same plain - men projected on and crossing men till all individual lines are lost - and yet here are all the parts of a host, from corps to companies, each under its own leader in unbroken array and admirable discipline, pressing forward on victory to the rhythm of exulting trumpet and drum as only Napoleon and Austerlitz know how to pour them along. And it seems so to the same man just as soon as, arrived at yonder lofty hill-top, he mingles with the Emperor's staff and looks down on the whole scene. He has now the true point of view. They look from over the beaming city. They gaze down on the rushing army; and now the whole celestial economy of arrangement stands unfolded. What is it?"

Clearly such a standpoint to view, mentally, the whole material creation, is the standpoint of Him "whose glory is above the heavens." This is indeed the Emperor's standpoint, "who hath prepared his throne in the heavens and whose Kingdom ruleth over all."

Ah! Lord, when we thus approach thee, to "consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers," may we do it with becoming reverence; "for the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork."

What then is the divine arrangement of this stupendous miracle of creation as God has permitted man, by studious and patient effort and investigation to discover it? Again we quote our worthy author: -

"The system of arrangement is this: -

• 1. A body, not self-luminous, has one or more like bodies revolving around it. There are many such systems, which we will call satellite systems.

• 2. Several of these primary systems form a still larger neighborhood and revolve about a self-luminous body, like the sun. There are many such systems which we will call planet systems.

• 3. Several of these planet systems form a still larger neighborhood; and revolve about a common point within it. There are many such systems which we will call sun-systems.

• 4. Several of these sun-systems form a neighborhood still larger, and circulate about one point within it. There are many such systems which we will call group-systems.

• 5. Several of these group-systems unite in a still larger neighborhood, and in revolving about a common point within it. There are many such systems which we will call cluster-systems.

• 6. Several of these cluster-systems combine into another system still grander, whose center of motion is also common to all its members. There are many such systems which we will call nebula systems.

• 7. Finally all the systems of space, composing one great neighborhood that embraces all other neighborhoods, revolve around one motion center of the creation. This we will call the universe system.

"Each order of systems includes all the orders below it; and each primary system has at least as many revolutions as there are different orders. It is very like the arrangement of human society. First we have the elementary group of the family, revolving about the home; then several families making a town, revolving about its central village; then several towns making a county, revolving about its county seat; then several counties making a state, revolving about its state-capital; then several states making a nation, revolving about the national metropolis; then several nations making a world, revolving about the political center of humanity; which once was Rome, which now is - shall we say London, or Paris, or St. Petersburg, or Washington?

"Take another illustration; for it is important to have this matter familiar .... Imagine the encampment

of a great army. On entering it, the order in which the tents are disposed does not readily appear. But, on examination, we find that there is a very rigid system of arrangement, and that this is it: First, the camp of the company about its captain, separated by a plain interval from all other company-camps. Next expanding around this is the camp of a regiment about its colonel, separated by a still more marked interval from all other regiment-camps. Then, expanding around the regiment, is the camp of the brigade, about its brigadier, separated by an interval still more decided from all other brigade-camps. Further, expanding around the brigade, is the camp of the division or corps, about its major-general, separated by an interval still broader from all other corps-camps. Lastly, expanding around the corps, is the whole encampment of the grand army about its general or marshal or monarch.

"See here a picture of the great encampment of the sky .... But really the sky is not a camp. It is rather

a glorious parade-ground, full of motion, full of orderly systematized motion - a flaming bannered field on which the various celestial powers are going through their various related evolutions under their respective leaders - companies of stars, maneuvering under star-captains; regiments, brigades, divisions, whole hosts of stars, maneuvering under star chiefs of as many ascending grades of rank and splendor. Hail, host of heaven! . . . . such brilliant equipment, such skillful commanding, such perfect obeying, such complicate wheeling, on exactest time and admirable step was never seen in any terrestrial army....

"But where is the center of motion? Astronomers have sought to answer this question, and apparently not in vain.... It is found that Alcyone—most beautiful star of the Pleiades—is the center of our motion ....

And the celebrated Mädler has shown that it is also the center of a great number of other suns - in fact, that the proper motion of the stars in all quarters of the heavens conform to the idea that they are spurring in glorious curriculum around the same point. He concludes that Alcyone is the center of the whole nebula. And though an occasional scholar ventures to dissent from this conclusion, and though we certainly are not authorized to claim for it the most absolute proof, yet it is probably as much like the truth as most photographs are like the persons who sit for their pictures to the sun ....

"Such are the various orders of systems which we can prove to be within the range of our telescopes. But no astronomer doubts that within this range may lie hundreds of different orders, wheel within wheel in astounding climax and bewildering complexity.... But there must be, at last a Universe System - a system

composed of all the bodies that people space, and in which each body revolves about the gravity-center of the whole material universe....

"All members of this great ultimate system must be in motion about its common center of gravity .... Is

there not something at the bottom of our hearts, better than science, which invites us to believe that what would be so fitting and beautiful, is also triumphantly actual; namely, that, at the center of this august totality of revolving orbs and firmaments - at once the center of gravity, the center of motion, and the center of government to all - is that better country, even the heavenly, where reigns in glory everlasting the Supreme Father and Emperor of nature, the capital of creation, the one spot that has no motion, but basks in majestic and perfect repose while beholding the whole ponderous materialism which it ballasts in course of circulation about it"?

Science and Revelation Agree

Yes, there is something better than science, highly as we should and do esteem its laborious and painstaking efforts to trace the stately steppings of our God; and better too - more reliable - than even the reverent institutions of the human heart. It is the testimony of the divine Word setting its seal to the truth of this scientific and reverent conclusion. The reasonable conclusion of science that the vast universe spread out before us must be the effect of a great and intelligent First Cause, who is himself, not a myth, but a glorious living Personality, enthroned in the heavens, is the stated fact of the divine revelation: - "To whom then will ye liken me, or shall I be equal? saith the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high and behold; Who hath created these things? that bringeth out their host by number, that calleth them all by name. From him who is great in might and strong in power not one escapeth*." "The Lord hath prepared his throne in the heavens and his kingdom ruleth over all." *Isa. 40:25, 26; Psa. 103:19; 19:1, 4, 6; 84:11.

The inquiry as to the exact location of the great center of all power and authority may not be answered conclusively yet somewhere "in the heavens the Lord hath prepared his throne," and there are strong intimations, both of science and of revelation, pointing to a locality in the northern heavens, and to that magnificent northern constellation, the Pleiades, of which Alcyone is possibly the central star. There is an intimation in the expressed treasonable ambition of Satan, of a locality in the northern heavens. See Isa. 14:13,14 "Thou hast said in thy heart, Into heaven will I ascend, above the stars of God will I exalt my throne; and I will sit also upon the mount of the assembly in the farthest end of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be equal to the Most High."

The suggestion of astronomers as to Alcyone may be correct, or the center of government may be some other star of the Pleiadic group, not visible to us because of its immense distance; and this may be the hidden meaning of Job 38:31 - "Canst thou bind the sweet influence of the Pleiades?" etc. It is more than likely that the human eye, even with telescopic aid, has never discovered the central metropolis of the universe; for it is written: "He holdeth back the face of his throne, and spreadeth his cloud upon it." "Clouds and darkness are round about him." Job 26:7, 9; Psa. 97:2.

Even so the sign of God's presence in the typical Tabernacle in the wilderness was veiled from human sight: "A cloud covered the tent of the congregation, and the glory of the Lord filled the Tabernacle." Exod. 40:34-38. "He dwelleth in light which no man can approach unto, whom no man hath seen, nor can see." 1 Tim. 6:16. Yet, as Moses was hidden in the cleft rock while the glory of the Lord passed by and the name of Jehovah was proclaimed, so redeemed man, hidden in Christ and covered by the sheltering hand of God from the overwhelming glory, may have refreshing glimpses of that glory even now.

Of one thing we may be sure - that several stars and groups of stars with which astronomers head the list of the glorious train, are called by name in the Scriptures, as though worthy of special attention. In addition to those quoted above (Job 38:31, 32) we notice Job 9:9, 10 - "Which maketh Arcturus, Orion and Pleiades and the chambers of the south, which doeth great things past finding out; yea, and wonders without number." Also Amos 5:7, 8 - "Ye who turn judgment to wormwood and leave off righteousness in the earth, seek him that maketh the seven stars [Pleiades] and Orion: ....Jehovah is his name."

"See," says our reverent and adoring astronomer, "all the path-bits of the solar system curved as for a common center, and lo, some of the celestial pilgrims brightly smiling toward the same point! Who feels that he must actually see that center blazing as a sun before he can solidly believe in it? Why, all the arcs of the system, great and small, unite in affirming that primate and metropolitan. - See Constellation Hercules growing larger year by year. Must you see with fleshly eyes, a flaming ellipse trending along the abyss, and carefully take its bearing among the stars with compass and sights, before you will consent to believe in it?

If so, alas for the Herschels and Struves! they are visionaries, and not the men of science they have had the credit of being. See the proper motions of all Galactic stars curved as if for central Pleiades! To know the reality of that center must I actually see it blazing like twelve thousand suns, and actually see it brightly zoned about by its eighteen millions of completed ellipses, and actually hunt down, one by one, as many shadowy foci till they are lost to view in thy effulgent bosom, O illustrious and imperial Alcyone?

"Not at all, Forbid it, Dorpat and Pulkova - forbid it, the fames of Maedler and Argelander, and all most signal astronomers. Never do I need to turn eye on the neck of Taurus. Its famous cluster might be as strange to my sight as the lost Pleiad, and yet I must believe. It is enough for me that I know the law of gravitation, and have noted the general drift of our heavens. This settles the matter. Every bit of star-path out in yonder vault contributes a voice to that euphemism which tells me the brilliant story of the Central Sun. I am assured of that august nebular heart, of that astonishing center of force and revolution; as plainly if not as impressively, as I could have been by near sight.

"No, I do not need to see it. No more do I need to see God in order to know of his existence. He is perturbing Neptune. He is the Herculean Constellation toward which all things sail. He is the Metropolitan Alcyone around which all things revolve. So I have no occasion to invoke sight. The perturbations of nature show him. Her orbits concave to him. The general drift of her firmaments announces him like a choir of trumpets and artilleries. Hail, great center of revolving being - as real as if we saw thee on thy throne sending forth thy beams and government to remotest space!"

In final consideration of this vast theme of the material creation here so briefly sketched, we call attention again to the statement of Job (26:7) - "He hangeth the earth upon nothing." This ball of organized matter was launched out into space to pursue forever its orbit around the sun. This space - what is it? It is "nothing." So also, "He stretcheth out the north [the northern heavens] over the empty place" - space -"nothing." Space, then, is nothing, emptiness, void, vacancy. It is a negative. It can have neither beginning nor end, for it is nothing; and it cannot be measured except as distance or relative nearness of one material body to another.

All that naturally belongs to space is also negative, - cold, the absence of heat; darkness the absence of light; silence, the absence of any disturbing element, and also of any means for communication of such disturbance. Thus, upon the cold, black, negative back-ground, God paints his fair creation; and all the positive elements of light and heat and grace and beauty are the developments of his established law, the outgrowth of his eternal power, and the manifestations of his divine nature and glory. Rom. 1:20 RV.

To one other item we would call attention, namely, to the assured stability of God's creation. The vast domain gives no sign of approaching dissolution, and neither does the inspired Word give such a hint. The recuperative powers of nature are wonderful; her resources are inexhaustible; and while her bounty is most graciously lavish, her economics are no less conservative. Though bearing the weight of ages, she has still all the freshness and vigor of youth: aye, of an eternal youth, for such also is the testimony of divine prophecy.

We have seen that God's purpose with reference to his creation is called an "eternal purpose." "Jehovah is the King of eternity" - Jer. 10:10; his throne is established - Psa. 93:2: then, of course, his whole universal dominion, all creation. Even this world, though for a time laboring under the curse of sin and its entailments, "is established that it cannot be moved." Psa. 93:1. "The earth abideth forever." Isa. 45:18. The Son and Heir of God is promised an existence as long as that of the sun - an eternal existence: "His name shall endure forever: his name shall be continued as long as the sun, and his dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed." Psa. 72:17; Dan. 7:14.

Faith the Only Reasonable Conclusion

Having thus briefly glanced at the glory of the material creation, we again call to mind the statement of Paul - Rom 1:20 - that the invisible things of God - his eternal power and his divinity - are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made. Or, in other words, that this vast wonderful, glorious, incomprehensible material creation gives ample testimony to the eternal existence, the infinite power and the divine nature of its living Author.

Here again we would quote from our Author of Ecce Coelum. Taking the mental telescope and looking through and beyond the glory of the material creation, he tells us how the close study of the visible works of God have helped him to perceive clearly a living, eternal God, of infinite power and divine nature. He says: -

"Theists and atheists agree as to the advantage of approaching the question of a Divine Being with a mind freshly steeped in the leading facts and courses of nature. The atheist claims that nature makes on minds thoroughly imbued with her spirit an impression adverse to faith; and points, in evidence, to some eminent cultivators of the physical sciences who have been as skeptical as they have been scientific. So he is in favor of the study of nature.

"On the other hand, the theist is in favor of it - for the very opposite reason. He denies the atheism of science. He refuses to infer it from the unbelief of some French and German philosophers - with here and there a second-rate English disciple - whose minds from childhood have been poisoned with the writings of Voltaire and his school, who have seen around them only a grotesquely corrupted form of religion, and whose private

lives for the most part were such as to make it greatly for their interest to have no God. To him the case of such exceptional men only shows the exceeding force of native depravity, evil training, evil surroundings and evil habits at withstanding the natural tendency of their pursuits. This tendency he regards as strongly theistic. He thinks he sees premonitions, prophecies, presumptions and even proofs of Divinity in the great universe that expands around him, and believes that, other things being equal, the more fully one comes under the influence of the astronomy, the geology and the other branches of natural science whose findings have amazed mankind, the more easily he will admit, and the more strongly he will hold the doctrine of a Divine Being....

"Now it is claimed that nature is the work of God. Let us, step by step unveil its leading features and see if they do not strikingly harmonize with the claim:.... One of the most striking features of what we call nature

is its vastness. . . . So I ask you to think of plains stretching to the horizon; of mountains piercing the clouds; of roomy continents anchored in roomier oceans; of this whole earth sphere with its huge baldric of twenty-five thousand miles; covered with innumerable vegetable products; peopled with men to the potential figure of a thousand millions, swarming still more with the lower animals; and so flooded with microscopic life that almost every cubic inch of air and water and soil is panting with an incalculable population. Such is our world.

"Out in yonder vault, find that million-fold world which we call the sun, with its invisible retinue of a hundred earths; when night falls, find a thousand suns similarly attended; with tube Galilean, thousands more; with tube Herschelian, millions more; with tube Rossian, billions more. Is this the end? What astronomer for one moment imagines that another enlargement of the great speculum at Parsonstown would show our vision to be already hard up against the frontiers of nature? .... Where is the verge of the universe? Who would

undertake the roll-call of its orbs?.... Figures go but a small way toward expressing the dimensions of such a

universe: .... Calculation covers its abashed face with its great wings in the presence of these overwhelming

amplitudes. And such is nature.

"Certainly such a universe as this does not cry out against the existence of a God whose essential attribute is immensity.... And when I am told of an author of nature who is immense with a three-fold

boundlessness of intelligence, might and years, .... who can properly challenge, 'Do not I fill heaven and

earth?' .... and I then place myself out under the open dome of nature, amid its exuberant objects and

marvelous stretches, I feel myself silently drinking in predispositions to faith as the fleece spread out under the open heaven drinks in the dew. I feel that the doctrine matches the facts.....

"Notice with me the variety in unity that characterizes nature. Some hundreds of millions of creatures on our earth are so much alike that we put them into a class by themselves and call them men. They are all alike in certain fundamental features; and yet each man differs, both in body and soul, from every other man. So of every other class of things - animals, vegetable, inorganic; while there is a substratum of unity, there is not one which is not very unlike, in many respects, all its fellows. All animals have great points in common, but how

many, many sorts of animals! .... All vegetables are similarly constituted, but whose memory can master all

the distinct kinds of vegetables in the wide interval between the spire of grass and the huge tree that wrestles victoriously with stormy centuries, and reckon up the great differences that exist, as to shape and size and color and flowers and leaves and grasses and shrubs and trees? ....

"So with those other worlds that shine or hide in the vault above. They are all spheres; all have orbital and probably axial motions; all are governed by the same principle and law of gravitation; all are lighted and colored and warmed by the same mysterious element or impulse: but on such basal unity is superimposed an almost infinite variety....

"But we pass on to the region of the fixed stars.... Lo, we skirt systems, clusters, firmaments, and never

two alike.... Lo, systems with several suns each, from one to a hundred! Lo, systems lighted, some with white

suns, some with ruby, some with emerald, and some with suns of many different colors! Lo, suns differing exceedingly in size and amount of light they shed.... Alcyone shines with a force of twelve thousand suns.

And then we have suns themselves combined into systems of all sizes and shapes, - firmaments which, under the name of nebulae, are the last generalization and most stupendous variety of modern discovery: sometimes rolled up into spheres; sometimes gathered into circular or elliptic rings; now fan-shaped; now like an hour glass; now broad wheels of compacted suns, large, glittering and sublime enough to under-roll the chariot of immeasurable God. There are not two leaves or grass-blades perfectly alike in all this verdant world; not two worlds, nor systems of worlds accurately alike in all of the prodigious realms.

"Now no one can claim that this vast variety embosomed in unity makes positively against the idea of one Creator of boundless invention and executive faculty. Just such a many-sided, versatile, complete Deity as is affirmed would produce a vast universe, in which great outlines of unity would be steeped in immeasurable variation. The eternal laws of his own nature would demand it of the great Builder. The invincible beauty and fitness of things would demand it. Perfect uniformity, however piled up in magnificent magnitudes - even a uniformity only varied after so cramped and frugal a fashion as would be perpetually suggesting poverty of resources - would belie the inexhaustible Divinity. If he builds at all, he must not misrepresent and disparage himself in his work: his fruitful nature, teaming with all imaginable fertilities and seeds, must surely blossom into very much that marvelous fruitfulness of product and pattern which we observe.

"And when I am told of an Author of nature whose being swarms in resistless force toward every point of the compass, nay, of the sphere; who is both a unit and a polygon, facing every desideratum and possibility with a flashing side, both of thought and action, that out-dazzles the sun, .... and I put myself forth under the

open dome amid the glorious diversities that root themselves in the glorious unity of nature, .... I feel myself

drinking in predispositions to faith, as the exposed fleece drinks in the dew. I feel that again the doctrine matches the facts.

"Another characteristic of nature is the perfection of its details. The exquisite finish of nature in its minutest parts is about as wonderful as its vastness and variety. Scan that leaf: examine the wing of that butterfly. Let the tinted and polished antennae of that moth glitter in the focus of your instrument. Subject to the skillfulest notice of science and art the smallest veins of any animal or vegetable. Push the analysis just as far as possible.... with the most searching criticism of the superbest microscope. What exquisite details!

What elaborate refinement of workmanship! It is not as with some masterpiece of human painting - the main points only cared for, while all the subordinate are too rude to bear close inspection.... The microscope turns

the most finished work of man into coarseness and clumsiness. Not so with the works of nature....

Everywhere among natural objects, great and small, the outlines and the minute filling up .... are wrought with

apparently the same overflowing outlay of attention and skill. It is so, not in a few instances merely, nor in a thousand - it is so universally.

"That there are any so preposterous as to think that this feature of nature makes positively against the idea of a sparrow-watching, hair-numbering, and thought-weighing God, is, of course, not to be imagined....A

nature finished exquisitely down to the most infinitesimal of its details, is just what one would have predicted of a God of this description.... A God for whose vision nothing is too small, who gives as complete attention to

the affairs of an atom as to those of an empire, .... who is embarrassed no more by unlimited multiplicity than

by unlimited minuteness of detail, who can concentrate his almightiness with as much freedom and accuracy on a mathematical point as on a world, .... can with equal ease do this, and roll a solar system on its triumphant

path about the Pleiades: do I not know that a being with such a striking attribute as this would surely give it expression in his works? Do I not know that he who is equally at home in maxima and minima, and to whom beauties and glories in the world of infinitesimals would be just as apparent and practicable as they are in the world of infinites, would lay himself out on the one very much as on the other?.... Again I feel the force of a

doctrine matching facts.

"Another feature of nature is what I shall call its wisdom. The world is full of adaptations of means to ends, often of the most complex and elaborate description.... The adaptations are wonderful.... Down into

the regions of the infinitely small, whither only the most searching microscopes carry the sight; up into the regions of the infinitely large and far, whither only the mightiest telescopes lift our struggling knowledge; among the mechanisms of the atomic nations that people a single leaf, and among the mechanisms of those swarming celestial empires whose starry banners sweep our nightly skies - it is everywhere the same - exquisite adaptations in such endless amounts and varieties of wise structure as exhausts all human understanding.

"Does such a nature swear against a Divine Contriver?.... I feel that the God who is affirmed is just the

God to match the nature which I see - here the ball and there the socket, here the foot and there its footprint, here the shapely hand and there its glove, here the sovereign sword and there the golden scabbard that just fits it

- that these noble adaptations and mechanisms, spangling and blazoning all the fields of matter are in rejoicing sympathy with the idea of a Creator who is wonderful in counsel and excellent in working; that the alabaster box of precious wisdom that has been emptied, not only on the queenly head and shining tresses of nature, but on her very feet, scents bravely of One who is himself a 'mountain of such spikenard'....

"Another striking feature of nature is its power . . . . It is to inanimate nature that we must go for most brilliant examples of physical force. What power in the wind, when, as a tornado, it sweeps along; in the oceanswell as it tosses an entire navy with as much ease as a single cockle-shell; in steam, dragging thousands of tons at the pace of the winds; in dynamite, lifting a city into mid-air and deafening earth with its voice; .... in

the earthquake, when oceans and continents are tossed aloft: what stalwart shoulders of gas and steam and fire are heaving at the mighty burden! .... But there are celestial forces which are of still huger and loftier pattern. .

..

"When, then, I am told that a Sublime Force, who has Almighty for his name, is the author of nature, . . . . I feel that the doctrine matches the facts; that the asserted Creator and creation fit each other as the die and the face of the coin which it has stamped.

"Another feature of nature is its remarkable relation to law. Notice, law and its exceptions - the general steadfastness of modes of being and action in nature, and the occasional breaches in that steadfastness. On the earth's surface, in its dark interior, in the air and vault above, in the instant present and the ancient past, everywhere, law waves its mighty scepter. Atoms and masses, the ponderables and imponderables, the organic and inorganic, the living and dead - all are subjected in their modes of being and action to certain fixed rules, sometimes particular, but more often covering whole classes of objects. Not a particle floats at random; or as a unit: not a leaf grows or falls save according to rigid principles of science. All chemical elements have their modes and measures of combination to which they steadfastly adhere. All heat, electricity, magnetism, gravity, act according to abiding methods which philosophers have gradually discovered and arranged into the sciences of natural philosophy. The great processes of vegetable and animal life proceed after the same forms and steps from age to age. The stone-beds of the world are formed and modified in certain set ways which are the same now as in the periods anterior to man. Even the weather, so often called fickle, has its stable methods, almost every year bringing to light some new general fact in meteorology, or extending the application of an old one. Day and night succeed each other every twenty-four hours without variation. The seasons do not change their order or general character. All of Kepler's and Newton's laws are as operative to-day as they ever have been since their discovery. The planets shoot round the sun and are circled by their own moons on substantially the elliptical orbits, in the same times, and with the same principles of alternate retardation and acceleration as of old. All known changes in the planetary orbits have been found to be bound in a law of periodicity which is apparently invariable.

"So beyond the solar system. Law still; nothing but law; law everywhere on ten thousand blazing thrones; largely the same laws that prevail in our own system! As far as we can observe - and it is no little that has been observed - those distant orbs reverence the various principles of gravitation and mechanics, and keep as rigidly to their behests as when the earliest astronomy gazed at them. And every man of science is well persuaded that could his observation alight on particular orbs of those remote and twinkling hosts, he would find their minutest details bound up in the chains of the same adamantine regularity that rules our own globe.

"So in general we speak. But we must not be understood to speak with absolute precision of language. In this wide scene of steadfast arrangement there are outbreaks of anomaly - ruptures and rents and dislocations in the habits and on goings of nature, like those in the strata of the earth, .... great exceptional events,

phenomena without fellows through an astonishing stretch of ages. Among the geologic strata - where are found faults, dislocations, fissures, and even reversions of those great rock-beds which, in general, are laid down on a plan of utmost regularity. The course of nature is like some great-thoroughfare which advances through great distances without the slightest solution of its continuity, but at last finds a great river thrust squarely across its track. On this side the thoroughfare, on that side the thoroughfare, and here the broad deep flow of the bridgeless river - a river worth to the public, it may be, many times what the perfect continuity of the road would be.

"Now no one can say that this characteristic of nature makes positively against such a steadfast and yet miracle-working God as is affirmed in the Christian Scriptures. Instead of opposition there is positive harmony between the fact and the doctrine.... As general laws are necessary to make science possible, to enable men to

forecast and profit by experience, to serve as a basis for all comprehensive business and for all civil government - as the broader and profounder the intelligence, the more it is pleased with and tends to work by general principles, we may say that the very nature of Deity would demand a generally steadfast law-abiding universe. At the same time, a miracle-worker, he sees it undesirable to allow nature to hide its Maker altogether behind its swarming screen, and give to the ideas of necessity and fatality full sweep in human minds. Such a being would be under a loud call to provide in the constitution and course of nature such suggestions and prophecies of miracles as would gradually, though perhaps unconsciously to them, prepare the minds of men for those crowning abnormals of the system. He must have the glory of personal agency glimmer through occasional rents in the uniformity of nature. An anomaly-sprinkled, miracle-suggesting, as well as stable, universe must proceed from his wondrous hand.... And when I am told of one who is actually just this sort of divinity - both

law and miracle: both giver and keeper of moral laws which shall not pass away, while his iron will throned as superbly in the realm of matter as of morals, yet launches forth into special providences and miracles on extraordinary occasions, .... I feel that the doctrine and the facts are at one; that the asserted Creator and the

observed creation fit each other as do the signet and the seal just stamped.

"Another feature of nature is its wonderful relation to time and motion.

"How long are the earth and its confederates in the solar system calculated to endure? Geometry declares that no element of decay within endangers the stability of the system of the world. That year which circumscribes our seasons is only three hundred and sixty-five days; but the earth has another year to which this is a mere point - its pole goes nodding through space in a circle which takes twenty-five thousand years to traverse.... All the planetary orbits pass through cycles of changes varying in length from a few centuries to

nine thousand, to seventy thousand, even to many millions of years; but the greatest of these planetary cycles are as nothing compared with those enormous periods which bound the perturbations and express the secular equations of the sun and fixed stars - periods including more years than imagination has ever succeeded in realizing. What amazing longevities! What portentous numerals! They are hieroglyphics of the everlasting. They lift us among the dizziest peaks of the sublime.

"These immense periods, interspersed with others exceedingly small, sometimes express an exceedingly slow movement among the powers of nature. In other cases the movement with which they are connected is exceedingly rapid.... If now one should say that these great cycles embosoming unutterable extremes of

movement makes positively against an Eternal God who is able to move to his purpose like the light, or at a rate so trifling as to be quite imperceptible by human senses, we should laugh his logic to scorn. We know better. These are facts that palpably agree with such a theism.... They express a state of things that might have been

expected from a being who has both unlimited time and unlimited speed at his disposal - who is able to dart on his purpose as if infinite whirlwinds were in his wings, or to approach at a rate so minute that no human sense can discern the movement in the lapse of generations.... It is only a God who has substantial forevers on his

hands, and who on occasion can lighten and on occasion can linger ineffably along the highway of his purposes, who is properly represented by such a nature. His character demands of him a nature expressing his own attributes.

"So when I am told of one whose longevity is eternity, whose orbit of existence has an infinite axis, who reaches an atonement after slowly beating toward it for forty centuries, who is ages and dispensations in establishing his kingdom in the world, who commonly approaches the punishment of sinners with steps lingering through numberless delays and forbearances, and who yet sometimes yokes steeds of wind and fire and foam to his car - .... I feel that there is a significant matching of what we are taught with what we observe;

that such a theism is on most excellent and embracing terms with nature.

"Another feature - the mysteriousness of nature. Who does not know it? - terrestrial nature is one huge sphinx. She vomits enigmas on us in seas. Riddles too profound for the highest science yet in our possession lurk in every ray of light, in every blade of grass, in every rudest stone. Only some of the coarser facts, in relation to a few things here and there, have been picked up and systematized; and these are what compose our boasted sciences. From center to circumference the earth is choked with mysteries whose stony rind has never yet received a blow, much less a fracture, from the mallet of investigation. Come now, ye great Computers, compute for us how long it will be before the science which loses itself at the very threshold of the complexities of this world, will be able to swoop down with triumphant wing upon the surfaces and to the fiery centers of those fellow-planets that mysteriously weave and interweave paths across the concave, and thoroughly solve the problem of all their swarming contents!

"A disorderly maze are the apparent paths of the members of our solar system! But you say the real paths are not so intricate as the apparent. Take your stand, then, at the sun, and observe planets and comets going and coming at all distances and rates of velocity and directions; while around most of the larger planets are similarly moving other systems of satellites - is it not an intricate as well as a brave sight? Can you see through the mazy plan? But you say that it has been seen through, and planetariums have been made that clearly represent the whole thing to us within a few feet of space. How many centuries and philosophers, O Copernicus - Copernicus I say, away yonder in the depths of four hundred years ago - did it take to make that orrery and solve that riddle of the system of the world? Indeed it is yet very far from solution. Astronomers can completely account for the movements of a system of only two bodies. A system of three is quite beyond them; one of a hundred and more bodies, like our solar system, immeasurably beyond them. There is not even a hope that science, with all its dynamical calculuses, will ever overtake this higher problem.

"But there is a higher problem still. Solar system revolves around solar system; a group of such systems around a similar group; a cluster of such groups around a similar cluster; a firmament of such clusters around a similar firmament. Indeed, as we have seen, the whole universe of stars, with all the countless fleets of planets and moons which they represent, must, according to the law of gravity, revolve about a last center of centers. Let us go to it. Standing at this heaven - for is not this the dazzling metropolis where dwell the sublime Caesar of the creation? - standing at this wondrous point, and looking forth on the countless nebulae coming and going at all imaginable distances, speeds and directions - lo, what a glorious scene of bewilderment and unsearchable complexity! It fairly takes away our breath to look. There is no more spirit left in us. If a system of three bodies is too much for the most subtle and comprehensive science yet known, what can ever be done by all coming generations and geniuses however imperial, toward mastering such labyrinthine immensity of involved orbs?

"Now hearken to the Christian Scriptures - affirming a Maker of nature who is himself the mightiest of all enigmas. Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself - Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty to perfection? - It is high as heaven: what canst thou do? deep as the grave: what canst thou know? Does the aspect of nature contradict this doctrine? Who will presume to deny that the incomprehensible materialism about us, to say nothing of the more incomprehensible spiritualism within us, is just what one would expect to find issuing from the hands of an incomprehensible Creator - a being mysteriously without a beginning, mysteriously self-existent, mysteriously able to make the greatest and noblest things out of nothing by simple volition, mysteriously all-knowing, mysteriously unfettered in the application of his power and knowledge by all conditions of space and duration and personal presence - in short, a being enveloped in a terrible pomp and majesty of sunset clouds whose broken lines never permit the orb that glorifies them to appear, even for a moment, in clear and golden contour on our rapt sight. Such a being setting out to create would be likely to give us the present enigmatic universe, nay, for why state the matter so feebly? - would be sure to give it. Like every other copious author, he would reproduce his own traits. An unutterable sphinx himself, his creatures would be sphinxes. A nature from the hand of God that I can comprehend, or make any approach to comprehending? - preposterous! A creation that to me, with my low place and filmy vision and narrow orbit, is not steeped in seas of mystery? preposterous! If Jehovah build the temple of nature at all, he will found it on mysteries, frame it with mysteries, cover and dome it with mysteries, pillar and ballast it with mysteries, pave and ceil it with a mosaic of mysteries - surely he will.

"And when I am told of a being whose own nature is an overwhelming problem, whose attributes have no horizon, no zenith and no nadir; whose ends respect all possible objects and interests, and spread themselves out in plans of boundless vastness whose merest corners and differentials only are visible to men of the widest scope, and I then place myself out under nature's open dome, amid its inscrutableness of leaf and star, of whole crowded earth and circumventing heavens .... and open my soul candidly to all their silent suggestions and

magnetisms, I feel myself drinking in faith as the fleece spread out under the stars drinks in the dew - I feel that the facts give embracing arms to the doctrine."

Thus the heavens declare the glory of God, and no honest mind can resist their logic. The book of nature and the book of revelation agree in one testimony as to their Divine Author, to whom be glory and dominion throughout all ages.

Let us add but a few observations to this eloquent testimony of reverent science. How many doubting Thomas’s there are who say, Except I can see with my eyes and feel with my hands, I will not believe. How much then must they remain in ignorance of, for the invisible things of God are to be understood from the things that are made. The visible things from the ladder whereupon faith should confidently mount to view the things unseen. Faith in the divine power and goodness of the living God is the only legitimate conclusion from a mighty array of evidence; and, as Paul suggests (Heb. 11:1, is a substantial basis for the Christian's hope in the things as yet unseen, but promised of God to the faith that overcometh the unbelieving spirit of the sinful world. Armored with the panoply of faith, acquired by meditation upon the works and ways of God, the Christian soldier can bravely endure hardness as seeing by faith him who is invisible to his human senses.

Both the telescope and the microscope bring lessons to men in this respect. How much they have revealed in nature that otherwise must have remained undiscovered, and might have been disbelieved had it only been told. So also the combined telescope and microscope of divine revelation, mounted and adjusted by the spirit of God for the use of the prospective heirs of God, leads into all truth, and shows them things to come - the divine plans and purposes in all his vast creation. And blessed is he, who, like Abraham, and like Moses, believes and acts upon the testimony, "as seeing him who is invisible." Heb. 11:27

Creation a Finished Work

While scientists with their wonderful instruments and no less wonderful scientific methods, are overwhelmed and amazed at the apparent endlessness of the physical creation, few, if any, seem to have considered the testimony of the Word of God, that this vast creation had a beginning, and that it is also a finished work. See John 1:1. "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth"; and Gen 2:1. "Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them." There was a time before they began to be created; and when the earth and man were created, the creative energy ceased, and God rested from those labors.

The testimony of God's Word is also to the effect that the divine creative energy was not merely a power of organization of matter already in existence, and in accordance with physical laws already established, but that the work of creation down to its primary elements, as well as the entire scope of natural law is the outgrowth of the divine wisdom and energy, and is therefore the expression of his divine power and character. See Prov. 8:26. RV - "While as yet he had not made ....the beginning of the dust of the world."

God's Oath by the Stability of the Heavens

When God lifts up his hand and swears by the heavens which he has made, and by the ordinances of the heavens which he has established , declaring that his word is as sure of accomplishment as that the heavens exist and that the operations of their laws are established, what blessed assurance it gives to his believing children. He is thereby swearing by himself, for he can swear by none greater. Deut. 32:40-43; Jer. 31:35-40. He is calling attention to the fact of his finished creation, and to the permanency of his established physical laws, and saying that his blessed promises are just as sure of fulfillment as those established conditions. See Jer. 31:35-36.

God the Author of all Natural Law

How significantly too does God remind Job that he alone is the author of all natural law, in heaven and in earth. See Job 38-41.

In chapter 38:1-30, 34-37 he demands of Job to account for the wonders of nature about him in the earth. In verses 31-33 he points to the established laws that bind the material universe together and that guide majestic worlds in their orderly courses. In verses 36, 38-41 and chapter 39:1-30 he calls attention to the wonders of

creation in the animal kingdom. Then, that man may realize the greatness of divine power and its rightful authority, he significantly inquires, "Canst thou do these things?" - "Hast thou an arm like God, or canst thou thunder with a voice like him? Deck thyself now with majesty and Excellency and array thyself with glory beauty, .... then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee." Job 38:31; 40:7,9, 10,

14.

Man's Proper Attitude

This divine logic is the voice of God, through nature's works, to every man; a Father's counsel to all his sons, declaring not only the fact and the righteousness of his power and authority, but also their necessity for the well-being of his children, whose natural and rightful place is ever beneath his sheltering wing.

And in view of the goodness and glory of God revealed in his mighty works, the only proper attitude for the enlightened mind and heart of man is the attitude of Job after God had thus expostulated with him. Job, like other men, in his failure to consider the works and ways of God, had reproached the Almighty, judging him from a very narrow and limited view-point. But when thus awakened to a reasonable consideration of God's testimonies, Job said, "I know that thou canst do everything, and that no thought can be withholden from thee . . . I have uttered that I understood not, things too wonderful for me, which I knew not .... I have heard of thee by

the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye [of faith] seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes."

Thus the view and appreciation of God's sovereignty and glory, leads man to his rightful place, as a dutiful son and grateful heir of the divine bounty.