Edward Hitchcock

“ He, therefore, who knows the most of science ought most powerfully to feel this religious influence. He is not confined, like the great mass of men, to the outer court of nature’s magnificent temple, but he is admitted to the interior, and allowed to trace its long halls, aisles, and galleries, and gaze upon its lofty domes and arches; nay, as a priest he enters the penetralia, the holy of holies, where sacred fire is always burning upon the altars, where hovers the glorious Schekinah, and where, from a full orchestra, the anthem of praise is ever ascending. ”

“ Other branches of knowledge, highly esteemed among men, shall pass away with the destruction of this world. The baseless hypotheses of science, falsely so called, whether moral, intellectual, or physical, and the airy phantoms of a light and fictitious literature, shall all pass into the limbo of forgetfulness. But the principles of true science, constituting, as they do, the pillars of the universe, shall bear up that universe forever. How many questions of deep interest, respecting his favorite science, must the philosopher in this world leave unanswered, how many points unsettled! ”

“ Consider, too, what havoc has been made in the body, that curious and wonderful workmanship of the Almighty; how the unbridled appetites have sown the seeds of disease therein, and how pain, languor, and decay assail the constitution as soon as we begin to live, and cease not their attacks till they triumph over the citadel of life. Consult the history of the world, and what a lazar-house and a Golgotha has it been! What land has not been drenched in human blood, poured out in ferocious war! ”

“ It is as if each man had his foot upon the point where ten thousand telegraphic wires meet from every part of the universe, and he were able, with each volition, to send abroad an influence along these wires, so as to reach every created being in heaven and in earth. It is as if we had the more than Gorgon power of transmuting every object around us into forms beautiful or hideous, and of sending that transmuting process forward through time and through eternity. ”

“ I fancy that scenes far more enchanting, and objects far more glorious, will meet the soul at its first entrance upon the new earth, even though to mortal vision it should present only an ocean of fire. I imagine a thousand new inlets into the soul—nay, I think of it as all eye, all ear, all sensation; now plunging deeper into the infinitesimal parts of matter than the microscope can carry us, and now soaring away, perhaps on the waves of the mysterious ether, far beyond the ken of the telescope. ”

“ Griffin, one of the ablest of the American divines, “A question here arises, whether the new heavens and new earth will be created out of the ruins of the old; that is, whether the old will be renovated and restored in a more glorious form, or whether the old will be annihilated, and the new made out of nothing. The idea of the annihilation of so many immense and glorious bodies, organized with inimitable skill, and declarative of infinite wisdom, is gloomy and forbidding. Indeed, it is scarcely credible that God should annihilate any of his works, much less so many and so glorious works. ”

“ And yet, through the glass which philosophy and faith have put into our hands, we can see that the disk is a full-orbed circle, and that no spots mar and darken its clear surface. How gloriously, then, when all those clouds shall have passed away, and the last taint of evil shall have been blotted out by the final conflagration, shall that sun, in the new heavens, send down its light and heat upon the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness! ”

“ But does not this law of mutual influence between organic beings extend to other worlds? Why should it not be transmitted by means of the luminiferous ether to the limits of the universe? Who knows but a blow struck upon a single link of organic beings here may be felt through the whole circle of animate existence in all worlds? That is a narrow view of God’s work, which isolates the organic races on this globe from the rest of the universe. The more philosophical view throws the golden chain of influence around the whole animal creation, whether small or great, near or remote. ”

“ Think of two thousand worlds rolling nightly around us, visible to the naked eye. Take the telescope, and see those two thousand multiply to fifty or one hundred millions, and then recollect how very improbable it is that the keenest optics of earth can reach more than an infinitesimal part of creation. Surely the mind is as much confounded and lost, when it attempts to conceive of the number of the worlds in the universe, as when it contemplates their distances and magnitudes. In respect to number and distance, at least, we find no resting-place but in infinity. ”

“ Such representations as these, I am aware, will, upon first thought, seem to most minds little better than the dreams of fancy, although founded upon the laws of mathematics. For how soon does every trace disappear from the earth of the most terrible convulsions and the mightiest human efforts! The shout of countless multitudes, the thunder and the crash of battle, and even the volcano’s bellowing, are soon succeeded by unbroken silence; and we cannot discover a trace of any of those countless scenes of noise and convulsion that have been acted upon the world’s busy stage. ”

“ But with the exception of the materialist, I am sure that most reasoning minds will feel as if the creation of the human family was one of the most stupendous, perhaps the most stupendous, exercise of infinite power and wisdom which the universe exhibits. If any change whatever demands a Deity for its accomplishment, it must be this; and, therefore, geology presents, in the case of man, the most striking example which nature could furnish of a beginning of organic and intellectual life on the globe. ”

“ Look now, for the sun’s first rays have shed a flood of glory over the clouds which now fill the valleys beneath your feet. A fleecy white predominates; but the colors of the prism tinge the edges of the clouds, and no part of the solid earth rises above them, save the pinnacle on which you stand, and to the south the higher peaks of the Bernese Alps,—the Jungfrau, the Eiger, the Shreckhorn, and the Wetterhorn,—covered with snow and glaciers, and seeming too pure to belong to earth. ”

“ How few of our systems of theology contain a manful vindication of truths so important! Let not the Christian divine, therefore, refuse the aid thus offered by physical science. Let him no longer indulge groundless jealousies against true philosophy, as if adverse to religion. Especially let him not spurn the aid of geology, which alone, of all the sciences, discloses stupendous miracles of creation in early times, and thus removes all presumption against the miracles of Christianity and special providence at any time. ”

“ Yet it is only a few gifted and adventurous minds that are able, from some advanced mountain top, to catch a glimpse of the entire stream of truth, formed by the harmonious union of all principles, and flowing on majestically into the boundless ocean of all knowledge, the Infinite Mind. ”

“ On that pinnacle of the northern regions no sound of man or beast breaks in upon the awful stillness which reigns there, and which seems to bring the soul into near communion with the Deity. It is, indeed, the impressive Sabbath of nature; and the soul feels a delightful awe, which can never be forgotten. Gladly would it linger there for hours, and converse with the mighty and the holy thoughts which come crowding into it; and it is only when the man looks at the rapidly declining sun that he is roused from his revery and commences his descending march. ”

“ How can a man who has heard only a brief and hurried course of thirty lectures on chemistry, twenty on anatomy and physiology, fifteen upon zoölogy, ten upon botany, ten upon mineralogy, and twenty upon geology, at the college, with no additional instruction at the theological seminary,—how can he judge correctly of points and reasoning difficult to be mastered by adepts in these sciences? How certain to be worsted in an argument with an accomplished naturalist who is a sceptic! ”

“ Yet to him who realizes that the destruction is only a necessary preparation for a brighter world, which will emerge from the ruins of the present; that, when the matter of the globe has been purified, its surface shall be covered with new and lovelier forms of beauty, surrounded by a still more bland and balmy atmosphere, and inhabited by sinless and immortal beings,—to him who realizes all this, the desolation will put on the aspect of a glorious transformation. ”

“ He may be confident that he is investigating those principles which will form a part of the science of heaven. Should he ever reach that pure world, he knows that the clogs which now weigh down his mind will drop off, and the clouds that obscure his vision will clear away, and that a brighter sun will pour its radiance upon his path. He is filling his mind with principles that are immortal. ”

“ Infinite benevolence gives him over, and no longer holds back the sword of retributive justice. Nay, the justice which inflicts the punishment is only benevolence in another form. And this it is that makes the infliction intolerable. How much more terrible to the wayward child are the blows inflicted by a weeping, affectionate father, than if received from an enemy! God is that affectionate Father; and he punishes only because he loves the universe more than the individual; and he has exhausted the stores of infinite mercy in vain to save him. ”

“ Yet what a startling thought is it, that the most secret workings of our minds and hearts are momentarily spread out in legible characters over the whole material universe! nay, that they are so woven into the texture of the universe, that they will constitute a part of its web and woof forever! To believe and realize this is difficult; to deny it is to go in the face of physical science. How many things we do believe that are sustained by evidence far less substantial! ”

“ Not only does the reasoning faculty fail to grasp the entire sum, but even imagination, as she flies backwards through period after period, tires in the effort, and brings back not even a conjectural result. The same feeling does, in fact, come over the mind, which she experiences when astronomy has hurried her from world to world, from sun to sun, from system to system, from nebula to nebula, and yet she seems no nearer to the limits of creation than when she started. ”

“ Hence a man may reach the loftiest pinnacle of scientific glory whose heart has never heaved with one religious emotion. He may penetrate to the very holy of holies in nature’s temple, and yet retain his atheism, in spite of the hallowed influences that surround him. Nothing is plainer in theory, and, alas! nothing has been more surely confirmed by experience, than that the possession of science is not the possession of religion.
In the third place, what a perversion of science it is to employ it against religion! ”

“ So far as the mere extinction of life is concerned, it is the same in man as in other animals; but sin arms it with a deadly sting, by pointing the offender to a world of retribution, as he sees the menacing dart of the great destroyer aimed at his heart. And, indeed, through all his days, man’s power of anticipation keeps death ever before him, as the end of all his present enjoyments, and the commencement, it may be, of unmitigated suffering. But the inferior animals, being incapable of sin, find none of these aggravations to give keenness to their final sufferings. ”

“ It will be said, perhaps, that the good resulting to the whole from even the most severe of these sufferings, overbalances the evil, and therefore they are indications of benevolence in such a world as ours. True, as things are, this may be so. But the question is, Why is there such a constitution given to nature as made it necessary to introduce disease, accident, and death? Would not unmixed benevolence have conferred the good, but have withheld the evil? Had there not been something in man’s character requiring the discipline of trials, would pure benevolence have sent them? ”

“ Scientific truth is but another name for the laws of nature. And a law of nature is merely the uniform mode in which the Deity operates in the created universe. It follows, then, that science is only a history of the divine operations in matter and mind.
In order to avoid mistake, we must make a distinction between the principles of science, and the application of those principles to the useful arts of life. The principles themselves are an illustration of the divine wisdom and benevolence, but their application to the arts illustrates the ingenuity and wisdom of man. ”

“ I need not stop to notice the objections, that it makes God the author of evil as well as good, and that it represents man as a mere machine in the hands of the Deity, and therefore takes away human responsibility. I say I need not stop to answer such objections, because they lie equally strong against any system which makes God the original author of the universe. But a more plausible objection is, that it makes all events miraculous. This objection is based on the supposition that every event which takes place through the direct and immediate agency of God is a miracle. ”

“ What though the astronomer stood ready with his diagrams and formulas to demonstrate the motion of the earth; who would calmly and impartially examine the claims of a scientific discovery, which, by its very announcement, threw discredit upon the Bible and the senses, and contradicted the unanimous opinion of the wise and good,—of all mankind, indeed,—through all past centuries? Rather would the distinguished theologians of the day set their ingenuity at work to frame an argument in opposition to the dangerous neology, that should fall upon it like an avalanche, and grind it to powder. ”