Universe

“ What blessedness it is to dwell amidst this transparent air, which the eye can pierce without limit, amidst these floods of pure, soft, cheering light, under this immeasurable arch of heaven, and in sight of these countless stars! An infinite universe is each moment opened to our view. And this universe is the sign and symbol of Infinite Power, Intelligence, Purity, Bliss, and Love. ”

“ Fix your gaze upon the splendors of the universe. Behold the countless multitude of the heavenly bodies, as they revolve in their orbits; behold the wondrous creations which are upon this earth, as comprised in the animal, vegetable, or mineral kingdoms. Does not the most marvelous beauty and order, the most consummate imaginable skill, everywhere meet the eye?
But now listen to what certain unbelieving scientists, naturalists, and astronomers say to all this. ”

“ The Universe is God's teaching in symbol and in type. It is His great picture-book, where in living form He has portrayed Himself, and all that belongs to Him--His nature, character, wisdom; His greatness, glory, and His power. The Universe is a temple, where He sits enshrined in the things His own hands have made, and where those who have eyes to see, and hearts to learn and understand, may adore and worship Him. ”

“ This magnificent revelation of the Copernican students; a universe infinite in its reach and in its grandeur; a universe fit at last to be the home of an infinite God; a universe grand enough to clothe him and express him, to manifest and reveal him; a universe boundless; a universe that has grown through the ages and is growing still, and is to unfold more and more of the divine beauty and glory forevermore. ”

“ Has the universe always existed, or had the Cosmos, with its changes and constants, its forces and laws, its forms and relations, a Beginning? Is its present condition but one link in an endless chain, one phasis in a series of changes, which had no beginning and shall have no end? Is the universe limited both in space and duration, or is it unlimited, unbeginning, and endless? ”

“ Its marvelous and varied powers and utilities create a new epoch in scientific thought and discovery. Its study is replete with new and fascinating ideas and scientific theories. It contains the story of the universe more sublime than an epic, more wonderful than a romance. It organized the machinery of the worlds, and holds the secrets of nature and the mysteries of life in its invisible grasp. ”

“ How infinite in faculty! In form and moving, how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god!' And for the development of such a being what is a universe such as ours? However vast it may seem to our faculties, it is as a mere nothing in the ocean of the infinite. ”

“ Is there an intangible bond with the universe beyond which draws mankind on? Does a mighty Cosmic intelligence from the reaches of space ebb and flow through the deep recesses of the mind, forming a river of wisdom which can carry men and women to the heights of personal achievement? ”

“ ARGUMENT. The primary light of reflection which awakens the human mind to a distinct consciousness of itself at the same time reveals a world of unknown forms, the universe of space and succession, teeming with evolutions of order, beauty, and power. With the dawn of reason comes also the principle of causality, and man asks himself, What mean these mighty changes on earth and in the sky? ”

“ He, who through vast immensity can pierce, See worlds on worlds compose one universe, Observe how system into system runs, What other planets circle other suns, What varied being peoples every star, May tell why Heaven has made us as we are. ”

“ What is the universe of stars, and suns, of which this inhabited earth is one, and their motions, and their destiny, compared with life? Life, the great miracle, we admire not, because it is so miraculous. It is well that we are thus shielded by the familiarity of what is at once so certain and so unfathomable, from an astonishment which would otherwise absorb and overawe the functions of that which is its object. ”

“ This Universe, the grandest and loveliest work of nature, and the Intellect which was created to observe and to admire it, are our special and eternal possessions, which shall last as long as we last ourselves. ”

“ To these in some moment the old inspiration returns, the universe is as magical and sweet as ever, a new impulse is given, and so they revolve, perverting and using, each one in his own way, the cosmic rhythm. ”

“ This universe, therefore, is compacted from the minute portions of these seven divine and active principles, the great soul, or first emanation, consciousness, and five perceptions; a mutable universe from immutable ideas. ”

“ But God has computed the mutual perturbations of millions of suns, and planets, and comets, and worlds, without number, through the ages that are passed, and throughout the ages which are yet to come, not approximately, but with perfect and absolute precision.
8. The universe is in motion,—system rising above system, cluster above cluster, nebula above nebula,—all majestically sweeping around under the providence of God, who alone knows the end from the beginning, and before whose glory and power all intelligent beings, whether in heaven or on earth, should bow with humility and awe. ”

“ But if you think of yourself in relation not to this world only but to the whole universe of hundreds of millions of stars and planets—in relation to the whole mystery of existence—then you have a cosmic emotion of the highest order. ”

“ A certain self-absorption, not personal, but human, has marked almost all attempts to conceive the universe as a whole. Mind, or some aspect of it—thought or will or sentience—has been regarded as the pattern after which the universe is to be conceived, for no better reason, at bottom, than that such a universe would not seem strange, and would give us the cosy feeling that every place is like home. ”

“ So the universe has always appeared to the natural mind as a kind of enigma, of which the key must be sought in the shape of some illuminating or power-bringing word or name. That word names the universe's PRINCIPLE, and to possess it is, after a fashion, to possess the universe itself. 'God,' 'Matter,' 'Reason,' 'the Absolute,' 'Energy,' are so many solving names. ”

“ The mysteries of the Great Universe of God! How can we with our limited mental vision expect to grasp and comprehend them! Infinite SPACE, stretching out from us every way, without limit: infinite TIME, without beginning or end ”

“ Yonder light is a focus; that focus is a star; that star is a sun; that sun is a universe; that universe is nothing. For all numbers are as zero in the presence of the Infinite.
These worlds, which yet are nothing, exist. Through this fact we feel the difference which separates the being nothing from the not to be. ”

“ Suns crowding upon Suns, to our weak Sense, indefinitely distant from each other; and Miriads of Miriads of Mansions, like our own, peopling Infinity, all subject to the same Creator's Will; a Universe of Worlds, all deck'd with Mountains, Lakes, and Seas, Herbs, Animals, and Rivers, Rocks, Caves, and Trees; and all the Produce of indulgent Wisdom, to chear Infinity with endless Beings, to whom his Omnipotence may give a variegated eternal Life. ”

“ The substantial basis for what we actually see becomes therefore no mere potential universe, or objective mystery, but something much more definite than either of these. The spectacle of Nature, as we behold it, becomes nothing else than the spectacle of all the living bodies that compose the universe, each one of them with its corresponding invisible soul-monad. ”

“ The universe revealed to us by the complex vision is a universe compounded of the concentrated visions of all the souls that compose it, a universe which in its eternal beauty and hideousness has received the "imprimatur of the immortal Gods." ”

“ Ever since scientific observation discovered the true system of the material universe, and so, as it were, changed those twinkling sparks of light into central suns, the rulers of tributary worlds, philosophy apart from faith has been, more or less articulately, scattering the question, at once a fruit and a seed of unbelief, How could the Creator of so vast a universe bestow so much of his care on one small spot? ”

“ Has the universe any unity of plan or purpose, or is it a fortuitous concourse of atoms? Is consciousness a permanent part of the universe, giving hope of indefinite growth in wisdom, or is it a transitory accident on a small planet on which life must ultimately become impossible? Are good and evil of importance to the universe or only to man? ”

“ The universe is a thought of God. After this ideal thought-fabric passed out into reality, and the new-born world fulfilled the plan of its Creator—permit me to use this human simile—the first duty of all thinking beings has been to retrace the original design in this great reality; to find the principle in the mechanism, the unity in the compound, the law in the phenomenon, and to pass back from the structure to its primitive foundation. Accordingly to me there is only one appearance in nature—the thinking being. ”

“ I would want it built in the same general style and with the same general effect as the universe, but a universe in which everything lets one alone, in which everything just goes quietly on in its great still round, letting itself be looked at—no more said about it, nothing to be done about it. ”

“ The dependence of all the systems of worlds upon each other, every dust composing each individual globe being “weighed in a balance,” the adjustment of the powers by which every physical condition is ordered, the disposition of matter in the mass of the earth, and the close relation of the kingdoms of nature,—are all revelations of natural truths, exalting the mind to the divine conception of the universe. ”

“ We are thus faced by a universe which is the half-creation and half-discovery of all living souls, a universe the truth and beauty of which depend upon the eternal vision, a universe whose material substance is entirely composed of the actual physical bodies of those very souls whose vision half-creates and half-discovers it. ”

“ How I have enjoyed listening and learning about the admirable laws and order of the universe, the harmonious circling of the stars, the motion of atoms, and above all, those grand principles which govern our souls and minds. ”

“ The universe transmits these vibrations through the entity attuned to receive them. Or, to speak poetically, we say, the universe “voices its intelligence through man.” And man voices his intelligence through the universe. ”

“ Hence men imagined gods, and attributed those mighty phenomena of nature—earthquakes, tempests, lightning and thunder, and dire eclipses of sun and moon, to the vaguely visible powers which they imagined they saw. There was indeed a soul or spirit of the universe, as there was a soul or spirit of every individual thing that constituted it. But this was only a finer system of atoms after all. All else is convention or dream; the only realities are Atoms and Emptiness, Matter and Space. ”

“ The matter, which is the direct position of God, which fills the whole universe, which is the time in a state of tension and motion, the formed space, the heavy primary essence, I call the Primary matter, the matter of the world, cosmic matter, Æther. The æther is the first realization of God, the eternal position of the same. It is the first matter of creation. ”

“ When belief in the earth’s central and supreme place in the universe was surrendered at the bidding of astronomy, there was compensation in the revelation of a universe to which thought can fix no limits. ”

“ But a current toward the Best, a plan of the Cosmos which points toward perfection, a drift in the direction of what is complete, a movement like that of the stars of heaven, continuing slowly but surely through countless millions of ages, toward one centre of the universe—the perfectly Good—is surely one of the grandest of all indications in natural theology of a benevolent and perfect Creator. ”

“ Thus far we've gone; the order of my plan Hath brought me now unto the point where I Must make report how, too, the universe Consists of mortal body, born in time, And in what modes that congregated stuff Established itself as earth and sky, Ocean, and stars, and sun, and ball of moon; And then what living creatures rose from out The old telluric places, and what ones Were never born at all; and in what mode The human race began to name its things And use the varied speech from man to man ”

“ If thought is not to stand forever pointing at the universe in wonder, if its movement is to be diverted from the issueless channel of purely theoretic contemplation, let us ask what conception of the universe will awaken active impulses capable of effecting this diversion. A definition of the world which will give back to the mind the free motion which has been blocked in the purely contemplative path may so far make the world seem rational again. ”

“ The complication of the phenomenon, of which a glimpse can be caught, beyond our senses, only by contemplation and ecstasy, makes the mind giddy. The thinker who reaches so far, is, for other men, only a visionary. The necessary entanglement of the perceptible and of the imperceptible strikes the philosopher with stupor. This plenitude is required by thy all-powerfulness, which does not admit any blank. The permeation of universes into universes makes part of thy infinitude. Here we extend the word universe to an order of facts that no astronomer can reach. ”

“ Since the powerful Almighty creator of all the Universe of all that exist gave me the power and wisdom of thinking, I never discontinued contemplating and admiring his wisdom in the creation and Ruling the Universe, as also the several Globes, Planets, Stars and firmament, things incomprehensible to men's feeble understanding. ”

“ By this idealistic theory all the apparent universe of known external realities—sun, moon, stars, rocks, clouds, earth, and human history and tradition—is resolved or reduced into mere present thinkings of your mind or my mind, a mere complex phantasmagory of the present human spirit; and therefore it is through this present human spirit that one has to seek the all-explaining bond of connection between the real world of finite nature and the real and infinite supernatural world. ”