VASTNESS AND FAITH.

Evening Star, Issue 18051, 19 August 1922, Page 2

VASTNESS AND FAITH.

Last Saturday wc discussed on this page the wonder of the spatial universe. We adduced come facts from the science of astronomy in evidence thereof. The vastness of the universe has frightened many men. They feel as Carlyle once expressed it to a, friend, “Man, it is just awful.” Our forefathers were not troubled by it. To them “ the earth was the centre of creation, and mart its raison d'etre. Our planet was the fixed point round which everything revolved. The sun was created to give man light by day, the moon and stars to shine to him by night. At a handy distance above him was a paradise for the good, and beneath, within equally easy reach, was an avenue for the wicked.” But all This has vanished. “Above” and “below,” as far as space is concerned, have been emptied of their meaning. To “ascend” from London and from Dunedin would be to go in two exactly opposite directions. If one were to make a flight through the myriads of worlds in search for our earth it would be like a person flying over Australia to find a mustard seed that was hidden somewhere beside a certain grass blade on that great continent. It is not much wonder that man is not merely awed, bub dismayed, by the vision of this vastness and our insignificance. Tennyson lias put it impressively iu his well-known poem on the subject. In view of it, what arc all the struggles of this tiny earth's history “ but a trouble of gnats iu the gleam of a million million suns,” or as a living poet has expressed it—Sir William Watson— The’intolerable vastness bows Turndown, The awful homeless spaces scar© his soul. * * * * But surely this is an utterly foolish ami false inference to draw. Instead of depressing man, it seems to us that it should have an exactly opposite effect. Let us offer some reasons for that. To begin with, these worlds upon worlds reveal not merely the presence of Mind but of the same Mind l . “The laws of light and heat and gravitation which obtain in London (or Dunedin) obtain in the Pleiades.” The same King’s writ evidently runs through out the whole. Wo know, when we are travelling, how reassuring it is to see the Flag of Britain flying,over strange cities or seas. Wo feel a certain security and pride. So, to find the same Mind and Power at work iu the furthest cosmic spaces as in the very atoms of our earth ought to help to steady faith. But it needs greatly more than that, and it need not go far to seek it. To be dismayed or overwhelmed by the vastnoss of these new revealed worlds is to mistake bulk for greatness. A mountain is bigger than a baby, but what mother would say that it is better? Are we to admit that Arcturus or the Magellanic Cloud is more wonderful than the brain of the astronomer that measures and weighs them? A critic said to someone that Wellington was a very little man. The reply was : “ He ie biggest at the top.” Sir Oliver Lodge makes the daring assertion that the rush of these countless hosts of stars may be but the expression in material terms of thought in the Divine Mind analogous to the change of the grey matter in our own brain; yet even the mind, great though it be, is not the final measure of tho man nor of a world. It is the moral and spiritual that are the ultimate realities, the true standard of values. For though the giant ages heave the hill And break the shore. And evermore Make and break and work their will; Though'-world on world in myriads roll Bound us, each with different powers And other forms of life than ours, What know wo greater than the soul? If, then, the vastness of this universe displays an infinite Power and Mind, it implies that tho moral and spiritual must bo at least ou an • equal scale. The lair of proportion requires that. Love and righteousness aro the chief of the moral attributes. And if might and mind are on tho scale of vastnesa which the cosmos exhibits, then we must look for love and righteousness to be commensurate with these, else you would have a moral monstrosity, « » •» That brings ns to the revelation made in the Scriptures. Tho old Jewish poet had a conception .of■ it when lie declared of tho Creator that His “ mercy was over all His other works.”- Those who believe the Christian revelation have an assurance of the worth of man and tho significance of this globe to the Creator not found anywhere else. We know how sacred to thousands are the plains of Flanders and) the scorched and wind-whipped lulls of Gallipoli. It is because they have been stained with the blood of their beloved. Their hearts turn there as tho dearest spot on earth to them. If we believe the Christian Scriptures, ( his earth was once trodden by the only Son of God, and His blood dyed its soil. That happened in no other of those myriads of worlds. And so this insignificant globe of ours acquires a sacredness to its Creator unpossessed by any other of His myriad worlds. Sir Alfred Wallace, in his book, ‘Man’s Place in tho Universe, ’■ argues that our solar system is the actual centre of tho sidereal system. Whether that be so or not, if the Incarnation and Crucifixion of the Sou of God took place upon it, that gives it a distinction that no other worlds, however vast, can over claim. But, further, according to the Christian interpretation of man’s function on this earth, ho has been called into existence to meet and combat the spiritual dislocations iu tho invisible universe. This earth is only a very small part of the cosmos. Ages before man's creation there were other beings and other worlds. There were revolutions and chaos in these. And that condition of things still exists. We are surrounded by a world of spiritual existences good and bad, and the final purpose of ipan’s creation, as St. Paul expresses it, is to make known “through the Church to the principalities and powers in heavenly places the manifold wisdom and the eternal purpose of God in Christ,” It is by means of a redeemed humanity that the hosts of wickedness in spiritual places, in the unseen, are finally to bo overcome. If this be so, then it gives a new significance to man’s place in the universe and to this earth as tho sphere of his activities. He and his conflicts are thus geentobs not “ a murmur of gnats in the gloom or a moment's anger of bees in a. hive,” but the vanguard in a war wide as the cosmos, and whose issues roll from soul to eoul and live for ever and for ever. Thus, righfly understood, the very vastness of -the universe becomes an argument not for the destruction of faith, but for its reconstruction on a scale undreamt of before. « * .« . * But the vasluess of tho universe is not to be conceived of merely in its bulk or spatial distances, but in its miuutias ns well. The vaetness of the worlds revealed by the telescope is indeed amazing enough, but it is not so amazing as the vastness of the worlds in tho atom. The miscroscopo ha's opened up visions here that arc even more astonishing than those of the telescope.

And they have supplied new reinforcements for a beleaguered l faith. Consider how. Take hydrogen, for example/ Pick out tho letter “o” in the word. Now suppose you could drop a little bubble of the thing itself into that letter, tiro “number of atoms flying about in that bubble is 6,000 billions, and each ono passes 6,000 neighbors in a second—in the twinkling of an cyo.’ IE atoms were eyes, one cyo in that bubble would see all the populations of the world go by 200 times in a minute." No living germ can 'contain less than a, hundred million atoms. A small speck of protoplasm Iras as many as the Milky Way has stars. They build up the universe, and life itself starts from the atom. Even tho complctest and hugest of whales was once an atom so small that 1,500,000 or them could hold, a mass meeting, on the head of a pin! And these atoms everywhere move according to fixed laws in perfect order and with unerring accuracy. Not less wonderful are their speed and persistence. A grain of pure radium will expel every minuto about ten thousand million particles. Professor Thomson says that a certain kind of radium rays will travel at the rate of 20,000 miles a second —40,000 times faster than a rifle bullet. The life of a particle of radium is computed! at 2,250 years, but that of uranium reaches the unthinkable period of 7,500 million. And there is reason to believe that wo have not yet tapped the most wonderful and powerful of them. .We shall discuss the subject more fully when we come to a future article to deal with the wonder of the atom. Hero is ono point, juet now. ».* « * If these atoms, the smallest conceivable things, arc thus charged with such amazing powers, what becomes of the insignificance of man? What is tho nature of tho grey atoms in tho .substance of the human brain that by some mysterious process is able to discover and calculate these other infinitely little things? And what shall wc say of the life of the soul, the ego, that co-ordinates the whole, directs them to certain ends, and can measure with accuracy and ease, as Professor’ Sbddy says, “ tho one billionth of a milligram of radium emanation”? Surely the vaetness of the infinitely little even more than that of the infinitely largo docs not suggest the insignificance of man. On the contrary, it lifts him r:p to a height undreamt of before, and confirms faith in tho greatness of himself, and. his future. For who is to say that the cosmos wo sec with eye or instrument exhausts the reality? That would be like Caliban on his island, or like an oyster in its shell, thinking there was nothing beyond their limitations. Double the senses of man, or strip'them off altogether, and' in a moment new windows may open in his consciousness, and he may find himself in unimaged worlds. « « « « Few readers but will be familiar with the name of Robert Blatchford. No man of our generation has dealt deadlier blows to faith or has done so much to popularise infidelity as Blatchford. In a recent article in the ‘ Weekly Dispatch ’ he makes a remarkable confession. He says that ever since ho began to read and think he was what is called a Materialist. But of late the distant drum has been beating out strange measures, and it has never been his fault to shut his cars. “ Materialism seemed to me an impregnable fortress so. long as there remained a material foundation for it stand on. But how can one hold to materialism if there is no material? It seems to me that tho division of the atom shook the materialist fabric dangerously. If the infinitesimal atom is divisible into millions' of electrons, all of them in motion, there is no such thing as material substance. . . . I have been driven out of my materialist philosophy. Let us then give a little thought (o .the soul.” This strikes us as a very remarkable conversion; but. it is characteristic of the man, for Mr Bl'alehford has always been straight and honest, however much many may have regretted his attacks upon the Christian faith. So science in its Investigation of the atom has made an end of materialism, at least for Mr Blatchford. And, rightly understood, it should do the. same for everybody. “Let ns give a little thought to the soul.” And when w© do that in all its- issues and implications we shall not need to crouch in terror before the-• vastness of the universe. Rather shall we find ourselves in unison with Tennyson, when he sings in almost the last poem ho ever wrote : Will my tiny spark of being wholly vanish in your deeps and heights? Must my day be. dark by reason, O yo heavens, of your boundless nights. Rush of suns and roll of systems, and your fiery clash, of meteorites ?

Spirit, nearing yon dark portal at the limit of thy human state, Fear not thou the hidden purpose of that Power which alone is great. Nor the myriad world, His shad'ow, nor the silent Opener of tho Gate.