p. 67Well, where are we now?—I wish I exactly knew.
We ought to be nearing the haven of conviction.—We are drawing near somewhere, I think, from the lights I begin to see glimmering in the dark.
The universe subject to omnipotent control was our last thought; the proposition was that it is more interesting in that respect than as the domain of blind mechanical law, acting without mind, without discernment, without plan or intelligence of any kind.—I admit that the universe subject to omnipotent control is, as you said last time, a vastly more interesting theme of contemplation than when it is looked at as a mere machine of relentless law; but to admit this is one thing, and to concede the existence of the omnipotent control is another.
No doubt they are two things, but the one is a step to the other. A reasonable assumption points in the direction of a probable truth. The existence of the omnipotent control is a reasonable assumption.
p. 68 How would you establish that proposition?—Well, the unity of the system of the universe would indicate it. It is bound together as one system. No one part of it is disconnected from another—still less at war with another. The nature of the connection is inscrutable to our limited intellects; but the fact of the connection is self-evident.
I don’t know that I quite follow you there.—Well, we do not know much of the measureless vastitudes of being opened out to the eye in the spectacle of the milky way, which turns out, under improved telescopes, to be countless multitudes of worlds at distances baffling the imagination; but what we do know enables us to be positive that they are as much in the grasp of a universal system of law as the more limited bodies of our own solar system. Now what is this “grasp?”
That is the question.—It cannot be gravitation, which is the mere attraction of one body for another: for such a law acting by itself would lead at last to the huddling of all worlds into one—the greatest attractions gradually overpowering the lesser. The mere actions of such a law would not have admitted of the poising of lighter bodies in independent orbits in space, like our own moon, or the smaller moons of Mars, still less the 240 asteroids which revolve in an unbroken band around the sun, between the Earth and Jupiter. They must have been drawn into the larger bodies long ago.
They are in the grasp of gravitation.
There gravitation would not be grasp at all, but the separate and disconnected tendency of bodies to run into each other according to size. Instead of gravitation being master, behold the universe extended and sub-divided into the infinite realms of p. 69 space, in the utmost order and beauty. You have the solar system made up of a number of independent members, revolving round the sun, and smaller than the sun, but they do not run into the sun. Why not? There must be a counter force. What is it? It cannot be the influence of other systems, for the other systems are too immensely remote to exercise any influence whatever, in the ratio of dynamic action shewn by the influence of one body on another in the solar system. Besides, if the neighbouring systems were strong enough to hold the planets back by mere attraction from running into the sun, they would be strong enough to prevent them from revolving round the sun. And if they were so strong as that, they would be strong enough to draw the planets away from the sun altogether in process of time: and then it would be a tug of war between the systems and the sun itself, and in the end we should see a universal straining and huddling together everywhere, like what we see among the minute bubbles on the surface of a wash-tub when left to settle. Instead of that, the universe is calmly spread out everywhere with immovable stability, in bodies large and small, according to a system of order and beauty, such as evokes the highest admiration of intelligence, and the most staggering fact of all is that this order is maintained among bodies that are loose, that float without resistance in the free realms of space.—The facts are beautiful, I must allow.
My argument is that as the whole universe is bound together in one system before our eyes, the existence of Omnipotent Control is forced upon our recognition as an assumption necessitated by the spectacle. There is no other method of accounting p. 70 for the movements of heaven and earth. It would not be going too far to say that it is a self-evident conclusion: a conclusion we cannot resist: a fact staring at us from the heavens, as we might say. There it is: control is exercised: the stupendous fabric of creation holds together from age to age, and works with greater exactness and smoothness than the most well-oiled machinery that man ever constructed. Here is a work of supreme wisdom: is it possible it could be done without intelligence?—It is done intelligently.
Could it be done intelligently without the action of intelligence? If there were no such thing as intelligence in the universe, we might understand the indisposition to recognize intelligence in works that bear the stamp of it; but here is man, himself a feeble creature on the surface of the earth, shewing such marvellous intelligence. Is it possible that his intelligence is the highest there is?—I must admit the improbability of the supposition when put in that way.
Put it in another way: Human intelligence is the attribute of the stuff of which man is made. Is he the only stuff that can evolve intelligence? Is it not in the highest degree reasonable to suppose that the attenuated stuff in which the universe subsists—called “ether” by scientists and “spirit” by the Bible—should have the capacity (say) of a higher development of intelligence than anything possible to the organization of dust?—That is a new thought to me.
I am not advancing it as a formal thesis, but as an appeal on the lowest ground against the insensate opposition of modern thought to the idea of God, and a plea for this supreme conclusion of common p. 71 sense, that the Cause of the existence and form of the universe is the pre-existence of a Supreme Eternal Power or Being, whose attributes are necessarily those of wisdom and power and personality in the highest degree. The Bible reveals such a being, and nothing in true reason can be urged against the revelation.—As I have said before, I truly and sincerely desire to surrender to the conclusion for which you are contending; but a full surrender cannot take place in the face of anything that seems to forbid it. Some things which I have felt to be obstacles, you have disposed of. There are one or two others of a more practical and sublunary character than those we have been talking of. I may submit them should we have further opportunity.