GOD’S THOROUGHNESS by Gamma Beta

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Feb 27, 1901

GOD’S THOROUGHNESS.

By Gamma Beta

As far as the East is from the West, so far hath He removed our transgressions from us.” Ps. 103:12.

We do not all see from the same point of view. We would not all see alike if we did. How different our conceptions of the same fact!

A part of the constellation of Orion, showing the stars easily visible to the naked eye. The constellation is due south from overhead at this time of year, March 1, say about 6 p.m.

“How readest thou” the text at the head of this article? How far is it from the East to the West? Finite men can not know the infinite, but finite man can, may, and will reason; so “let us reason together” as to how far the East is from the West, not that we may find out, but to more fully realize God’s greatness and our littleness.

Is a mountain a large object?—Yes, when compared to a tree, but small when compared to the earth itself, which is, in its turn, insignificant when compared with the same. And even the sun is small when compared to some other suns. Does a man move rapidly when he walks?—Not if his motion is compared with that of a fast train, but very rapidly when compared with the glacier in its stately movement down the mountainside. And so with distance, time, or events, all are great or small by comparison, and so, also, are our conceptions, especially in matters we do not clearly understand.

The fastest thing with which we are generally familiar is an express train, our minds having adopted the speed of “a mile a minute,” or eighty-eight feet per second, as the standard. Place two trains into position and bid them to be off on their journey to annihilate space, one to go to the East and the other to the West: when will they reach their destination?

Again, start two cannon-balls; the modern high-power gun can give them a speed of 2,500 feet a second,—thirty times faster than an express train,—yet who would be bold enough to say they could ever reach the East and the West?

In the constellation of Orion is the bright blue star Rigel. It is one of the fourteen stars that astronomers have rated as of the first magnitude, and is well up to, but not in, the first ranks. Sirius is the bright leader of all the shining hosts of heaven, while Arcturus, Vega, and Capella are the three great luminaries of the Northern hemisphere. Sirius has often been mentioned in the writings of the ancients, while Arcturus is mentioned in Job, but never a word, so far as I know, has ever been written of Rigel, down to the time of Hipparchus, altho Rigel is receding at a very rapid rate, and must have been brighter then than now.

There is something to be learned from this, when we carefully examine the facts. Let us see.

Spectroscopic observations indicate that Rigel is moving from us at an enormous velocity—enormous from even the astronomer’s standpoint, some observers placing the velocity at nearly 400 miles a second; but let us cut this in half, and, for sake of the thought, make it 200 miles per second—more than 400 times faster than our cannon-balls; and yet, after bearing in mind that the star has been flying on its boundless course for these thousands of years, the patriarch Job would probably not notice any less in its brightness if he could see it to-day. Certainly it could not have been greatly brighter when the ancients wrote of Sirius, for Rigel would have been the leader.

Astonishing as this may seem, it is not difficult to understand; it can easily be explained, altho it is entirely beyond our comprehension. Yet the explanation gives us a better conception of the distance from the East to the West, even tho it only proves to us our utter inability to grasp the infinite.

To make the above plain, we will consider one of the laws of light, the one that says, “The intensity of light varies inversely as the square of its distance from its source.” That is, if we double or halve the distance the light will decrease or increase fourfold, and not be one-half or twice as bright as one would easily believe without investigation. We can demonstrate this law in a simple way; if we place a light in the center of a room ten feet high, wide, and long, we will have a certain amount or intensity of light on the walls, ceiling, and floor; the area of each side, the floor, and the ceiling will be 100 square feet, or a total of 600 square feet. Now place the same lamp in the room 20 feet in every dimension; the distance of the lamp will be just twice the distance from the walls, etc., as it was in the room 10 feet each way, but the intensity of the light on the walls will be only one-fourth of what it was in the smaller room, because the area of the walls, floor, and ceiling will now be 400 square feet each, or a total of 2,400 square feet. To put it another way, we will have just the same amount of light, but it will be spread over four times the area.

Next, to understand why the light from Rigel appears nearly the same to-day as it appeared hundreds and even thousands of years ago, I will give another illustration of the same law. Place a lamp one foot from the eye, and we get a certain quantity or intensity of light, no matter how bright or how faint. Now move the lamp away from the eye one foot, doubling the distance, and the intensity will be only a fourth; four feet would reduce it to a sixteenth; eight feet, to a sixty-fourth; one hundred feet, to the one ten-thousandth part, and so on; each time we double the distance the intensity or brightness will decrease four times.

Let us imagine, now, that the lamp is placed at the distance of the moon, or 240,000 miles away, and still remains visible, could our observer detect an increase or decrease if the lamp were moved to or from him one foot?—Certainly not; and even a mile would be only the one two hundred and forty thousandth of the whole distance, an insignificant part, yet great enough, if it is the first mile, to increase or decrease the intensity twenty-five millions of times.

It is easy now to see how great and incomprehensible must the distance be to Rigel; for, altho the star is traveling from us hundreds of miles a second for every tick of the clock, the distance is comparatively but little greater now than it was in the time of Job, and the difference can be safely ignored.

We have a still more speedy traveler, however, than Rigel, beside which the star would appear to be at rest. I refer to light, the swiftest motion known to astronomers, which speeds on its way 186,000 miles a second, a thousand times the velocity of Rigel at the rate we have imagined the star to be leaving us.

Suppose we could harness two rays of light and start them to the East and the West; in a single second they would be separated by a distance equal to sixteen times the circumference of the earth, while in a whole minute they would be a score of millions of miles apart. When would they reach their journey’s end? Could they have started in the days of Job, or even “in the beginning,” at what stage of their journey would they now be? It would not be true to say they had accomplished at least a part of their journey, no matter when they started, for the distance in either direction is infinite, and nothing less than an infinity of time can end their journey; and the time that has elapsed since “the beginning” to the present is finite (tho not comprehensible), and is an infinitesimal part of infinity.

If our transgressions are removed from us “as far as the East is from the West,” how completely are we forgiven, how perfect our pardon! The Lord’s ways are not our ways (praise the Lord), but His pardon is worthy of even Him; for He removes us from our sins “as far as the East is from the West.” GAMMA BETA.