AN ASTRONOMICAL VIEW OF OUR FATHER'S HOUSE.
By Gamma Beta
"In my Father's house are many mansions." John 14:2. The Revised Version admits the following reading: "In my Father's house are many abiding-places." Continuing this verse, Christ says, "I go to prepare a place for you." The sense of the text is, that in God's house, i. e., in God's universe, are the "mansions," or "abiding-places," in which we are to dwell if we are found worthy of a dwelling-place with God. This text may be considered an astronomical one, and, like many others, the greater our knowledge of the structure of the universe, the more clearly we will see and comprehend its meaning. While the astronomer himself only faintly comprehends the overwhelming greatness of our Father's house, his conception is vastly above that of the casual reader. While he would be indeed a bold astronomer who would not shrink from the task of explaining this and similar texts, yet he can safely direct the mind of the earnest seeker into paths that are ablaze with the glory of God. Ask an astronomer, How large is our Father's house? and instantly he would see, in imagination, unnumbered millions of worlds, systems, constellations, clusters, and aggregations in our, or the visible universe, and beyond this he knows that other universes, universe after universe, infinity after infinity, unspeakable in dimensions and duration, stretch away into unfathomable, endless space, until his imagination is stunned, his mind reels, and his reason cries, Halt!—for the finite mind here meets the incomprehensible, and Nature challenges the astronomer. We often hear from the pulpit the word "universe." What is our preacher talking about? Evidently something pretty big, for it is usually the grand finishing point when he wishes to impress us with something vast and unlimited. What is the universe? Can we understand it? Let us examine into this matter and see if we can know anything of our Father's house, for surely it is right for us to use the mind he has given us to add to our knowledge of his glory; nay, would it not be sin if we did not use our best endeavors to know all we can of the great Master Builder and his works? Come, reader, let us, in imagination, go on an infinite voyage, and see for ourselves something of our Father's house, with its many "abiding-places." We have no time for details, but at once select a starting-point. For this the astronomer would naturally turn to the sun as the great center, and from which we receive the light and heat that makes this world of ours habitable. The question of the speed with which we must travel is more difficult; but, assuming that we have the choice in this matter, we will soon settle this most important point. Railroad speed of a mile in a minute is entirely out of the question, for our time is short and the journey long, besides, we want to return in time to tell the SIGNS' readers something of what we see. There is a cannon-ball—that travels about twenty miles a minute! But that, too, is too slow—entirely too slow. But there is light?—Yes, now we have it! We will travel with the inconceivable speed of light itself, for we must travel with infinite speed on an infinite journey, and light travels one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles in a single second of time! This is equal to over eleven million of miles in a single minute! (186,000 × 60=11,160,000.) Fearing that our unusual performance will produce undue excitement in the worlds we are about to visit, we will send before us a messenger to announce our arrival, and we will select for this purpose a cannon-ball, traveling at the rate of twenty-eight thousand miles a day, and, that it may have plenty of time, we will give it a start of a hundred years! We want to be perfectly fair in all that we do in this wonderful journey, and to "start fair" we will not start from the sun, but from the center of that vast globe. While we are in such a good position, we will find out something about the sun's enormous dimensions. He is over thirteen hundred thousand times as large as our earth! His diameter is so vast that, if he were a shell, the earth could be placed in the center, and the moon could travel in her usual orbit, and then be only about midway between the earth and the surface of our gigantic276primary, his diameter being eight hundred and sixty-four thousand miles! We will direct our course toward the nearest fixed star, and see what will be our experiences. Now then, all ready, full speed, ahead! At the prodigious rate of speed we are going, less than three beats of the clock will find us entirely clear of the sun, and thousands of miles on our way to his nearest planet, Mercury, and in about three minutes we will reach him. Mercury is about thirty-six million miles from the sun, and is about three thousand miles in diameter. His year is equal to eighty-eight of our days, therefore his seasons are only twenty-two days long—if he has any seasons; for you must remember that he receives a vast amount of heat and light from the sun, which to the Mercurials appears two and one-half times as large as to the inhabitants of earth. Our tremendous velocity carries us by the "messenger of the gods" so quickly that we have no time to make a close examination of him, and in less than three minutes we will cross the orbit of Venus. Here we will find a world surprisingly like our own in many particulars. She is only twenty-six million miles nearer the sun than we, and, as we are ninety-three million miles distant, this "mansion," with very moderate changes in the condition of her atmosphere, may be as habitable as the earth, to life with which we are acquainted. Venus is only two hundred miles less in diameter than the earth (all distances and dimensions are given in round numbers), and her year is equal to two hundred and twenty-five of our days, and, so far as the astronomers know, life is just as probable on Venus as on any other planet; but if we find out much about her we must be sure to tell the astronomers about it, for they are very anxious to know something of the condition of all the planets. In an instant Venus is left far in the rear, and looking behind us, we note the sun is growing smaller, while ahead we see two brilliant stars—or what appear to be stars—one of which is wonderfully bright, and the other is close beside it. We draw toward them with more than lightning speed, and they soon bid fair to rival the sun himself in brightness, for he is less than half the size we saw him from Mercury, and gives us less than one-fourth of the light and heat he pours out on that planet. In a little over two minutes we reach our two stars, and find this marvelous object to be Earth, and the companion star to be the Moon. We must be careful here, for if we draw too near we may be drawn upon its surface like many a venturessome meteorite (popularly called "falling stars") that has approached too near. But our speed is our safety, and gravitation will not be able to overcome such velocity as ours. A feeling of reverential awe overcomes us as we draw near this tiny speck in God's great universe that we call Earth. Here is a little world, perhaps, nay probably, the only one in all our Father's house upon which sin ever obtained a foot-hold. It may be absolutely unique in this respect, in all the length and breadth of his dominion. It was here that man fell, and here God's only begotten Son came to die, that the earth might be replenished with beings worthy to be called children of the great Creator, and that his Father's house might again become clean and the universe restored as it was when it came from the hand of the Great Architect. We leave the earth reluctantly, for here we have the history of the life and trials of God's Son while upon earth; we have his promises, his teaching, his example, we have everything that the heart of a Christian could wish. Here, too, is being enacted the great drama of sin and righteousness, of life and death. We see the struggle of the saints, and wonder why judgment is delayed so long. But all we see is not black and cheerless, for God has a people here on this little world; saints are here, and here are they that keep all the commandments of God. The eight minutes in which we are allowed to come from the sun to the earth have passed, and we must haste away if we are to see the glorious dimensions of our Father's house. A bright star looms up ahead, and in less than four minutes we find ourselves at the distance of Mars' orbit after passing the earth's. Our (apparent) star proves to be the little planet Mars, with his two little moons of only about five and seven miles in diameter; baby mansions, truly. We will find, if he is in that part of his orbit we are passing, a world four thousand miles in diameter, and the great telescopes that we have left behind can plainly show his seas and continents, his snowy poles and his equatorial regions in which snow never appears—just like our earth. The Martial day is about as long as our own, but his year is as long as six hundred and eighty-seven of our days. The sun appears considerably smaller, and his light and heat are much less. After hastily noting the above facts, we pass the ruddy planet, and are soon darting through a great number of little worlds called the Asteroids. Nearly three hundred have been discovered, all within this century, and there may be thousands more that have as yet escaped the sharp-eyed astronomers of earth. Their average diameter is only about forty-five miles,—more baby mansions! But we have no time, however, to look for undiscovered Asteroids, for we are now about to visit the "giant of the solar system," Jupiter. It will take us over a half hour to reach him from Mars, or about forty-four minutes from the sun, so we will have a little time to look out for comets, for we may come across one almost any time now, on its journey to or from the sun. However, comets don't amount to very much, and we only mention them to show we haven't forgotten these erstwhile terrible visitors. But Jupiter is worthy of our greatest admiration. Swinging around in a majestic orbit, requiring twelve of our years for one of his, he pursues his stately path, a real giant. His mean diameter is about eighty-seven thousand miles, and he is as large as thirteen hundred and nine (Young) of such worlds as ours put together. He has four moons, all but one of which are larger than ours; indeed, one of them is larger than Mercury, and rivals Mars in size. In passing, we note that a great change has come over our sun; he appears to be only about one-fifth the size as we see him from the earth, and he gives only one twenty-fifth as much light and heat to the Jovians (assuming that there are Jovians) that we receive. We could find much of interest here if we had time to stop, but our tremendous speed carries us by Jupiter in a twinkling, and before we realize it we are crossing the enormous gulf of over four hundred million of miles that separates the orbits of Jupiter and his big brother Saturn—our next station. Saturn is the farthest planet easily visible to the unaided eye. His dimensions rival those of Jupiter. His mean diameter is seventy-one thousand miles. While his day is only ten hours in length, his period (year) is twenty-nine and one-half of our years, and his volume is over seven hundred times greater than the world upon which we live. He has eight moons to keep him company in his vast orbit, in addition to his enormous ring system, the outer ring of which is one hundred and sixty-eight thousand miles in diameter. There is nothing like him in the system presided over by that great autocrat the sun, or in the universe as far as we know, and he is at once the marvel and the admiration of astronomers. The sun now seems to be growing alarmingly small, while his light is only about one-eightieth of that received by the earth. We cannot tarry, however interesting this "abiding-place" may be, but we will hasten on to Uranus. A distance of nearly nine hundred million miles separates these two planets, and it will require over an hour and a quarter to carry us to Uranus, buried in space as he is, nearly one billion eight hundred million of miles from the sun, from which we have so recently parted company. We will just settle ourselves comfortably for our flight across this mighty span, and—whiz! what was that?—Why, it is our messenger, the cannon-ball, that left the sun a hundred years ago! while it is less than one and a half hours since we left on the wings of light. This is very astonishing—to none more so than the astronomers. In a single beat of the clock our messenger is one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles behind us, and we must henceforth go unheralded. When we have crossed this great abyss we will find Uranus to be thirty-two thousand miles in diameter, and as large as sixty-five worlds like ours. He has four moons, and it requires eighty-four of our years to see his age increased by a single one of his years. We have no time to study the wonderfully peculiar axial rotation of this far-away planet—much to our regret and that of the astronomers on earth, who are so interested in him, and who know so little about him. Another mighty plunge and we will meet the sentinel—the outer guard, so to speak—of our system. We would rest here for a few minutes if we could, for we are on the very frontier of the grand scheme of worlds that comprise the majestic family of the sun. After we leave Neptune, we will have passed the last of the planets, and at most we can only hope to meet one of those celestial tramps, a comet, making his regular pilgrimage to or from the sun, for all comets must visit him at stated times, to report, as it were, that they are still faithful, and have not deserted him for some of his mighty neighbors. We would find Neptune eighty-five times larger than the earth upon which we dwell, and it requires one hundred and sixty-four of our years to equal one of his. His vast orbit is five billion five hundred and eighty-four million miles in diameter.277 We do not wish to discourage our friend and messenger, the cannon-ball, but it would take him over five hundred and eighty-five years to cross this mighty chasm, and a railroad train going a mile a minute—no stops—would require ten thousand years to make the same journey. We get thoroughly bewildered in dealing with these vast dimensions, and they cease to have a meaning, and, lest we forget it in dealing with the gigantic magnitudes of the planets, it is well to remember that the sun is over seven hundred times as large as all of them put together. Our sun now gives us much concern, for he no longer shows us a disk, but is only a point of light, and, as a sun, we do not recognize him. Of course he is much brighter than any star that we can see; but his light and heat are only one-nine-hundredth part that we receive on earth. At this rate we fear that we may lose him altogether. About four and a quarter hours have elapsed since we left the sun, and we are so far away that we are getting lonesome, although only on our farthest known planet. Perhaps, reader, we have traveled too fast for you. May be you regret it, thinking you have seen God's house. What! this God's house! Will we call this worthy of him? Not so; for in our Father's house are "many mansions," and if you think we are near our journey's end, be at once undeceived, for at this point we are still standing upon our own threshold. GAMMA BETA.
(To be continued.)