The Articles of Faith: A Series of Lectures on the Principal Doctrines of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day SaintsTalmage, James E. (James Edward)
Religion
The Articles of Faith: A Series of Lectures on the Principal Doctrines of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
Talmage, James E. (James Edward)
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints -- Doctrines; Latter Day Saint churches -- Doctrines
=4. God in Nature.=--Sir Isaac Newton, one of the most critical
of scientific workers, in writing to his friend Dr. Bentley in
1692, said in reference to the natural universe: "To make such a
system, with all its motions, required a Cause which understood
and compared together the quantities of matter in the several
bodies of the sun and planets, and the gravitating powers
resulting from them, the several distances of the primary planets
from the sun, and of the secondary ones from Saturn, Jupiter, and
the earth; and the velocities with which these planets could
revolve about those quantities of matter in the central bodies;
and to compare and adjust all these things together in so great a
variety of bodies argues the Cause to be not blind and
fortuitous, but very well skilled in mechanics and geometry."
=5. Natural Indications of God's Existence.=--"It may not be, it
is not likely, that God can be found with microscope and scalpel,
with test-tube or flask, with goniometer or telescope; but with
such tools, the student earnestly working, cannot fail to
recognize a power beyond his vision, yet a power of which the
pulses and the motions are unmistakable. The extent of our solar
system once seemed to man more limited than it does at present;
and the discovery of the most distant of the planetary family was
due to a recognition of an attractive force inexplicable except
on the supposition of the existence of another planet. The
astronomer, tracing known bodies along their orbital paths, could
feel the pull, could see the wire that drew them from a narrower
course; he saw not Neptune as he piled calculations sheet on
sheet; but the existence of that orb was clearly indicated, and
by heeding such indications he sought for it, and it was found.
Theory alone could never have revealed it, though theory was
incomplete, unsatisfactory without it; but the practical search,
instigated by theory, led to the great demonstration. And what is
all science but theory compared to the practical influence of
prayerful reliance on the assistance of an omnipotent, omniscient
power? Disregard not the indications of your science work,--the
trembling of the needle that reveals the magnetic influence; the
instinct within that speaks of a life and a Life-Giver, far
beyond human power of explanation or comprehension. As you sit
beneath the canopied vault, pondering in the silence of night
over the perturbations, the yearnings which the soul cannot
ignore, turn in the direction indicated by those impulses, and
with the penetrating, space-annihilating, time-annulling glass of
prayer and faith, seek the source of that pervading force."--The
Author in _Baccalaureate Sermon_, Utah University Quarterly,
Sept., 1895.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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