The Day After Death; Or, Our Future Life According to Science (New Edition)Figuier, Louis
Religion
The Day After Death; Or, Our Future Life According to Science (New Edition)
Figuier, Louis
Cosmology; Future life; Transmigration
_The Author._ Yes. Our whole solar system, the sun, with its immense
following of planets and asteroïds, with the satellites of those
planets, with the comets which from time to time come sweeping on, to
fall into the burning furnace of the radiant star, all that, compared
with the universe, is no more than an ear of corn in a huge granary,
than a grain of sand upon the shore, than a drop of water in the ocean.
The terrible vastness of the universe is such that it is absolutely
inaccessible to our measurement, and it is for us the image of the
infinite, or the infinite itself. Now, my friend, attend to me. Most
certainly God, as to His nature, is absolutely inconceivable by our
minds. His essence escapes us, and always must escape us. We can
only affirm that He is infinite in His moral perfections, and in His
intellectual power. But if, on the one hand, God is _The Infinite_
in the moral order, and if, on the other hand, the universe is _The
Infinite_ in the physical order; if one is _The Infinite_ in spirit,
and the other is _The Infinite_ in extent, these two ideas, although
in themselves inaccessible to human intelligence, are nevertheless of
the same order, and may be regarded in contiguity. It is then possible,
without laying one's self open to the charge of presumption or
absurdity, to place the Infinite, which is called God, in the Infinite
which is called the Universe, in other words, to locate the person of
God at the common focus of the worlds which compose the Universe.
_Theophilus._ Your reasoning is just. But you must prove, or, if you
prefer the phrase, you must teach me that the universe is truly _The
Infinite_ by its extent. I could not admit that assertion without very
convincing evidence.
_The Author._ Very well. Lend me your best attention, and excuse me if
my demonstration resembles a lecture on astronomy. I have said that our
solar system is only a little corner of the universe. When you look at
the vault of the sky on a bright clear night, you see it thickly strewn
with stars, which, you will at once acknowledge, it would be impossible
to count. But all that you see with the naked eye is next to nothing.
Take a good telescope, and direct it to any part of the sky. There
where a moment before you saw nothing, you will now discern legions
of stars, bright spots will come out upon the darkness of space, like
diamonds upon the velvet lining of a casket, each of them a star,
exactly like those which we see at night in the sky. And now, let me
ask you, do you know what a star is?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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