MARINER S COMPASS TELESCOPE. 



117 



displayed to view without a guide to direct 

 their course through the billows of the ocean, 

 they could have afforded no light and no relief 

 to cheer the distant nations &quot; who sit in darkness, 

 and in the shadow of death.&quot; Though the art 

 of printing had been invented ; though millions 

 of bibles were now prepared, adequate to the 

 supply of all the &quot; kindreds of the heathen ;&quot; 

 though ships in abundance were equipped for 

 the enterprise, and thousands of missionaries 

 ready to embark, and to devote their lives to the 

 instruction of the pagan world all would be of 

 no avail, and the &quot; salvation of God&quot; could never 

 be proclaimed to the ends of the world, unless 

 they had a mariner s compass to guide their 

 course through the trackless ocean. 



In this invention, then, we behold a proof of 

 the agency of Divine Providence, in directing 

 the efforts of human genius to subserve the most 

 important designs, and contemplate a striking 

 specimen of the &quot; manifold wisdom of God.&quot; 

 When the pious and contemplative Israelite re 

 flected on the declaration of the prophets, that 

 &quot; the glory of Jehovah would be revealed, and 

 that all flesh would see it together ;&quot; from the 

 state of the arts which then existed, he must 

 have felt many difficulties in forming a concep 

 tion of the manner in which such predictions 

 could be realized. &quot; The great and wide sea,&quot; 

 now termed the Mediterranean, formed the bound 

 ary of his view, beyond which he was unable to 

 penetrate. Of the continents, and &quot; the isles 

 afar off,&quot; and of the far more spacious oceans 

 that lay between, he had no knowledge ; and how 

 &quot; the ends of the earth&quot; were to be reached, he 

 could form no conception ; and, in the midst of 

 his perplexing thoughts, he could find no satis 

 faction but in the firm belief, that &quot; with God 

 all things are possible.&quot; But now we are ena 

 bled not only to contemplate the grand designs 

 of the divine eonomy, but the principal means 

 bv which they shall all, in due time, be accom 

 plished, inconsequence of the progress of science 

 and art, and of their consecration to the rearing 

 and extension of the Christian church. 



The two inventions to which I have now ad 

 verted, may perhaps be considered as among the 

 most striking instances of the connexion of hu 

 man art with the objects of religion. But there 

 are many other inventions, which, at first view, 

 do not appear to bear so near a relation to the 

 progress of Christianity, and yet have an ulti 

 mate reference to some of its grand and interest 

 ing objects. 



The Telescope. We might he apt to think, 

 on a slight view of the matter, that there can be 

 no immediate relation between the grinding and 

 polishing of an optic glass, and fitting two or 

 more of them in a tube, and the enlargement 

 of our views of the operation of the Eternal 

 Mind. Yet the connexion between these two 

 objects, and the dependence of the latter upon 



the former, can be fairly demonstrated. The 

 son of a spectacle- maker of Middleburg in Hol 

 land, happening to amuse himself in his father s 

 shop, by holding two glasses between his finger 

 and his thumb, and varying their distance, per 

 ceived the weathercock of the church spire op 

 posite to him much larger than ordinary, and 

 apparently much nearer, and turned upside down. 

 This new wonder excited the amazement of the 

 father ; he adjusted two glasses on a board, ren 

 dering them moveable at pleasure ; and thus 

 formed the first rude imitation of a perspective 

 glass, by which distant objects are brought near 

 to view. Galileo, a philosopher of Tuscany, 

 hearing of the invention, set his mind to work, 

 in order to bring it to perfection. He fixed his 

 glasses at the end of long organ-pipes, and con 

 structed a telescope, which he soon directed to 

 different parts of the surrounding heavens. He 

 discovered four moons revolving around the pla 

 net Jupiter spots on the surface of the sun, and 

 the rotation of that globe around its axis moun 

 tains and valleys in the moon and numbers of 

 fixed stars where scarcely one was visible to the 

 naked eye. These discoveries were made about 

 the year 1610, a short time after the first invention 

 of the telescope. Since that period this instru 

 ment has passed through various degrees of im 

 provement, and, by means of it, celestial won 

 ders have been explored in the distant spaces of 

 the universe, which, in former times, were alto 

 gether concealed from mortal view. By the help 

 of telescopes, combined with the art of measur 

 ing the distances and magnitudes of the heavenly 

 bodies, our views of the grandeur of the Almighty, 

 of the plenitude of his power, and of the extent 

 of his universal empire, are extended far beyond 

 what could have been conceived in former ages. 

 Our prospects of the range of the divine opera- 

 ions are no longer confined within the limits of 

 the world we inhabit ; we can now plainly per 

 ceive, that the kingdom of God is not only &quot; an 

 everlasting dominion,&quot; but that it extends through 

 the unlimited regions of space, comprehending 

 within its vast circumference thousands of suns, 

 and tens of thousands of worlds, all ranged in 

 majestic order, at immense distances from one 

 another, and all supported and governed &quot; by 

 Him who rides on the Heaven of heavens,&quot; 

 whose greatness is unsearchable, and whose un 

 derstanding is infinite. 



The telescope has also demonstrated to ua 

 the literal truth of those scriptural declarations 

 which assert that the stars are &quot; innumerable.&quot; 

 Before the invention of this instrument, not 

 more than about two thousand stars could be 

 perceived by the unassisted eye in the clearest 

 night. But this invention has unfolded to view 

 not only thousands, but hundreds of thousands, 

 and millions, of thtfse bright luminaries, which 

 lie dispersed in every direction throughout the 

 boundless dimensions of space. And the higher 



