01.29. Lessons from Hailey's Comet
Chapter 29 LESSONS FROM HALLEY’S COMET.
These celestial visitors called comets are full of mystery. Just what they do for the universe is unknown still, although astronomers have been studying them for many centuries. That they do perform some essential part we question not, as God makes nothing for naught.
If insignificant worms, burrowing away out of sight under the ground, render a most important service to the soil, how much more should we be prepared to believe that these great leviathans of the sky with heads ranging from fifty thousand to one million miles in diameter, and with tails sometimes reaching the amazing length of one hundred million miles and more, have a most essential work to render for the good not only of our solar system, but for the vast universe itself that lies so far away from our little settlement, or village of planets.
Some of these comets are elliptic; that is, their angle of turning around the sun is such that the astronomers can calculate from the two lines of approach and departure what size the whole curve or ellipse is, and so when the glaring eyed, hair streaming sky racer will return again. These ellipses or heavenly race tracks range in the matter of time from three years to eight hundred and even more; and as to distance from a few hundred million of miles to such numbers as to make the head whirl, and almost bankrupt mathematics in the use of figures. The comet of 1882, which many of our readers will remember as such a splendid object, especially in the morning sky, will not return for nearly one thousand years. The comet now approaching us was last here in 1835 and has an ellipse of about seventy-five years. This visitor belongs to our solar system. All these seventy-five years Halley’s comet, as it is called, has been crossing just half the breadth of our solar system and returning.
Somewhere about the year 1872 it rounded Neptune, our remotest planet, which is two billion eight hundred millions of miles from the sun, and started back this way. Astronomers say that its present accelerated speed as it approaches the sun is about a million miles a day.
There is another class of comets called parabolas, and still another known as hyperbolas. The two lines of approach and recedure of the parabolas are such as to indicate that this class of comets will never return. The curve made by them in turning the sun is so great that it will never be closed as in the case of a circle or ellipse. Such a comet goes off into infinity. The hyperbolas, of which only a half dozen or so have been seen by the telescope, move in still remoter regions from the sun; and while the elliptic comet comes in a few hundred thousand or several millions of miles from the sun, the hyperbolas’ nearest approach is three hundred millions of miles. Like spectre ships on the sea of infinite space, they silently pass on by us, and away forever in the boundless immensity beyond. The only difference we can see, from what we have read, between the parabola and hyperbola comet is that the latter seems to be headed for far more distant points in the universe than the former. The ablest writers on the sidereal heavens think that these more remote rangers of the skies have been on their way toward us not only for thousands but millions of years. The present approaching visitor brings us several lessons or messages from the skies.
One is the inconceivable vastness of God’s universe or empire. So many people regard the earth and themselves, as so large and important, that they need this solemn reminder coming to them through the heavens.
Let the reader bear in mind that the trip taken by Halley’s comet across just half the diameter of our Solar System, would require a locomotive going at the rate of a thousand miles a day, eight thousand two hundred and sixteen years to accomplish, and yet our Solar System as compared to the Astral system above us and beyond us in the far away firmament, is like a shell on the sea shore, a pebble in the desert of Sahara, a mere speck on the face of creation.
It is known that light travels at the rate of one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles a second. So it takes light from the sun nearly four hours to reach Neptune, the farthest planet of our Solar System. But think of it! God’s universe is so great that it requires light thirty thousand years to cross the diameter of even the visible stellar heavens that twinkle at such infinite distances above and on all sides of fathomless space.
We glance at the nations of Europe, at our own country, at our proud cities, and say if the Solar System itself six billions of miles in diameter is but a speck or dot on the face of creation, what are you? and where do you come in? Truly, the comet which brings this exhortation with attendant reflections does well in its preaching. Fixing its gleaming eye upon us, and throwing its streaming hair back from its white forehead, it makes an appeal of such a nature to the whole human family as should make every one lift his eyes from mud and the muck rake and fix them with the life ever after on God, Christ, duty and eternity. A second message of the comet is in regard to the greatness of God who made the universe. That such a system, vast, complicated and yet harmonious at every point, could have evolved itself without an infinite omnipotent intelligence back of it, is too absurd to entertain as a thought a moment. It would be infinitely easier to believe that a watch with all its related and correlated parts, time-keeping power, etc., etc., made itself, than to think for a moment that the stupendous and perfect mechanism in the heavens above us sprang there by blind chance, or through a fortuitous concourse of atoms. There is too much harmony, regularity, order, and smooth working laws to credit such folly, a single instant. The comet puts in its voice here. Speaking to the world it says: "I left you seventy-five years ago. I am due to cross your track in 1910. Please put on your Bulletin Board that I am on time. Add also that the God who made such a locomotive for the sky, and laid the tracks in the air, and arranged the schedule, caused a six billion miles run without a stop for recoaling, and engineered the whole thing through without a single failure or accident, is a God infinite in wisdom, almighty in power, is as good as He is great, and should be worshiped, adored and obeyed by every man, woman and child on the face of the earth." A third message of the comet is a warning of the hopelessness of all opposition to God.
It would have us to consider its own vast size, its rush at times of over one hundred miles a second, its swing out into space beyond the limits of the Solar System for five hundred millions of miles; and yet argues the comet: "God easily manages me. He has bridled me with His laws and guides as He will. When I was almost out of sight of the whole Solar System, the Almighty laid His hand on me out yonder in measureless space and began to draw me back. And I had to yield. And great in volume as I am, I was as an infant in the hands of a giant. And yet he is controlling ten thousands times ten thousands comets larger than myself, and is leading billions of suns through the infinite fields of space as a shepherd would direct his flock through a field.
What hope of success, then, has any man or city, or nation against such a Being of Omnipotence whom not only winds and sea obey, but the universe itself stands in place because of the Word of His power. My advice, says the Comet, to everybody is to get right with God at once.
Let the potsherds strive with the potsherds of earth, but "woe unto him who striveth with his maker." A fourth lesson of the comet has reference to the equanimity with which God must view all enemies to Himself and His truth.
It is an awe inspiring thought to a human being to know that great bodies of matter from one million to many million miles in diameter are rushing through space with a speed from one to four hundred miles a second and that still other vast bodies are crossing the orbits of the former class, and yet the Almighty is without the slightest anxiety. The Bible speaks of His peace and how it passeth all understanding. The fact is that God is greater than the universe, and His power infinitely beyond anything that He has made. So the Almighty perfect master of the situation rules on restfully and triumphantly, knowing there can never be accident, failure or direful mishap in His vast physical kingdom of billions of suns, trillions of planets, quadrillions of satellites and quintillions of comets without His consent or bringing about. The Cometic argument is, if God is thus undisturbed by what we see going on all around us in space among the worlds, how much more tranquil is the Almighty when He beholds a few human insects and ants trying to sting His truth to death or block up His way in Redemption and the providential deliverances of the children of men.
How little a man must look to God. How small even the monarch of earth. The Bible says that when the kings of the earth took counsel together against Him and His Anointed, He that sat in the heavens laughed. He never arose from His throne, but continued to sit, and as He sat, He laughed.
How perfectly are we all in His power. If we tried to run He could chase us with a comet.
If we defied Him He could send a stream of destroying fire on us from the skies as he did on Sodom. Indeed, He could by the breaking of one of the laws He made, send the world flying from its place, and let it fall forever and ever in the black, bottomless space that lies underneath the vast twinkling universe of God.
No, God is not afraid of any one of us, nor of all of us put together. This may be one of the reasons He lets us live, and furnishes us air, sunlight, and rations while we keep up the hopeless contest. A further message from the comet is one of wonder that his approach should be viewed with alarm and many times with panic.
What the Comet communicated at this point we got by wireless. It said: Every time that I or some of my brethren flash through the skies there is always a lot of you people on earth that think the end of the world is coming. Why don’t the people read the Bible and get over your newspaper alarms? It is true that the world is to be destroyed, but not by a comet, but by Him who made the comets. He will appear in the sky and not one of us; and the nations will wail not because it sees one of us in the heavens, but because of the sight of Him who made the universe and has come to judge the world on the last day of its probation.
Another word I would say, and that is, as I have returned after a long absence, even more certainly will the Being who created me come back to earth; and if men dread me and my coming, how much more ought they to dread and prepare for the return of Him who made all the comets, and all the worlds and suns, and holds the universe in the hollow of His infinite hand.
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