The palace of the Great King

Front matter

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THE

Preface

In offering to the public another volume, the writer would fain acknowledge the generous reception which his former publications have met. If these gleanings from a Pastor's study — of which the present volume is another instalment — -have not the merit of illustrating some of the great themes and principles which most vitally concern man here and hereafter, and which display the w^onder- working hand of Infinite goodness, skill and wisdom, then let them die the death — of all abortive books.

The present volume is the result of long and careful investigation — a patient collocation of facts from a great variety of sources — an attempt so to combine amusement and instruction, the useful and the entertaining, as to challenge the lovers of fiction to the field of facts as not the less marvellous. He believes he has collected, within a tangible compass, an amount of varied and interesting knowledge on the subjects treated which will spare the reader the trouble and expense of searching through more libraries and books than are likely to fall in his way. The writer will esteem it recompense enough, if he may contribute any appreciable amount of influence to arrest the current of the reading world in its strange re veilings in

4 PREFACE.

the mazes of romance. He has endeavored to make a readable book of FACTS, which '^ are stranger than fiction."

It is a book from the world and for the world we live in — conducting the reader through the museum of the Great King — contemplating the Monarch on his throne — ^his royal attire — the crown-jewels in all their beauty — the concave of his Palace studded with ten thousand gems — the robes of glory he wears — his footstool wrought in all the skill and wisdom and variegated beauty which can please the taste or minister to the pleasure or profit of man.

But we have done more than to survey the exterior of the Temple. We have essayed to enter the audience-chamber of the Great King, to search out God in the holy of holies of the upper Sanctuary. Who is this God that worketh so wondrously^ Can we form any conception of such mental resources — of such sleepless activities — of such power, benevolence and skill ? In our profoundest searches, when we have seemed to discover much, a voice from the inner Temple seems, in contempt of all human knowledge, to respond : ^* Lo ! these are but parts of his ways ; but how little a portion is known of him."

The character of the writer's books already before the public and the success they have secured, he fondly hopes, will bespeak for the forthcoming volume the same generous regard.

Craneville, N. J., Sept., 1859.

Chapter I. Page

Crystal Palaces — The Universe a Magnificent Palace — Endless Variety of the Divine Workmanship— No two Objects alike— The Insatiable Desires of the Mind— Its Love of Novelty and Yariety, . . . . . ,9

Chapter II

Vaeieties Geological : — The nice adjustment of particles composing the Earth such as to secure all our various Soils — Productions — Minerals and Metals — Coal, Iron— Iron annihilated, and what then ? . . , . .24

Chapter III

Vaeieties Geogkaphical : Cosmogony — The Earth as a Uniform Lump — The Earth as Variegated : Land, "Water, Mountains, Plains — How many things a Man requires in the Common Affairs of Every-day Life: Food, Apparel, House, and Implements of Labor, . . . . . . .89

Chapter IV

The Elementary Particles of Things— Varieties Chemical — The same law of Variety pervades the Atomic World — " Ultimate Molecules," or Elementary Particles— The Particles composing a Kay of Light or Drop of Water, . 55

CONTENTS.

Chapter V. Page

The YegetaWe Kingdom : No two Trees, Plants, Shrubs alike — No two Leaves, Flowers, Seeds, or Fruits— The Natures, Qualities, and Uses, how different. —The Abundance of Yegetable Productions— All formed of a few Elementary Substances. ......... T4

Chapter VI

The Animal Kingdom— The Scale of Life—^'hQ "Vast Chain of Being ''-• The Animal World a Counterpart of the Yegetable, . . . .90

CHAPTER Vn.

The Animal Kingdom: Species of Animals— Individual Varieties — Organs of Locomotion — Legs, Wings, Eyes, Ears, Noses — Clothing — Habitations — Weapons of Defence — The Feathered Tribes, ..... 104

CHAPTER VHI.

The Animal Kingdom — The Microscopic World : Variety of Temperament — Sagacity — Activity — Precocity — Productiveness— Migrations of Animals — Fishes, . . . . . . . . . . .123

CHAPTER IX.

Man — His Physical Varieties — ^External Form — Color of Skin — ^Mechanism — The eye — Organs for Breathing; Digestion, Secretion; Nerves, Blood-vessels — Yoice— Upright Position— The Wrist and Hand— Jenny Lind's Voice, . 142

CHAPTER X.

Human Skill and Workmanship, ....... 163

CHAPTER XL

Man : All sorts of Men to make a World — Characteristics and Idiosyncrasies, . 175

CHAPTER XIL

Varieties Intellectual : Many Men of many Minds, or all sorts of Minds make a World, , . . . . . . . .186

CONTENTS. 7

CHAPTER XIII.

PAGE

Man and his Yarieties, in his endlessly-diversified conditions of life, . . 204

CHAPTER XIV.

Astronomical Yarieties: No two Worlds alike— Differ in Form, Bulk, Motion—Inhabitants — Moral Yarieties among Worlds — Kedemption the Grand Moral Yariety of our World, ....... 215

CHAPTER XV.

How it takes all sorts of Saints to make a Heaven, . . . . .241

CHAPTER XVI.

Variety in Divine Truth, as suited to produce Yariety in Christian Character and Experience, ......... 255

CHAPTER XVII.

How various the dealings of Providence by which men are brought to the Saviour — and how various the manner by which the means of grace in different individuals are made effectual, ...... 269

CHAPTER XVIII.

Man's varied wants : Pood — Clothing — Habitation — ^Luxuries. Land, Sea, Mine, Forest, Eiver taxed to supply these wants. Mental Wants, — Moral Wants, . 283

CHAPTER XIX.

Man designed and adapted to a high State of Civilization in this Life, and a high State of Exaltation and Glory in the Life to come : or, the Model Man, . 298

CHAPTER XX. %

The same Subject : Examples of extraordinary development among men, as pledges of his high future destiny— Nature, Providence and Eevelation indicate this same high destiny — Man capacitated to appropriate the provisions made for his progress, ....... 811

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XXI.

PAGB

The Mind of God : The Infinitude of the Perceptions and Ideas in the Divine Mind, 829

CHAPTER XXII.

The Divine Complacency — The Happiness of God in the Contemplation of his "Works and his Ways, and his own Attributes and Character, . . . 345

CHAPTER XXIII.

God in all and over all — Giving Life and Breath and all things — Inspired Descriptions of God — How such views of God should aflFect us, . . . 36S

CHAPTER XXr^.

Conclusion : The claims of Natural Religion — The origin of False Religions — Their Philosophy and History — Reasons for one common universal Religion, and that Christianity, ........ 884

THE

PALACE OF THE GREAT KING.

Chapter I

Crystal Palaces — The Universe a Magnificent Palace — ^Endless Yariety of the Divine Workmanship— No two Objects alike— The Insatiable Desires of the Mind— Its Love of Novelty and Yariety.

The present is the age of Crystal Palaces. The people of one nation are vying with those of another which shall raise the most magnificent dome and construct the most superb pal ace for the " exhibition of the skill and industry of all nations." As you pass through one of these stately edifices, you are astonished at the skill and power as seen displayed in the structure and dimensions of the building itself; and yet more at the variety and multiplicity of the objects it contains. Here are the products and specimens of the skill not only of all nations, but of every variety and degree of individual taste and talent. Here are met the most rare, the most ingeniously wrought, and the most valuable, useful and ornamental fabrics that are to be found on the face of the earth, or made by the hand of man : " Shawls from India, robes from Eussia, and the bornoose from Africa, and linens, and silks, and fabrics of the finest texture and the most wonderful workmanship." 1*

The Universe is the Palace of the Great King. The skill and power engaged in the rearing and fitting up of this wonderful palace as far surpasses all human skill and power as the Creator surpasses the creature. This is Heaven's exposition of arts for all nations — and for all the principalities and powers — for all the orders of intelligent beings which inhabit the Universe. In beauty, variety and multiplicity of objects ; in exuberance of the imagination, and in the exquisiteness of the workmanship, it surpasses the utmost stretch of all human conception.

We invite the reader to accompany us into this august Palace, and to contemplate some of its wonders. As we enter the great Temple, we find ourselves encompassed on every side by the works and productions of Nature in forms infinitely diversified. It would seem as if even Divine skill had been exhausted in the formation of the multiplicity and variety of objects produced.

In our proposed visit to the Palace, we will make the special object of our researches the variety of the Divine Workmanship. As we pass from one department to another, we shall meet nothing more profoundly to admire than the endless variety which pervades the whole.

We contemplate with wonder the magnitude of the works of the Great Architect ; or the multiplicity of these works ; or we penetrate into the wonders of the microscopic world, and we are filled with wonder no less profound. Indeed, I scarcely know whether the student of Nature the more profoundly admires the magnitude, the multiplicity or the minuteness of the Divine workmanship. In the contemplation of either he can only wonder and adore, but cannot comprehend.

VASTNESS OF THE UNIYEESE. 11

Directing his thouglits to the vastness of the material universBj to the inconceivably great quantity of matter which composes the countless number of worlds which fill infinite space, he finds himself conducted to the outermost limit of human observation, and even of human conception ; yet he meets no evidence that he approaches any limit of creation. We can form no adequate idea of material existences. When he has traversed space as far as he can by the aid of the most powerful telescope ; and when he has exhausted all his capabilities of calculation, he seems scarcely to have crossed the threshold of God's great material Temple. He can make no adequate estimate of the amount of material which God has called into existence. Were he to travel through space millions of millions of miles, and take his station on the remotest star, the least twinkling ray of which reaches us, he would see space beyond him equal to that which he had already traversed, and equally radiant with shining worlds. His own native earth is in comparison but as a grain of sand on the sea-shore. He can form no conception of a Being possessed with power adequate first to bring into existence, and then to reduce to law, and govern so many and such vast worlds.

But if we pass from the magnitude to the minuteness of God's ^orks, we are, if possible, lost in still greater wonder. It comports more readily with our preconceived notions of the Infinite One, that he should do magnificently great things than that he should do exquisitely little things. We expect Omnipotence to exert great power, and to work on a magnificent plan. But when we descend into the microscopic world, and contemplate the teeming, countless millions of minute living beings, and animalcules, so minute that myriads are not larger than a grain of sand, and may inhabit a drop of water, — and when we see these minutest of all living atoms, finished with a most exquisite touch of skill and beauty, our admiration of the Divine workmanship is, if possible, raised still higher. We now become sensible of a skill and delicacy of workmanship which transcends all our highest conceptions of the Great Architect.

The microscope reveals to the astonished eye an invisible world of living beings ; and all these, though their existence may not be detected by the naked eye, are endued with organs for locomotion, for hearing and seeing ; with nerves and blood-vessels, and the means of procuring and digesting their food and reproducing their species. And they present every conceivable variety of motion, form, size and color. How wonderful the skill that decked the wing of one of these marvellously minute little atoms of creation, and set the blood coursing in its veins.

And wonderful as the discoveries of the microscope are, there is no intimation that they approach a limit. As at the other extreme of creation, every new power added to the telescope opens new fields of space still radiant with shining worlds ; and then beyond the scope of telescopic vision lie untraversed fields, which, if viewed with a more powerful telescope, would reveal new systems and groups of worlds ; so no power that has hitherto been applied to the microscope has failed to reveal new worlds of animalcules. Every new discovery only serves to confirm the conjecture that a more powerful instrument would unfold new worlds of wonder beyond.

While we mean by the Universe, which we have called the Palace of the Great King, the grand summary of all the worlds

MULTIPLICITY AND ENDLESS VARIETY. 13

which God has made, and all the endless multiplicity of objects, animate and inanimate, vegetable and mineral, with which the Great Architect has furnished these worlds, yet we do not propose to launch forth into so boundless a field for illustrations of our present theme, but shall confine ourselves chiefly to one small world, and for obvious reasons we shall select the planet with which we happen to be the best acquainted. The globe, called Earth, shall serve as the Palace through whose strangely diversified products of art and skill we will make a few desultory excursions, seeking illustrations of the wisdom, goodness and power of God: not so much from the magnitude and minuteness of his works as from their multiplicity and endless variety. Yet we shall not overlook the broad, starry concave of this earthly palace — the great dome of Heaven, studded with ten thousand stars, and thence stretching off into boundless space as far as thought can travel.

As we compare the heavenly bodies, system with system, star with star, and planet with planet, we shall discover the same infinite variety pervading the whole.

The field of illustration is as broad as the entire arena of nature's works. The mineral, the vegetable, the animal worlds, are replete with examples to our purpose ; so is the condition and history of man, the ordinary dispensations of Providence, and the means of man's recovery from the fall. All indicate the profuse expenditure of the Divine goodness so to diversify and beautify his works and to vary his ways, as the most effectually to secure the happiness of his intelligent creatures. Who but God would have thought of the ten thousand ways he has adopted by which to make man happy ?

Our subject is a pleasant one, and well suited to minister to the entertainment of the observant mind. But we have, in the following chapters, a higher aim. We hope to raise the mind to Nature's God, and to present him as a kind, benevolent, infinitely wise, and wonder-working Father, who is ever busy, even in the most inconceivably minute, and apparently insignificant domains of creation. We most devoutly wish to leave impressed on the mind of the reader the sentiment that such a God is worthy of the profoundest homage, of unbounded admiration and unfeigned love. Such contemplations on the workmanship of the Divine hand can scarcely fail to give us the most exalted idea of the skill, and wisdom, and benevolence of the great Author of creation. He not only makes and finishes every thing with an exquisite touch, which will bear the closest scrutiny, and creates an endless number of objects, . from the most inconceivably minute to the most stupendously grand, but he makes all things in such strange and endless diversity. No two objects have ever been found to be alike. And not only no two objects that exist at any one time are alike, but judging from the only premises we have on the subject, we may reasonably raise the query whether any two objects that ever existed from the beginning of creation, or that ever shall exist, are precisely alike. So exhaustless are the conceptions of the Divine mind, and so boundless his skill and power, that no two individuals of any species of animals, vegetables, or minerals, or any created existences, are ever found to be alike. In the human race, for example, though so marked uniformity everywhere characterizes the race that there is no fear of mistaking the human animal for an animal of any other species, yet no two individuals that now live, or ever did, or ever shall live on the globe, are alike. And,

RESOUECES OF THE DIVINE MIND. 15

perhaps, if due examination could be made, it would be found that in no one particular are they alike — in no organ, or feature, or member, or development of mind, or of moral qualities or affections. And such being the fact in respect to all the races of beings with which we are acquainted, we are justified in the inference that it is so throughout the boundless realms of creation. Variety is an essential characteristic of the works of the Divine hand. It equally decks the wing of the tiniest insect that sports in a single drop of water, and is met in the form, and motion, and magnitude of the hugest orb that rolls through space.

But what an idea does this give us, at the very outset, of the exhaustless resources of the Divine mind ! The Author of the whole magnificent machinery of nature, and He that upholds and directs the whole, and makes all its numberless parts, the minutest as well as the mightiest, to harmonize, must at the same moment have the whole, in all its infinite details, present to his mind. We wonder at the capabilities of the man who can with ease attend to all the details of a great business — who can plan, meet contingencies the most unexpected, direct the minds and labors of a great number of men, and make agencies the most various and apparently adverse all harmonize to achieve his one great aim — who can, at the same time, dictate a correspondence to agents abroad, and foresee there the casualties of business or trade, and meet contingencies which may occur thousands of miles distant — who has within his own measure a sort of omniscience and omnipotence. His active, busy, intelligent mind is the main-spring that sets in motion and directs every wheel of the great manufactory, or that guides, in all its thousan-d details, the great mercantile house. It is his mind that guides the hand of every clerk, agent or workman. By night and by day, whetlier corporeally present or absent, his power is felt, his watchful eye is there — ^he has, as it were, diffused himself through the whole. But all comparison fails to illustrate the never-ceasing, the infinitely comprehensive activity of the Divine mind.

The globe which we inhabit is but one of a countless number of similar globes, some of which (as Jupiter) are fourteen hundred times larger than ours ; or if compared with the sun, or some other fixed star, its magnitude falls into insignificance, the sun being one million three hundred thousand times larger than the earth. Tet for a moment suppose our globe the only world which God has made, still what an idea do we get of the Eternal Mind.

We select the period when he was about to enter upon the creation of our world. A perfect conception of the whole scheme must have lain in the mind of the Eternal One : the exact quantity of matter of which it was to consist; the structure of the whole, so as to form the dry land and the ocean, the river and the mountain, the plain and the valley, all in their relative proportions and influences on one another; the placing of every particle, even the minutest, so as to form the rock, the soil, the endless variety of trees, shrubs, plants, grains and grasses ; as also, the mineral, the metal, and the precious stone. He must, too, at the same time, have seen and determined the shape of every leaf, the tint of every flower, the form, and size, and properties of every particle of inanimate matter, and the number and variety, the organs and functions of all grades of animal life — all were vivid and per-

ITS ]SnCE CALCULATIONS. 17

feet eoneeptions in tlie mind of the Creator while as yet they were not made.

We are lost in utter amazement when we attempt to form any idea of God as the author and the controller of the wonderful system of nature. Both in their original creation and in their subsequent control, what a vast multiplicity of objects required a constant attention ; what nice calculations to have adjusted in their respective places every body that rolls in grandeur over the boundless fields of ether, and every minute speck that floats in the air ; and to have adapted each to the other, so as to secure the balance of the whole, and preserve the harmony of the universal system. For the size and weight of the tiniest flower that decks the solitary glen, and the number and dimensions of the minutest insect, as well as the location of a mighty river, or the structure of the loftiest mountain, or the hollowing out of the channel of the sea, are equally the work of the Almighty, and equally require his sleepless care. Nothing short of Omnipotence and Omniscience could do either.

And what a boundless field has God opened in the infinite diversity of his works for the unrestricted scope of mind, whether in the present state of existence or in the next ! He has been pleased to vary his works so as to please the eye, to gratify, to regale the mind, and to improve the heart. Variety, I have said, everywhere characterizes the Divine workmanship. The number of species and sub-species, where there is a marked diflerence, is immense ; but the moment you attempt to search out varieties of the same species you find yourself treading on the confines of infinitude. Here there will be found no two objects alike, not two blades of grass from the same root, or two leaves of the same tree, or two peas from the same stock. So endlessly diversified are the most common ohjects of nature, that you may ransack the three kingdoms without finding two the same. Variety is the order of all things.

And love of variety is but coextensive with the endlessly diversified means and objects of its gratification. There is the love of variety in taste, in seeing, in hearing, in smelling and in touch. How would either of these senses tire with sameness ? Who could endure seeing, tasting, smelling or touching the same objects perpetually? But there can be' no such satiety. The provisions for the gratification of the senses are as varied as their wants. The eye which is never satisfied with seeing, is regaled with a succession of diversified objects ; the taste with every needed variety. And so w^e may say of the ear or of any other organ of sense. Sounds are vastly more diversified than even the objects which produce them: as the same object may generate different sounds as well as difi'erent degrees of sound. Indeed, the mind, through the organs of sense, may expatiate forever amidst new natures, combinations and relations, and never return and retrace its steps for the want of new objects. Nor need we stop here. We may pass from man's circumscribed and transient state here to his higher and holier state hereafter, and we shall probably find the same principle not the less delightfully operative. The anthem sung in those blessed mansions, is, " Great and marvellous are thy tvorJcs, Lord God Almighty."

And not only is it probable that no two objects belonging to our little planet are alike, but the same strangely wondrous feature, doubtless, characterizes the boundless fields of creation. God probably never cast two things in the same mould.

INNATE LOVE OF NOVELTY. 19

And, as a divine arrangement, this love of variety in the future world and the provisions made for its gratification, are certainly not less interesting than that of which I have spoken. Indeed, it is but the exact and beautiful counterpart of that variety. Man, both as to his mind, and his moral tastes and aspirations, is so constituted as to be continually reaching after some new thing. He feels an insatiable desire for novelty. And this propensity is observed to increase in proportion as man advances in civilization and knowledge. The untutored savage has very little of it. Its development is sometimes denominated curiosity — sometimes inquisitiveness, or the love of knowledge. It is the natural outgoing of the mind for some new thing. This was a characteristic of the refined Athenians and of the "strangers" — the philosophers and literati perchance — that resorted to this renowned spot of ancient civilization and learning. " They spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing." The desires of the mind are insatiable, and increase in proportion to their gratification. When it has traversed one field, hov^ever immense and varied that may be, it instantly craves another. The acquisition of one science or an acquaintance with one art only sharpens the mind for another ; and the greater its acquisitions, the stronger its desires for further conquests. Bacon or Newton had a thousand ungratified desires in respect to the acquisition of knowledge, where the mere ignoramus has one. And we are constrained to believe that the same increased and inciting desires characterize the highest created intelligences in the universe, and the same boundless fields invite their eternal researches.

This reaching forward continually after some new thing or something not yet attained to — this dissatisfaction with any present acquisitions or enjoyments — this love of variety, is a constituent element in the mental and moral constitution of all intelligent beings, both men and angels — an essential part of their being ; and it forms for man a connecting link between his present and his future state of being. And not only so, but it - indicates what shall be the mental, and (if I may say so) the physical character and condition of that state of being, and what, in fact, the enjoyments and employments of the blessed above. Through all the endless multiplicity of objects here the mind may wonder and the heart expatiate and return dissatisfied. Were it possible that a single individual of our race should visit every nation and tribe — every nook and corner of our globe, and become perfectly acquainted with the geography, the history, the botany and mineralogy of each — in a word, were he to know all of every science and art, and of every thing that may be known in this mundane sphere, and in this corporeal state, would the eye be satisfied with seeing, or the ear with hearing ? would the mind be satisfied, and the aspirations of the soul find their fulness ? Or rather, would not such a mind feel that all its past acquisitions were no more than preliminary to the acquisitions to be made in the boundless field of eternity ? At every step of his stupendous progress till he reached the grand acme of all possible human knowledge, his desires for something unattained were sure to keep in advance of his acquisitions, so that when he had arrived at the grand climacteric of all that may be known on this earth, these longings for new fields of knowledge were found to be increased in a ratio equal to all former acquisitions.

It is only in the future abode of the blessed that all these

THE HEAVENLY FIELD. 21

desires can be gratified, and the soul, so singularly capacitated, sliall find a boundless range for its expanded and ever expanding faculties and susceptibilities.

But will the spirit, thus endowed, when emancipated from the disabilities of earth and time, have a field for the further expansion and the perfect gratification of these insatiable desires for something new % The following pages, we trust, will afford at least a partial answer to this interesting inquiry. The great theme of contemplation and research and admiration among the blissful inhabitants of heaven, is the " works " and the '' ways " of God ; or rather God as seen and known in his works and ways. In proportion, then, as our facts and reasonings go to show that the works of the Divine hand are boundless in extent, and strangely and endlessly diversified^ they will furnish a pleasing evidence of the benevolence and wisdom of the Deity ; first, that he should so singularly endow the human mind, and then, that he should, with such exhaustless liberality, fit up the universe with such a rich and boundless profusion of objects, and in all that unending variety, which can, to endless ages, give to the mind its full fruition of knowledge and bliss.