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NEW PLANET.

SERMON,'
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C. A. B AR'TOL, *
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JUNiOK jijlNISTEK OP THE WEST CHURCH,, IN BOSTON*
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LEONARD C. BOWLES.
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- 1847.
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THE

NEW PLANET:

AN ANALOGY

BETWEEN THE

PERTURBATIONS OP MATTER AND SPIRIT.

8BEM0N,

C. A. BARTOL,
JUNIOR MINISTER OF THE WEST CHURCH, IN BOSTON.

Roprinted from the Monthly Religious Magazine.

BOSTON :
LEONARD C. BOWLES.
1847.

SERMON.

Proverbs xvi. 11. A just weight and balance are the Lord's.
The public attention has been lately much drawn to the
discovery of a new planet, in that system of the heavenly
bodies, to which our earth belongs. This remarkable fact has
been the subject of many scientific comments. It may also
however be regarded in various religious aspects. I know
not that it has been considered in the point of view now pro
posed, as presenting an analogy between the material and
moral universe. But this analogy is so perfect, so fixed in
the principle and manner of the discovery, and leads to views
so consolatory, as well as instructive, that we may profitably
trace it.
" A just weight and balance are the Lord's." His creation
is but an exact balance of worlds. Planets orderly revolving
at various proportionate distances about the sun, lesser moons
and satellites, in orbits as precise, moving round the planets,
and the whole solar system, as it were one single globe, roll
ing obedient to some mighty centre, which a late astronomer
professes to have descried in the depths of the starry space.
For a considerable number of years, it had been supposed,
that the solar system, of which our world is part, was all

brought into the field of view and scientific knowledge ; one
bright body after another, with perhaps its attendant orbs,
having revealed its station to the observer's eye, nearer to, or
farther from the sun, — from Mercury thirty-six millions of
miles distant, to Herschel at the astonishing remoteness of more
than eighteen hundred millions. And at length the heavenly
lyre, to use a favorite figure with astronomical authors, was
thought to be complete, — the planet Herschel being the last
chord in this glorious harmony to the Creator's praise. But
still another note is now added, in the discovery of a new
world vastly exceeding in size that appointed for our mortal
dwelling. It is the principle and mode of this discovery,
which I wish to note, as suggesting the analogy to which
I have referred.
Le Verrier, the sagacious explorer of the celestial spheres,
to whom we owe this great achievement of the age, was led
into the track of the new planet, by detecting some perturba
tions or disturbed movements in the planet Herschel, for
which the motions and attractions of the known heavenly
bodies could not account.
One preliminary word more is necessary, in order fully to
develope our idea of the nature of these perturbations. The
perturbations of a planet are deviations or diversions from
its regular separate course about the centre, which are occa
sioned by the attraction of other bodies. It was at first thought,
these perturbations would finally derange the universe, and
bring into inextricable confusion and destructive chaos that
whole portion of nature in which we are placed.
But further insight into the process, by which these mighty
masses of matter are drawn or driven along their glittering
pathways, has shown that God's creation is fashioned wiser

ttan man's fearful supposition, and that the compensations
for these disturbances are so wonderfully wrought out, that the
very mingling and apparent clashing of almost innumerable
forces preserves the equilibrium of the whole, and, so far as
we can see, will secure the stability of the universe. Of the
perturbations however in question there had been no previous
explanation. But the question arose in the explorer's mind, as through
the lenses of his searching tube he gazed on that bright
sphere, so long supposed to tread on the very verge and
outermost circle of those stars that sing together in our little
sister-band of God's infinite family of worlds, — as he gazed
and, with his armed, instructed eye, saw it tremble and sway
from the line it should in obedience to the sun and its fellow
travellers maintain, the question arose, what affection it could
feel to make it thus lean aside.; and, with a bold prudence, he
judged that it must have beyond some other companion, which
human eye had not yet seen. He scans these perturbed
inclinations more exactly, measures their amount, ascends to
their adequate cause, and though that cause still lay darkly
ranging on, with to earthly vision undiscernible lustre, he yet
predicts its place, and course, and, time of arrival into the
focus of human sight. His prediction is recorded, to be enter
tained by some, or incredulously smiled at by others.
But lo ! in due time the stranger comes as announced, to
fulfil this " sure prophetic word " of the divinely inspired
understanding of man ; and a glorious new world swims into
his telescopic view, sailing on the farthest rim of solar attrac
tion, more than three thousand millions of miles away, —
a world immense in its proportions as compared with this
narrow surface of human action and passion. It comes and

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sets up its blue, brilliant disc in the heavens, in addition to
the broad, lustrous face of Jupiter, the shining ring of Saturn,
the soft beauty of Venus, and the red shield of Mars.
" A just weight and balance are the Lord's." So believed
the calm, though sanguine calculator who marked the rising
and falling scales of the material universe.
" A just weight and balance are the Lord's," I believe we
may with equal justice say, as we examine the order and ob
serve the perturbations of the moral universe. The motions
and tremblings and disturbances of the human heart also refer
to a world beyond.
The disorders and wrongs and sufferings of human life
demand a rectification and balance, as much as the swayings
and wanderings of a material orb. For God is a spirit. His
nature is essentially moral, and He cannot have made the
moral and spiritual system of things less perfect than his out
ward and coarser handiwork. Let us consider, then, some
of these moral perturbations, and inquire what the compensa
tion must be.
And first, there is a perturbation of the human heart in view
of death, and, so far as we can see, it is peculiar to the human
heart. The animal seems to have no proper fear of death ; he
knows nothing of that peculiar horror with which the soul of
man starts back aghast from the gulf of annihilation. That
horror and perturbation belong to human nature. It is made a
part of us by the Author of our nature. It is felt not by the
bad and conscience-stricken only ; but by the good and self-
approving also. Indeed, in proportion as faithful culture has
opened the nobler faculties and expanded the better affections
towards God and man, it is felt more deeply.

What, then, is it that thus draws our heart aside from the
orbit of mortality, and makes it unwilling to keep true to the
line that leads only to the grave ? Shall we not conclude, like
the astronomer, that it is another world, another system of
moral being, that attracts and claims fellowship with it? and
sways it up and on, over the white mark of the inscribed
tombstone, — a real world, though yet unseen by human
eye, — a world more glorious than the present, though no ray
of it has yet actually reached us — a world that shall yet at
length swim out from the darkness and distance, in which it
is now kept and mysteriously involved, and when the veil of
blinding flesh is taken off, and our eye purged of these mists
of mortal ignorance, rush into the field of vision, and to those
who doubt or believe, appear as a majestic reality ?
There is a second perturbation of the human heart in
view of sin. It feels that it was made for holiness, that its true
nature is not (as it has been called) evil and depraved, but that
it is constituted of God to love and worship and be like Him.
And yet it is aware how short it falls of the noble mark. It is
led away by appetite and passion, it succumbs to the power of
temptation, it is wounded and sorely scarred in its enlistments
in the base service of sin, and it moves but halt and slowly in
the race of well-doing and virtue which its Creator ordained.
But, note and confess this fact : it is not content thus ;
it mourns bitterly over its backwardness ; it is remorseful at
its transgressions ; it repents of its excesses ; it calls itself an
outcast, an enemy of God, yea, a thing of shame and wo, in
the extravagance of its sorer mortification ; and yet, notwith
standing, even in its degradation, it cries out with inex
tinguishable hope, "Who shall deliver me from the body

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of this death?" for it feels, in the intensest experience
which its consciousness reveals, that this guilty shame is not
its appointed and final destiny. By the grace of God and its
own conspiring it must be cleansed from these stains, whose
defilement is eating into its life and destroying its peace.
It sees however the road to perfection running before it, no
short, no smooth, no level pathway, but long, and rough, and
interminably ascending ;- and if the date of mortal existence
be its date, then it must fail of its destiny : aye, in its best,
purest developement, — in the most perfect of men, it is still
short of the mark, as they, especially, with an honest sadness
confess. Yes, if that quiet enclosure of the body's resting-
place, with its thick-strewn hillocks, over which the shadows
play from the rustling leaves and creaking boughs of the
trees, — if that be the term of all, — 'then there is a perturba
tion of the human heart, for which no compensation exists, —
then there is a break in the order of the Divine workman
ship, — then the moral world is ajar and unbalanced, while
the material world, in all its parts and systems, rolls on
and sings, as it shines, in everlasting harmony, — then the
heavy clods of the narrow pit press down, not upon an
exhausted and decaying organization merely, but upon the
untimely interruption, upon the unaccountable failure, upon
the miserable wreck of the finer and spiritual fabrics, the
vessels of an excelling honor, launched on their career with
the strongest and most determined impulse of the hand of
Omnipotence ; launched with yet loftier and farther reaching
aims than those lustrous globes sailing on their eternal voyage
through the heavens. But no ! the very thoughts refuse to
pursue the absurd and impious hypothesis. " A just weight and

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balance are the Lord's." And the moral explorer of God's
works, as well as the material, concludes upon the existence
of another world, — though yet unseen by actual vision, anoth
er world to balance and complete the present. Does it not
indeed lie off there in the depths of his power, held aloft
steadily by His Almightiness, even as the sparkling sphere
that rides inconceivably remote along its sure but trackless
way through measureless space to adjust and finish the
balance of the material creation ?
Yes, thou swift traveller through the unfathomable deeps, —
untraceable but by the wondrously marking pencil of sci
ence, — one of the morning stars that sang together over the
fastened foundations and laid corner-stone of earth ! — thou
teachest me a lesson of my Maker's justice, as rounding
every mass, and with his plummet ruling every motion, and
speeding along every imponderable beam of material splendor,
to make His boundless universe perfect as a diamond-scale
through all its vastness, finished exactly to the finest stroke
and particle : and justice stopping ? — oh no, not stopping in
its marvellous quality and matchless workmanship there, but
running on with equity as infallible into the moral world, into
the soul of man. Thou seemest to speak with a never before
perceived utterance, and from thy high post and divine watch-
tower, (as though that were the purpose of thy discovery,)
to declare that there is a spiritual eternity corresponding to the
material infinity ; that man's observations and conceptions are
not baseless illusions, but the figures and shadows of a trans
cendent and now incomprehensible reality ; a reality not less
but greater than our most enlarged and glowing fancy. And
though mute, save in reason's ear, thou dost prophesy to the
2

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faithful struggler with sin and temptation here, a future freedom
from these disturbances in a world to come !
There is one more perturbation of the human heart in the
view of sorrow. Linked together by the strong and various
affections of life, we might be almost indisposed to look be
yond the revolutions of this earthly scene. But if we are
tempted to feel thus, the severing of the links in the sweet
chain of domestic and social love, and the disappearance of
the objects to which our whole being tended, soon comes to
disturb this worldly orbit in which we have moved, and then
our hearts sway from the earthly line, and go in search of the
beloved. They are still affected by those objects though invisi
ble ; and, with yearning desire, they feel after them, if haply
they may find them. As even heathen fable represents men
as penetrating to the shades below in search of those dear to
them, so the heart, educated in a better school, soars tinto the
brightness above after the forms of the departed. It is never
quite at rest in this lower atmosphere after their removal. It
forsakes its ordinary path of action, and diverges from its
habitual track of meditation. It veers from its present ecliptic
of being, however clear and sunny that earthly ecliptic may be.
It feels the perturbation of sorrow ! And is it a causeless and
unmeaning perturbation, referring to no substance, but excited
in us by the Author of our frame for our mere mockery,
baffling, and torment ? Is there nothing but a blank, rayless
void beyond corresponding to it ? Oh no — these beating and
sorrow-perturbed hearts before me cry out, Not so ! There is
a world there, a world of splendor, an inhabited and social
world, a world larger and more comprehensive than ours, a
more spacious mansion in our Father's great house — our

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home — and for all the faithful, Death, God's angel, but
waiting to open the door.
Oh, Death, even as we gaze at the clay-cold ruins thou
hast made, we feel it is so. As we trace the surviving influ
ence of the disinterested and good, we feel it is so. Truly
may it be said of the " loved, revered and honored head "
which thou takest, that, even as it lies low and still upon the
bier, " thou canst not turn one hair to thy dread purposes,
or make one feature odious." * * "Strike, shadow,
strike ! and see his good deeds springing from the ground to
sow the world with life immortal." See, if thou canst, beyond
thy dark precincts, the released spirit, from the solitary death
bed or from the whelming sea, wing its way on an endless
career of excellence !
From the peaceful purity of private life, and even from
the guilt-stained scenes of earth, come testimonies that this
beating and perturbed heart of man is made for a loftier
destiny. When, on that southern field, where we are waging this
deplorable war, the Mexican woman comes out with comforts
in her hands for suffering friend and foe mingling together in
conflict, and is shot down by a chance bullet, and the soldiers
afterwards with a touched feeling suspend their deadly strife
on the soil ploughed by the cannon-ball, to give her decent
burial, (well reversing their arms to dig that grave !) who
does not feel that the human heart, though passionate, and
though polluted, is yet appointed to a greater fate beyond
the dust of the valley ?
Our subject suggests one reflection respecting that Christian
faith, which answers our longing. interrogations of the future,
and confirms all our best reasonings.

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It is strange that any of the spiritualizing philosophers of
the day should be incredulous as to the miraculous works and
resurrection of Christ, — these facts so congenially meet the
mind in its loftiest flights into the regions of spiritual truth, —
meet it, not to contradict, not to narrow, not to baulk, but
to illuminate, to exalt, and carry on its researches. These
facts are the very crown of the intellect and soul of man.
Our argument to-day has been a rational argument, sug
gested by nature and encouraged by Scripture. But it lands
us on the firm shore of the Christian revelation. It ends at
the shining sepulchre of Jesus. It brings us. to his glorious
ascension, not as an appearance portentous and disorderly in
God's universe, not as a history to be cavilled at as monstrous,
and gnawed by the tooth of a jealous, unbelieving criticism,
but to be accepted, welcomed, as something most probable and
natural for God to do. While our minds strive and reason,
let us thank Him for this superhuman instruction on a point
so momentous. Even as the observations of the astronomer
turned supposition into fact in regard to the planet, so Jesus
Christ has actually revealed the world which the human mind
had conjectured and made calculations upon. By his works
he is the verifier of man's loftiest ideas. He has sailed across
the gulf of time, and disclosed the continent of eternity ; he
has dispersed the mists of the grave, and unveiled the world
of spirits. Human hope had earnestly longed for, human
imagination had brightly pictured, human reason had almost
foreshown, that unbounded continent that upper world, as the
soul's immortal habitation ; but no Columbus of the earth or
the heavens had actually discovered it. Jesus Christ visited
its shores, and came back with the tidings of its real existence.

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It is no longer the bourn from which no traveller has returned.
We may still trace the analogies that indicate, and make the
rational calculations that predict, and draw the images in our
fancy that adorn it. Yet let us not slight, but greet with
grateful souls the confirmations of supernatural evidence, by
which our Saviour manifests and makes it sure. The Christian
does not deprecate examination of his faith. And yet, oh
Doubt, and oh Scepticism, could you prove the omens of
man's immortality to be all empty and fallacious, boast not
your triumph !
" Let wisdom smile not on her conquered field,
No rapture dawns, no treasure is revealed,"
as you dig the pit in this universal grave of the earth's crust,
and bury all the beauty, all the goodness, all the glory of the
world ! Boast not, smile not, but hang the head in sorrow and
shame as you tell your melancholy story. But no ! these
omens cannot be made hollow,to the human soul. Especially
that great and wondrous omen, (but the climax of an ascending
series,) of our Lord's broken tombstone, will be significant
forever. It meets indeed the perturbations of the human
heart, to make them quiet and peaceful. It turns those per
turbations into predictions. Whether our minds are excited or
unexcited, whether our reasonings are strong or feeble,
whether our imaginations glow or darken, this great omen of a
risen Redeemer still cheers us. For it brings that future world
out of the darkness in which it had revolved, to roll in celestial
splendor to every believer's eye, and gleam with inextinguish
able promise to all generations.

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