IMMENISTY OF THE
UNIVERSE
Astronomers have
demonstrated by actual observation and mathematical calculation that light
existed thousands of years before the creation of our earth. It has been
determined that light flies with the velocity of about twelve millions of miles
every minute; it has also been ascertained from the known power of the
telescope, and from other consideration, that there are bodies in the universe,
situated at such immense distances, that it would require their light several
hundred thousand years to traverse the space between them and our world. It
follows, then, of necessity, that the light by which those distant worlds are
now rendered visible must have left them thousands of centuries before our
earth was formed. In almost every point of space to which the telescope has
been directed, countless millions of inconceivably distant shining worlds are
to be seen. But what does all this prove? It proves that by far the greatest
portion of the visible universe existed ages before the organization of our
little globe. When we look upon the widely extended field of existence, we are
apt to imagine that we see worlds as they now exist, but this is not so; the
present existence and relative position of the distant bodies of the universe
cannot be seen. By the aid of light we only see the past, and not the present.
Light does not inform us whether the most distant luminous bodies which can be
seen are now in existence or not. Light enables us to see them as they existed
thousands of ages ago, but it gives us no indications that they have existed as
luminous bodies since that period. (Orson Pratt, “The Immensity of the Universe,” Treatise written at
Liverpool, January 1, 1851, in Masterful Discourses of Orson Pratt,
comp. N. B. Lundwall [Salt Lake City: N. B. Lundwall, 1946], 198)
Lundwall, in a footnote
added the following:
Footnote: To corroborate what Orson Pratt wrote ninety-five years ago,
Enoch said: “And were it possible that man could number the particles of the
earth, yea millions of earths like this, it would not be a _beginning to the
number of thy creations; and thy curtains are stretched out still; and yet thou
art there, and thy bosom is there.” In reply to Enoch, the Lord said:
“Wherefore, I can stretch forth mine hands and hold all the creations which I
have made; and mine eye can pierce them also.” According to the latest
scientific discoveries and thought, as calculated through the aid of the giant
one hundred-inch-diameter telescope at the Mount Wilson Observatory, which has
a light gathering power of 200,000 human eyes, light travels at the rate of
186,000 miles per second; it travels in a “light year” six million million
miles; it reaches the earth from the moon in one and one-third seconds, eight
minutes from the sun, and four and one-half years from the nearest star. The
faintest nebulae that can be detected are 500 million light years distant.
Clusters of nebulae average 10,000 light years in diameter, some of which are
100 million times brighter than our sun. (Ibid., 198)
