Worlds, Plurality of. The question whether other globes besides the
earth are inhabited is one of great interest both to the student of nature and
to the theologian. There are two classes of arguments that may be brought to
bear upon its solution.
1. Probabilities from Analogy.—From the fact that our own globe is
populated, it has naturally been inferred that the stellar bodies are so
likewise. Else why do they exist? Surely, it is contended, they cannot have
been formed merely for the delectation of the comparatively few denizens of
this relatively insignificant orb. But are we sure of that? If man be the only
intelligent creature, it is inconsistent neither with reason nor with Scripture
to suppose that the whole visible creation was intended for his express benefit
and behoof. Moreover, the presumption from analogy almost wholly breaks down if
extended to its legitimate results in this question. If the other celestial
spheres are inhabited, it is doubtless with rational and moral beings like
ourselves, for mere unaccountable animals would be a sorry outcome of so vast
creative power and skill. In that case they are free of will, and some of them,
at least, have probably fallen, like men and angels. Has a Redeemer been
provided for them also? It would seem not, from the silence of revelation on
the subject, or rather from the implications of soteriology. It is hazardous to
aver that Christ has died for other worlds than our own, or that he will ever
do so. Here is apparently an incongruity which clogs the hypothesis of other planetary
bodies being inhabited.
2. Evidence of Science.—This is really a problem within the domain of
physics, and should be decided by an appeal to known facts. These are neither
few nor indistinct. The moon, which is our nearest and most familiar neighbor,
is pronounced by the latest observers to be utterly uninhabitable. She has
neither atmosphere nor water, at least not on the hemisphere which is
constantly presented towards us. But she has enormously deep craters, which
speak of fearful convulsions upon her surface, and her face appears to be
entirely destitute of all possibilities even of vegetation. In fact, an
ordinary-sized farm, or even a considerable dwelling, had it existed there,
would probably have been detected by the powerful telescopes which have scanned
and even photographed the lunar landscape.
Turning now to Venus, our nearest
fellow-planet, we find her not much more favorably situated. She has so wide a
variation of temperature at different seasons of the year, owing to the great
obliquity of her ecliptic, as must be fatal to all animal or vegetable
existence. Mercury, the sole other planet within our orbit, is even worse off,
being so near the sun that no life could possibly endure the terrific heat.
Mars, our first outside neighbor, is circumstanced most like ourselves; but the
close observation, for which he affords peculiar facilities, have failed to
discover any positive indications of habitability. Of the remaining members of
our own planetary system, Jupiter and Saturn may perhaps have a temperature
capable of supporting life, but the different colored moons of the former and
the singular electric zone of the latter, besides their exceedingly low
density, imply a difference of constitution incompatible with the conditions
known upon our own globe. The improbability of their being inhabited is
increased by the revelations of the spectrum,
which discloses a composition of each materially different from the other and
from the earth’s. As for the asteroids, which occupy the place of a lost
intermediate sphere, they seem to have consisted of terribly explosive
materials, fragments of which frequently fall to us in the form of
meteorolites, and furnish compounds not found in terrestrial bodies. The more
distant planets are too intensely cold to admit of life in any form.
The only remaining member of our
planetary family is the central orb, the sun itself. If its body is coequal
with its luminous disk, the surface must be too rare to sustain beings of
anything more than ethereal weight; and whether this be the real body of the
sun, or whether the interior sphere, glimpses of which are obtained through the
so-called “spots,” and which only appear dark by contrast with the vivid
incandescence of the atmosphere, still the fiery ardor of the surface must be
such as to preclude all life of which we can form any conception.
The fixed stars are but the central suns of other systems, and are evidently of a like nature with our own. Their planets, if they have any, are a matter of pure conjecture. Comets and nebulæ are too flimsy in their structure to form a habitable abode for creatures of any sort; they seem, indeed, to be but fire-mist or electric vapor. We have thus exhausted the range of space, and find no home except earth at all suitable or possible for a creature having the least resemblance to man. To suppose a being capable of existing under the abnormal and intolerable conditions of vitality such as we have ascertained is as gratuitous as it is preposterous. We cannot, it is true, limit the power and resources of the Almighty, but we are forced by the facts in the case, and by the invariable analogies of all life with which we are acquainted, to deny its existence upon the other celestial bodies. Nor is there the slightest evidence that any of the globes except our own has ever been inhabited, or is likely to be so in the future. See Proctor, Other Worlds than Ours (Lond. 1870). (“Worlds, Plurality Of,” in Cyclopædia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature, Supplement—A–Z, ed. John M’Clintock and James Strong, 12 vols. [New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1894], 12:1077-78)
