Tuesday, July 12, 2005

Man's Disproportion




Yesterday I posted these verses from my personal devotions:

God] made the great lights,
His love endures fo
rever.

The sun to govern the day,
His love endures forever.


The moon and stars to govern the night;
His love endures forever.

Psalm 136:7-9


A further thought from Blaise Pascal on the glory of God in creation, and the smallness of man in proporiton to its vastness:

Let man then contemplate the whole of nature in her full and grand majesty, and turn his vision from the low objects which surround him. Let him gaze on that brilliant light, set like an eternal lamp to illumine the universe; let the earth appear to him a point in comparison with the vast circle described by the sun; and let him wonder at the fact that this vast circle is itself but a very fine point in comparison with that described by the stars in their revolution round the firmament. But if our view be arrested there, let our imagination pass beyond; it will sooner exhaust the power of conception than nature that of supplying material for conception. The whole visible world is only an imperceptible atom in the ample bosom of nature. No idea approaches it. We may enlarge our conceptions beyond an imaginable space; we only produce atoms in comparison with the reality of things. It is an infinite sphere, the centre of which is everywhere, the circumference nowhere. In short, it is the greatest sensible mark of the almighty power of God that imagination loses itself in that thought.

from Pensees, Section II, No. 72.




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