Psalms 147:4

He telleth the number of the stars.

The stars and the Cross

As the best, known constellation in our northern hemisphere is Ursa Major (sometimes called “the Plough”), so the best known, probably, in the southern hemisphere is Cruz Australis, or “the Southern Cross.” Each side of our globe has, therefore, its own most conspicuous sign, or group of shining stars. But it is the privilege of those who reside at or near the Equator to command a view of both of these beautiful constellations. Standing within the vicinity of the Line, and looking up, the eye can sweep a wide celestial dome, which includes the Northern Plough on the one side, and the Southern Cross upon the other. Now, it is of extreme importance that intelligent Christians should be able to behold at the same time the two hemispheres of nature and of grace. In the same field of vision we should embrace the Plough and the Cross, and intelligently identify the God of nature with the God of grace. The psalmist David always did so, and notably does so in the passage before us. What particularly strikes me here is the marvellous combination of Divine act. I find three statements, each of which commands our admiring thought, but the union of which--for they are closely bracketed together--is positively startling. Slightly varying the order, for the sake of convenience, I would take the whole as a descending climax, a diminuendo bar, of which the three steps are these:

1. God in the heavens: “He tolleth the number of the stars: He calleth them all by their names.”

2. God in the Church: “The Lord doth build up Jerusalem; He gathereth together the outcasts of Israel.”

3. God in the home of the afflicted: “He healeth the broken in heart; He bindeth up their wounds.”

I. God in the heavens. Do we not well from time to time to turn away from the distractions of this lower world, from the petty interests of this mere grain of sand on which we dwell, and, lifting up our eyes in intelligent contemplation to the glorious canopy overhead, to muse on the magnificent empire of Him “who alone spreadeth out the heavens, and treadeth on the waves of the sea; who maketh Arcturus, Orion, and the Pleiades, and the chambers of the south; who doeth great things past finding out: yea, and wonders without number”? Oh! it will deepen our sense of the condescending love of God shown towards His Church and towards His afflicted people, when we behold His stately and majestic march over the fields of immensity, and see His own hand kindling and trimming every one of those innumerable lamps of heaven!

II. God in the Church There is, as we all know, a literal sense in which the scattered tribes of Abraham’s family shall yet be gathered in. “He that scattered Israel shall gather him as a shepherd doth his flock.” Not more certain is the fact of his dispersion than is the decree of his restoration. A day is coming when Jacob’s captivity shall be turned. But the words have also a wider meaning. Blessed be God, He hath devised means whereby His banished of all nations may be brought back; and He is daily, by those means and in all lands where the Gospel is proclaimed, gathering in the outcasts to His fold; and let me say that never have we better evidence that God is in any particular locality building up His Jerusalem than when the outcasts are being gathered in. The surest token of a prosperous Church is zealous and unwearied effort on the part of its members to win the lost and the lapsed around it to Christ. Oh! let us be stirred by the view of the Divine condescension, by the thought that He who sitteth on the circle of the universe, whose arm swings the solar system round yonder star Alcyone, and who holds in His hand the reins of all those stellar steeds that bound around the circuit of immensity, stoops down to this little planet on which we dwell, not only to build up upon it a Church of ransomed men, but even to go out after those who have been poor outcasts from His fold.

III. God in the chamber of the stricken heart. Oh! is it not a marvellous conception: away from the Bible, man never entertained the shadow of such a thought: the Mighty and Eternal One, from whose hand worlds upon worlds are sent forth like sparks from the blacksmith’s anvil, or like chaff from the summer threshing-floor, bending to the humblest ministry of mercy, and putting liniments round the wounded heart! Ah! it is only the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ that can make the text intelligible. Only in New Testament light can we interpret this mystery; but the person and the mission of the Divine Redeemer make all plain. His mediatorial arms stretch “from the highest throne in heaven to the place of deepest woe.” In Him the majesty of Divine Omnipotence comes down to the door of human poverty and sorrow. (J. T. Davidson, D. D.)

“He telleth the number of the stars”

Sir Robert Ball says, “The number of the stars visible in England without a telescope may be estimated at about three thousand. Argelander has given to the world a well-known catalogue of the stars in the northern hemisphere, accompanied by a series of charts on which these stars are depicted. All the stars of the first nine magnitudes are included, as well as a very large number of stars lying between the ninth and the tenth magnitude. The total number of these stars is three hundred and twenty-four thousand one hundred and eighty-eight, and yet they are all within reach of a telescope of three inches in aperture. It almost invites us to the belief that the universe which we behold bears but a very small ratio to the far larger part which is invisible in the sombre shades of night.” Sir Robert Ball himself estimates the number of the stars at no less than one hundred millions, and an even higher estimate still is given by some astronomers. (R. Brewin.)

The geometry of God

It was truly said by the famous astronomer Kepler that “God is the great arithmetician.” He counts everything that He has made. He makes all things in fixed numbers. He forms the flowers according to certain numerical relations, so fixed and precise that the Linnaean system of classification was based upon them. The roses have five divisions, the lilies three, the seaweeds, lichens and mushrooms two or four, and every other part of their structure is arranged in fives or threes or twos, or by multiplying these figures. Even the little fringe around the mouth of the seed-vessel of a moss growing on the wayside wall, which you can hardly see with your naked eye, if you magnify it with a lens you will find it arranged in exact numbers--four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two--a series in which every number is the double of the preceding one. The leaves of plants are all arranged around the stem on the same principle, and a fir-cone is one of the most beautiful illustrations of it. Crystals are constructed with mathematical regularity. You cannot unite the chemical elements of Nature to form a compound body by chance or in any proportion you please. (H. Macmillan, D. D.)

Geometry of God

God counts the number of the stars, and He arranges them in the heaven-s not by chance, but according to a fixed system. In the Solar system, for example, the intervals between the orbits of the planets go on doubling as we recede from the sun. Thus Venus is twice as far from Mercury as Mercury is from the sun; the earth is twice as far from Venus as Venus is from Mercury; Mars is twice as far from the earth as the earth is from Venus, and so on. In this way the planets are arranged in the sky around the sun in the same numerical order as the leaves are arranged around the stem of a plant or the scales around a pine-cone, or the teeth around the edge of the seed-vessel of a microscopic moss. And that extraordinary law, the most universal of all laws, which everything throughout the universe obeys--the law of gravitation--is also expressed by a numerical formula: the force of an object thrown into the air decreases just in proportion as the distance is increased; it decreases according to the square of the number expressing the distance; so that at twice the distance the force of gravitation is not twice less, but four times less; at thrice the distance nine times, and so on. (H. Macmillan, D. D.)

Human mind fails to grasp the number of stars

In one of the most recent, standard works upon astronomy it is stated that in Great Britain the number of stars visible to the naked eye does not exceed three thousand. So accurate are the charts of the heavens that are now prepared that every individual star is there; the disappearance of one or the arrival of another would be at once discovered and recorded. Three thousand probably strikes you as being a small figure; but stay a moment. If you make use of a common binocular field-glass you will at once discern ten times as many as with the unaided eye, and if, laying aside the field-glass, you look through a good ordinary telescope, the tens will immediately become hundreds; while if you should have the rare privilege of beholding the celestial dome through one of the great astronomical instruments, the hundreds will become thousands, and you will be fairly bewildered at the sight. Our great telescopes can show at least fifty millions of stars; nor is this all, for, through the recent wonderful development of celestial photography, millions more are discovered registering their existence upon the sensitive plate. (J. T. Davidson, D. D.)