Have you ever looked through a telescope at the stars? If not, take the first opportunity that you get to do this, and you will be astonished and delighted at the wonders that you will see. The telescope is an instrument made to aid our sight by making objects that are really far away seem to be much nearer, so that they can be better seen. Things so far off that they cannot be seen at all with the naked eye, can be looked at through the telescope. [photos in the pdf document]

By the help of the telescope astronomers have discovered that the stars, which seem like tiny points of light because they are so far away from us, are many of them suns much larger than our sun, with worlds moving round them as our world moves round the sun.

And besides this they have found that these suns and worlds that can be seen, are only a very small part of God’s great universe. For as men are able to invent more and more powerful telescopes, they see millions of stars that were invisible before. And yet there are as many more beyond, and there is really no end to the universe of God.

Yet God is lighting up each one of these countless suns with His own glory, and upholding and guiding all the worlds that move round them. All this shows us the greatness of our God, greatness that our minds are too small to understand, even as our eyes, with all the help that men are able to invent, can see only a small part of His works.

As we think of these things, and “consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars which Thou hast ordained,” how it brings to our minds the words of the Psalmist, “What is man, that Thou art mindful of him?” [Psalm 8:3, 4]

But there is another instrument which aids our sight in a different way from what the telescope does, and helps us to see how mindful God is, not of man only, but of even the tiniest of His works. This is the microscope.

With the telescope we can look away off from our world, and see something of the great works of God, and the immensity of His universe. With the microscope we can look into the works of God that are round about us everywhere upon the earth, and see the perfection and beauty of the very smallest thing that our eyes are thus enabled to see.

With the telescope we see that our world, which seems to be so great, is but an atom, like a little grain of sand, compared with the great universe; and all the waters of the ocean are like “a drop of a bucket.” But when we take the microscope and examine the tiny grains of sand and the little drops of water that make up our world, we find that each is in itself a little world of wonders.

A drop of water magnified (you may have seen one, or the picture of it), is full of tiny living creatures as perfect, as wonderful, as the stars of heaven. And into whatever of the works of God we look in this way, we find that the more they are magnified the more wonders they show.

But here, again, our sight is limited, and when we have seen all that can be seen with the most powerful microscope, there is still hidden from us as much of the wonderful working of God’s power, His infinite perfection and skill revealed in the most minute atoms, as there is of His greatness in the heavens beyond the power of the telescope to reveal to us.

So while the use of the telescope might lead us to look upon our world as insignificant and unimportant, because it seems such a little speck in the universe, the microscope shows us the importance not of the world only, but of every little particle that forms it, and of the smallest and lowest living creatures that inhabit it.

Therefore while the telescope leads us to exclaim, “What is man thou Thou art mindful of him?” the microscope, showing how “fearfully and wonderfully” not we only, but all the works of God are made, puts into our mouths these words of the same Psalmist, “How precious also are Thy thoughts unto me, O God; how great is the sum of them; they are more than can be numbered.” [Psalm 8:4; 139:14, 17]

“The God of nature and of grace
In all His works appears
His goodness through the earth we trace,
His grandeur in the spheres.”

The Present Truth – December 1, 1898
E. J. Waggoner

Story in pdf  Telescope and Microscope