Take the little “radioscope” in your hand--a tiny tube less than
an inch in length, closed at one end, with a small magnifying
lens at the other. In the closed end of the tube you observe a
small disk of paper covered with microscopic particles of yellow
crystals--sulfid of zinc. In front of the yellow crystals is a
small metallic pointer, like the second-hand of a very small
watch, and on the end of the pointer is--nothing, absolutely
nothing, so far as your eye can see. Look at it very carefully.
No! Nothing! Now, take the little tube, go into a darkened
room, and look into it through the lens end, and you will see
a sight incredible. The metal pointer does have a minute speck
of something on its tip, and between that tip and the yellow
crystals are leaping showers of sparks of light. Will the shower
stop after a few minutes? No. After an hour? No; nor after a
thousand hours, or a thousand years, or ten thousand years! The
calculation is that that all but invisible speck on the tip of
the pointer will keep that shower of sparks going day and night,
for thirty thousand years! For that speck is radium, which
actually seems as tho it were a hot fragment struck off from
God’s great white throne, so amazing is its radiant energy.
It operates, not merely by setting “waves” in motion, but it
throws off a stream of actual particles which move with an
inconceivable velocity (at the rate, some physicists allege,
of 200,000 miles a second), and without--and here is the
miracle--without any apparent diminution in the morsel of radium
itself. It can hurl these particles literally through six inches
of armor plate. It can and does send them right through your own
head while you are looking at them, just as if your brain were
a loose sieve, as perhaps it is, or a grove of trees quite wide
apart, and a bright, flashing bird, all crimson and gold, were
flying right through the trees, without even hitting his wings.
Now, what I want to say is that the modern discovery of such
marvels as these, as being real, actual, objective, demonstrated
facts, stretches the mind out into a thrilling series of
undreamed-of possibilities, and this is a preparation for faith.
This is the first step. This is the first lamp on the modern
road to faith.--ALBERT J. LYMAN.
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