Here are wood, brass, my hand--any material things. Here are
light, electricity, a magnet--things that we all have something
to do with. Now let us ask the scientific people to look at
them, weigh them, test them, analyze them, describe them--what
will they report? Well, part of their report will be this:
There is one thing without which all these other things are
impossible, without which there could be no wood, no metal, no
light, no electric current; and that thing is called ether.
This ether is like nothing you have at hand. It is not solid,
nor liquid, nor a gas. It does not weigh anything, nor does it
move. It is not alive, nor is it capable of division. Yet it
is everywhere. It is in the wood, in the brass, in the air. It
fills what we call empty space. It is the road by which light
travels. It is the medium of electricity. It is the home of
magnetism. Well, when the scientist tells us this we can but
gasp. It is nothing that we know, yet without it all we know
would break down. It can not be seen, nor handled, nor heard,
yet without it we could neither see, nor handle, nor hear. It is
utterly beyond belief, so strange a bunch of contradictories it
is; and yet if we assume it to be real, then and then only can
all the things of life which we do know be properly explained.
If in the natural world we follow out carefully all that
is before us, if we explore our narrow strip of experience
thoroughly, we come to a region getting more and more remote.
Send a traveler from Hampstead--he comes back to tell us of
India or the Arctic Ocean. Send a scientist out into this world
of matter and force, of wood and stone and electricity, and he
comes back to tell us of the incredible wonders of the unseen
world, of the fathomless mysteries of the ether.
If this is so with material things, how much more is it likely
to be so with moral and spiritual things? If it be true of
earthly things, how much more of heavenly things? If the
findings of science are puzzling, contradictory, mysterious,
will the findings of theology--the science of God--be simple and
mere common sense? If when we have to do with wood and stones
we stand amazed before the doctrine of ether, is it surprizing
that when we have to do with Christ and His cross, God and
His redemption, we come also to the wonderful teaching, not
only of the divinity of Jesus, but of His preexistence from
eternity with God? So, then, because the doctrine is marvelous,
unheard of, difficult to grasp, do not, therefore, pass it by as
incredible.--NEWTON H. MARSHALL.
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