"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the
Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things
became by him, and without him was not anything made that was made
* * * and by him all things stand together."
[Page 248]
"O thou eternal one; whose presence blight
All space doth occupy--all motion guide--
Thou from primeval nothingness didst call
First chaos, then existence. Lord, on thee
Eternity had its foundation: all
Sprung forth from thee--of light, joy, harmony,
Sole origin: all life, all beauty thine.
Thy word created all, and doth create;
Thy splendor fills all space with rays divine;
Thou art and wert, and shalt be glorious, great;
Life-giving, life-sustaining Potentate,
Thy chains the unmeasured universe surround--
Upheld by thee, by thee inspired with breath."
DERZHAVIN.
[Page 249]
XII.
_THE ULTIMATE FORCE._
The universe is God's name writ large. Thought goes up the shining
suns as golden stairs, and reads the consecutive syllables--all
might, and wisdom, and beauty; and if the heart be fine enough and
pure enough, it also reads everywhere the mystic name of love. Let
us learn to read the hieroglyphics, and then turn to the blazonry
of the infinite page. That is the key-note; the heavens and the earth
declaring the glory of God, and men with souls attuned listening.
To what voices shall we listen first? Stand on the shore of a lake
set like an azure gem among the bosses of green hills. The patter
of rain means an annual fall of four cubic feet of water on every
square foot of it. It weighs two hundred and forty pounds to the
cubic foot, one hundred million tons on the surface of a little
sheet of water twenty miles long by three wide. Now, all that weight
of falling rain had to be lifted, a work compared to which taking
up mountains and casting them into the sea is pastime. All that
water had to be taken up before it could be cast down, and carried
hundreds of miles before it could be there. You have heard Niagara's
thunder; have stood beneath the falling immensity; seen it ceaselessly
poured from an infinite hand; felt that you would be ground to atoms
if you fell into that resistless flood. Well, all that infinity of
[Page 250] water had to be lifted by main force, had to be taken up
out of the far Pacific, brought over the Rocky Mountains; and the
Mississippi keeps bearing its wide miles of water to the Gulf, and
Niagara keeps thundering age after age, because there is power
somewhere to carry the immeasurable floods all the time the other
way in the upper air.
But this is only the Alpha of power. Professor Clark, of Amherst,
Massachusetts, found that such a soft and pulpy thing as a squash
had so great a power of growth that it lifted three thousand pounds,
and held it day and night for months. It toiled and grew under the
growing weight, compacting its substance like oak to do the work.
All over the earth this tremendous power and push of life goes
on--in the little star-eyed flowers that look up to God only on
the Alpine heights, in every tuft of grass, in every acre of wheat,
in every mile of prairie, and in every lofty tree that wrestles
with the tempests of one hundred winters. But this is only the B
in the alphabet of power.
Rise above the earth, and you find the worlds tossed like playthings,
and hurled seventy times as fast as a rifle-ball, never an inch
out of place or a second out of time. But this is only the C in
the alphabet of power.
Rise to the sun. It is a quenchless reservoir of high-class energy.
Our tornadoes move sixty miles an hour, those of the sun twenty
thousand miles an hour. A forest on fire sends its spires of flame
one hundred feet in air, the sun sends its spires of flame two
hundred thousand miles. All our fires exhaust the fuel and burn
out. If the sun were pure coal, it would burn out in five thousand
years; and yet this sea of unquenchable [Page 251] flame seethes and
burns, and rolls and vivifies a dozen worlds, and flashes life along
the starry spaces for a million years without any apparent
diminution. It sends out its power to every planet, in the vast
circle in which it lies. It fills with light not merely a whole
circle, but a dome; not merely a dome above, but one below, and on
every side. At our distance of ninety-two and a half millions of
miles, the great earth feels that power in gravitation, tides,
rains, winds, and all possible life--every part is full of power.
Fill the earth's orbit with a circle of such receptive
worlds--seventy thousand instead of one--everyone would be as fully
supplied with power from this central source. More. Fill the whole
dome, the entire extent of the surrounding sphere, bottom, sides,
top, a sphere one hundred and eighty-five million miles in diameter,
and everyone of these uncountable worlds would be touched with the
same power as one; each would thrill with life. This is only the D
of the alphabet of power. And glancing up to the other suns, one
hundred, five hundred, twelve hundred times as large, double,
triple, septuple, multiple suns, we shall find power enough to go
through the whole alphabet in geometrical ratio; and then in the
clustered suns, galaxies, and nebulæ, power enough still
unrepresented by single letters to require all combinations of the
alphabet of power. What is the significance of this single element
of power? The answer of science to-day is "correlation," the
constant evolution of one force from another. Heat is a mode of
motion, motion a result of heat. So far so good. But are we mere
reasoners in a circle? Then we would be lost men, treading our round
of death in a limitless forest. What is the ultimate? Reason [Page
252] out in a straight line. No definition of matter allows it to
originate force; only mind can do that. Hence the ultimate force is
always mind. Carry your correlation as far as you please--through
planets, suns, nebulæ, concretionary vortices, and revolving
fire-mist--there must always be mind and will beyond. Some of that
willpower that works without exhaustion must take its own force and
render it static, apparent. It may do this in such correlated
relation that that force shall go on year after year to a thousand
changing forms; but that force must originate in mind.
Go out in the falling rain, stand under the thunderous Niagara,
feel the immeasurable rush of life, see the hanging worlds, and
trace all this--the carried rain, the terrific thunder with God's bow
of peace upon it, and the unfailing planets hung upon nothing--trace
all this to the orb of day blazing in perpetual strength, but stop
not there. Who _made_ the sun? Contrivance fills all thought. _Who_
made the sun? Nature says there is a mind, and that mind is Almighty.
Then you have read the first syllables, viz., being and power.
What is the continuous relation of the universe to the mind from
which it derived its power? Some say that it is the relation of
a wound-up watch to the winder. It was dowered with sufficient
power to revolve its ceaseless changes, and its maker is henceforth
an absentee God. Is it? Let us have courage to see. For twenty
years one devotes ten seconds every night to putting a little force
into a watch. It is so arranged that it distributes that force
over twenty-four hours. In that twenty years more power has been
put into that watch than a horse could exert at once. But suppose
[Page 253] one had tried to put all that force into the watch at
once: it would have pulverized it to atoms. But supposing the
universe had been dowered with power at first to run its enormous
rounds for twenty millions of years. It is inconceivable; steel
would be as friable as sand, and strengthless as smoke, in such
strain.
We have discovered some of the laws of the force we call gravitation.
But what do we know of its essence? How it appears to act we know a
little, what it is we are profoundly ignorant. Few men ever discuss
this question. All theories are sublimely ridiculous, and fail to
pass the most primary tests. How matter can act where it is not,
and on that with which it has no connection, is inconceivable.
Newton said that anyone who has in philosophical matters a competent
faculty of thinking, could not admit for a moment the possibility
of a sun reaching through millions of miles, and exercising there
an attractive power. A watch may run if wound up, but how the
watch-spring in one pocket can run the watch in another is hard
to see. A watch is a contrivance for distributing a force outside
of itself, and if the universe runs at all on that principle, it
distributes some force outside of itself.
Le Sage's theory of gravitation by the infinitive hail of atoms
cannot stand a minute, hence we come back as a necessity of thought
to Herschel's statement. "It is but reasonable to regard gravity
as a result of a consciousness and a will existent somewhere."
Where? I read an old book speaking of these matters, and it says
of God, He hangeth the earth upon nothing; he upholdeth constantly
all things by the word of his power. [Page 254] By him all things
consist or hold together. It teaches an imminent mind; an almighty,
constantly exerted power. Proof of this starts up on every side.
There is a recognized tendency in all high-class energy to
deteriorate to a lower class. There is steam in the boiler, but it
wastes without fuel. There is electricity in the jar, but every
particle of air steals away a little, unless our conscious force is
exerted to regather it. There is light in the sun, but infinite
space waits to receive it, and takes it swift as light can leap. We
said that if the sun were pure coal, it would burn out in five
thousand years, but it blazes undimmed by the million. How can it?
There have been various theories: chemical combustion, it has
failed; meteoric impact, it is insufficient; condensation, it is not
proved; and if it were, it is an intermediate step back to the
original cause of condensation. The far-seeing eyes see in the sun
the present active power of Him who first said, "Let there be
light," and who at any moment can meet a Saul in the way to Damascus
with a light above the brightness of the sun--another noon arisen on
mid-day; and of whom it shall be said in the eternal state of
unclouded brightness, where sun and moon are no more, "The glory of
the Lord shall lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof."
But suppose matter could be dowered, that worlds could have a
gravitation, one of two things must follow: It must have conscious
knowledge of the position, exact weight, and distance of every
atom, mass, and world, in order to proportion the exact amount of
gravity, or it must fill infinity with an omnipresent attractive
power, pulling in myriads of places at nothing; in [Page 255] a few
places at worlds. Every world must exert an infinitely extended
power, but myriads of infinities cannot be in the same space. The
solution is, one infinite power and conscious will.
To see the impossibility of every other solution, join in the long
and microscopic hunt for the ultimate particle, the atom; and if
found, or if not found, to a consideration of its remarkable powers.
Bring telescopes and microscopes, use all strategy, for that atom
is difficult to catch. Make the first search with the microscope:
we can count 112,000 lines ruled on a glass plate inside of an
inch. But we are here looking at mountain ridges and valleys, not
atoms. Gold can be beaten to the 1/340000 of an inch. It can be
drawn as the coating of a wire a thousand times thinner, to the
1/340000000 of an inch. But the atoms are still heaped one upon
another.
Take some of the infusorial animals. Alonzo Gray says millions
of them would not equal in bulk a grain of sand. Yet each of them
performs the functions of respiration, circulation, digestion,
and locomotion. Some of our blood-vessels are not a millionth of
our size. What must be the size of the ultimate particles that
freely move about to nourish an animal whose totality is too small
to estimate? A grain of musk gives off atoms enough to scent every
part of the air of a room. You detect it above, below, on every
side. Then let the zephyrs of summer and the blasts of winter sweep
through that room for forty years, bearing out into the wide world
miles on miles of air, all perfumed from the atoms of that grain
of musk, and at the end of the forty years the weight of musk has
not appreciably diminished. [Page 256] Yet uncountable myriads on
myriads of atoms have gone.
Our atom is not found yet. Many are the ways of searching for it
which we cannot stop to consider. We will pass in review the properties
with which materialists preposterously endow it. It is impenetrable
and indivisible, though some atoms are a hundred times larger than
others. Each has definite shape; some one shape, and some another.
They differ in weight, in quantity of combining power, in quality
of combining power. They combine with different substances, in
certain exact assignable quantities. Thus one atom of hydrogen
combines with eighty of bromine, one hundred and sixty of mercury,
two hundred and forty of boron, three hundred and twenty of silicon,
etc. Hence our atom of hydrogen must have power to count, or at
least to measure, or be cognizant of bulk. Again, atoms are of
different sorts, as positive or negative to electric currents.
They have power to take different shapes with different atoms in
crystallization; that is, there is a power in them, conscious or
otherwise, that the same bricks shall make themselves into stables
or palaces, sewers or pavements, according as the mortar varies.
"No, no," you cry out; "it is only according as the builder varies
his plan." There is no need to rehearse these powers much further;
though not one-tenth of the supposed innate properties of this
infinitesimal infinite have been recited--properties which are
expressed by the words atomicity, quantivilence, monad, dryad,
univalent, perissad, quadrivalent, and twenty other terms, each
expressing some endowment of power in this in visible atom. Refer
to one more presumed ability, an ability [Page 257] to keep
themselves in exact relation of distance and power to each other,
without touching.
It is well known that water does not fill the space it occupies.
We can put eight or ten similar bulks of different substances into
a glass of water without greatly increasing its bulk, some actually
diminishing it. A philosopher has said that the atoms of oxygen
and hydrogen are probably not nearer to each other in water than
one hundred and fifty men would be if scattered over the surface
of England, one man to four hundred square miles.
The atoms of the luminiferous ether are infinitely more diffused,
and yet its interactive atoms can give four hundred millions of
light-waves a second. And now, more preposterous than all, each
atom has an attractive power for every other atom of the universe.
The little mote, visible only in a sunbeam streaming through a
dark room, and the atom, infinitely smaller, has a grasp upon the
whole world, the far-off sun, and the stars that people infinite
space. The Sage of Concord advises you to hitch your wagon to a
star. But this is hitching all stars to an infinitesimal part of
a wagon. Such an atom, so dowered, so infinite, so conscious, is
an impossible conception.
But if matter could be so dowered as to produce such results by
mechanism, could it be dowered to produce the results of intelligence?
Could it be dowered with power of choice without becoming mind?
If oxygen and hydrogen could be made able to combine into water,
could the same unformed matter produce in one case a plant, in
another a bird, in a third a man; and in each of these put bone,
brain, blood, and nerve in [Page 258] proper relations? Matter must
be mind, or subject to a present working mind, to do this. There
must be a present intelligence directing the process, laying the
dead bricks, marble, and wood in an intelligent order for a living
temple. If we do put God behind a single veil in dead matter, in all
living things he must be apparent and at work. If, then, such a
thing as an infinite atom is impossible, shall we not best
understand matter by saying it is a visible representation of God's
personal will and power, of his personal force, and perhaps
knowledge, set aside a little from himself, still possessed somewhat
of his personal attributes, still responsive to his will. What we
call matter may be best understood as God's force, will, knowledge,
rendered apparent, static, and unweariably operative. Unless matter
is eternal, which is unthinkable, there was nothing out of which the
world could be made, but God himself; and, reverently be it said,
matter seems to retain fit capabilities for such source. Is not this
the teaching of the Bible? I come to the old Book. I come to that
man who was taken up into the arcana of the third heaven, the holy
of holies, and heard things impossible to word. I find he makes a
clear, unequivocal statement of this truth as God's revelation to
him. "By faith," says the author of Hebrews, "we understand the
worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen
were not made of things which do appear." In Corinthians, Paul
says--But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom [as a
source] are all things; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom [as a
creative worker] are all things. So in Romans he says--"For out of
him, and through him, and to him are all things, to whom be glory
forever. Amen."
[Page 259]
God's intimate relation to matter is explained. No wonder the forces
respond to his will; no wonder pantheism--the idea that matter is
God--has had such a hold upon the minds of men. Matter, derived
from him, bears marks of its parentage, is sustained by him, and
when the Divine will shall draw it nearer to himself the new power
and capabilities of a new creation shall appear. Let us pay a higher
respect to the attractions and affinities; to the plan and power
of growth; to the wisdom of the ant; the geometry of the bee; the
migrating instinct that rises and stretches its wings toward a
provided South--for it is all God's present wisdom and power. Let
us come to that true insight of the old prophets, who are fittingly
called seers; whose eyes pierced the veil of matter, and saw God
clothing the grass of the field, feeding the sparrows, giving snow
like wool and scattering hoar-frost like ashes, and ever standing on
the bow of our wide-sailing world, and ever saying to all tumultuous
forces, "Peace, be still." Let us, with more reverent step, walk
the leafy solitudes, and say:
"Father, thy hand
Hath reared these venerable columns: Thou
Did'st weave this verdant roof. Thou did'st look down
Upon the naked earth, and forthwise rose
All these fair ranks of trees. They in Thy sun
Budded, and shook their green leaves in Thy breeze.
"That delicate forest flower,
With scented breath and looks so like a smile,
Seems, as it issues from the shapeless mould,
An emanation of the indwelling life,
A visible token of the unfolding love
That are the soul of this wide universe."--BRYANT.
[Page 260]
Philosophy has seen the vast machine of the universe, wheel within
wheel, in countless numbers and hopeless intricacy. But it has
not had the spiritual insight of Ezekiel to see that they were
everyone of them full of eyes--God's own emblem of the omniscient
supervision.
What if there are some sounds that do not seem to be musically
rhythmic. I have seen where an avalanche broke from the mountain side
and buried a hapless city; have seen the face of a cliff shattered
to fragments by the weight of its superincumbent mass, or pierced
by the fingers of the frost and torn away. All these thunder down
the valley and are pulverized to sand. Is this music? No, but it
is a tuning of instruments. The rootlets seize the sand and turn
it to soil, to woody fibre, leafy verdure, blooming flowers, and
delicious fruit. This asks life to come, partake, and be made strong.
The grass gives itself to all flesh, the insect grows to feed the
bird, the bird to nourish the animal, the animal to develop the
man.
Notwithstanding the tendency of all high-class energy to deteriorate,
to find equilibrium, and so be strengthless and dead, there is,
somehow, in nature a tremendous push upward. Ask any philosopher,
and he will tell you that the tendency of all endowed forces is
to find their equilibrium and be at rest--that is, dead. He draws
a dismal picture of the time when the sun shall be burned out,
and the world float like a charnel ship through the dark, cold
voids of space--the sun a burned-out char, a dead cinder, and the
world one dismal silence, cold beyond measure, and dead beyond
consciousness. The philosopher has wailed a dirge without [Page 261]
hope, a requiem without grandeur, over the world's future. But
nature herself, to all ears attuned, sings pæans, and shouts to men
that the highest energy, that of life, does not deteriorate.
Mere nature may deteriorate. The endowments of force must spend
themselves. Wound-up watches and worlds must run down. But nature
sustained by unexpendable forces must abide. Nature filled with
unexpendable forces continues in form. Nature impelled by a magnificent
push of life must ever rise.
Study her history in the past. Sulphurous realms of deadly gases
become solid worlds; surplus sunlight becomes coal, which is reserved
power; surplus carbon becomes diamonds; sediments settle until
the heavens are azure, the air pure, the water translucent. If
that is the progress of the past, why should it deteriorate in the
future?
There is a system of laws in the universe in which the higher have
mastery over the lower. Lower powers are constitutionally arranged
to be overcome; higher powers are constitutionally arranged for
mastery. At one time the water lies in even layers near the ocean's
bed, in obedience to the law or power of gravitation. At another
time it is heaved into mountain billows by the shoulders of the
wind. Again it flies aloft in the rising mists of the morning,
transfigured by a thousand rain bows by the higher powers of the
sun. Again it develops the enormous force of steam by the power of
heat. Again it divides into two light flying airs by electricity.
Again it stands upright as a heap by the power of some law in the
spirit realm, whose mode of working we are not yet large enough
[Page 262] to comprehend. The water is solid, liquid, gaseous on
earth, and in air according to the grade of power operating upon it.
The constant invention of man finds higher and higher powers. Once
he throttled his game, and often perished in the desperate struggle;
then he trapped it; then pierced it with the javelin; then shot it
with an arrow, or set the springy gases to hurl a rifle-ball at
it. Sometime he may point at it an electric spark, and it shall
be his. Once he wearily trudged his twenty miles a day, then he
took the horse into service and made sixty; invoked the winds,
and rode on their steady wings two hundred and forty; tamed the
steam, and made almost one thousand; and if he cannot yet send his
body, he can his mind, one thousand miles a second. It all depends
upon the grade of power he uses. Now, hear the grand truth of nature:
as the years progress the higher grades of power increase. Either
by discovery or creation, there are still higher class forces to
be made available. Once there was no air, no usable electricity.
There is no lack of those higher powers now. The higher we go the
more of them we find. Mr. Lockyer says that the past ten years have
been years of revelation concerning the sun. A man could not read
in ten years the library of books created in that time concerning
the sun. But though we have solved certain problems and mysteries,
the mysteries have increased tenfold.
We do not know that any new and higher forces have been added to
matter since man's acquaintance with it. But it would be easy to
add any number of them, or change any lower into higher. That is the
[Page 263] meaning of the falling granite that becomes soil, of the
pulverized lava that decks the volcano's trembling sides with
flowers; that is the meaning of the grass becoming flesh, and of all
high forces constitutionally arranged for mastery over lower. Take
the ore from the mountain. It is loose, friable, worthless in
itself. Raise it in capacity to cast-iron, wrought-iron, steel, it
becomes a highway for the commerce of nations, over the mountains
and under them. It becomes bones, muscles, body for the inspiring
soul of steam. It holds up the airy bridge over the deep chasm. It
is obedient in your hand as blade, hammer, bar, or spring. It is
inspirable by electricity, and bears human hopes, fears, and loves
in its own bosom. It has been raised from valueless ore. Change it
again to something as far above steel as that is above ore. Change
all earthly ores to highest possibility; string them to finest
tissues, and the new result may fit God's hand as tools, and thrill
with his wisdom and creative processes, a body fitted for God's
spirit as well as the steel is fitted to your hand. From this world
take opacity, gravity, darkness, bring in more mind, love, and God,
and then we will have heaven. An immanent God makes a plastic world.
When man shall have mastered the forces that now exist, the original
Creator and Sustainer will say, "Behold, I create all things new."
Nature shall be called nearer to God, be more full of his power.
To the long-wandering Æneas, his divine mother sometimes came to
cheer his heart and to direct his steps. But the goddess only showed
herself divine by her departure; only when he stood in desolation
did the hero know he had [Page 264] stood face to face with divine
power, beauty, and love. Not so the Christian scholars, the
wanderers in Nature's bowers to-day. In the first dawn of discovery,
we see her full of beauty and strength; in closer communion, we find
her full of wisdom; to our perfect knowledge, she reveals an
indwelling God in her; to our ardent love, she reveals an indwelling
God in us.
But the evidence of the progressive refinements of habitation is no
more clear than that of progressive refinement of the inhabitant:
there must be some one to use these finer things. An empty house is
not God's ideal nor man's. The child may handle a toy, but a man
must mount a locomotive; and before there can be New Jerusalems
with golden streets, there must be men more avaricious of knowledge
than of gold, or they would dig them up; more zealous for love
than jewels, or they would unhang the pearly gates. The uplifting
refinement of the material world has been kept back until there
should appear masterful spirits able to handle the higher forces.
Doors have opened on every side to new realms of power, when men
have been able to wield them. If men lose that ability they close
again, and shut out the knowledge and light. Then ages, dark and
feeble, follow.
Some explore prophecy for the date of the grand transformation
of matter by the coming of the Son of Man, for a new creation. A
little study of nature would show that the date cannot be fixed.
A little study of Peter would show the same thing. He says, "What
manner of persons ought ye to be, in all holy conversation and
godliness, looking for and hastening the coming [Page 265] of the
day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved,
and the elements shall melt with fervent heat? Nevertheless we,
according to his promise, look for a new heaven and a new earth."
The idea is, that the grand transformation of matter waits the
readiness of man. The kingdom waits the king. The scattered cantons
of Italy were only prostrate provinces till Victor Emanuel came,
then they were developed into united Italy. The prostrate provinces
of matter are not developed until the man is victor, able to rule
there a realm equal to ten cities here. Every good man hastens the
coming of the day of God and nature's renovation. Not only does
inference teach that there must be finer men, but fact affirms
that transformation has already taken place. Life is meant to have
power over chemical forces. It separates carbon from its compounds
and builds a tree, separates the elements and builds the body,
holds them separate until life withdraws. More life means higher
being. Certainly men can be refined and recapacitated as well as
ore. In Ovid's "Metamorphoses" he represents the lion in process of
formation from earth, hind quarters still clay, but fore quarters,
head, erect mane, and blazing eye--live lion--and pawing to get
free. We have seen winged spirits yet linked to forms of clay,
but beating the celestial air, endeavoring to be free; and we have
seen them, dowered with new sight, filled with new love, break
loose and rise to higher being.
In this grand apotheosis of man which nature teaches, progress
lias already been made. Man has already outgrown his harmony with
the environment of mere matter. He has given his hand to science, and
been lifted up above the earth into the voids of infinite space. He
[Page 266] has gone on and on, till thought, wearied amidst the
infinities of velocity and distance, has ceased to note them. But he
is not content; all his faculties are not filled. He feels that his
future self is in danger of not being satisfied with space, and
worlds, and all mental delights, even as his manhood fails to be
satisfied with the materiel toys of his babyhood. He asks for an
Author and Maker of things, infinitely above them. He has seen
wisdom unsearchable, power illimitable; but he asks for personal
sympathy and love. Paul expresses his feeling: every creature--not
the whole creation--groaneth and travaileth in pain together until
now, waiting for the adoption--the uplifting from orphanage to
parentage--a translation out of darkness into the kingdom of God's
dear Son. He hears that a man in Christ is a new creation: old
things pass away, all things become new. There is then a possibility
of finding the Author of nature, and the Father of man. He begins
his studies anew. Now he sees that all lines of knowledge converge
as they go out toward the infinite mystery; sees that these
converging lines are the reins of government in this world; sees the
converging lines grasped by an almighty hand; sees a loving face and
form behind; sees that these lines of knowledge and power are his
personal nerves, along which flashes his will, and every force in
the universe answers like a perfect muscle.
Then he asks if this Personality is as full of love as of power.
He is told of a tenderness too deep for tears, a love that has the
Cross for its symbol, and a dying cry for its expression: seeking
it, he is a new creation. He sees more wondrous things in the Word
than in the [Page 267] world. He comes to know God with his heart,
better than he knows God's works by his mind.
Every song closes with the key-note with which it began, and the
brief cadence at the close hints the realms of sound through which
it has tried its wings. The brief cadence at the close is this:
All force runs back into mind for its source, constant support,
and uplifts into higher grades.
Mr. Grove says, "Causation is the will, creation is the act, of God."
Creation is planned and inspired for the attainment of constantly
rising results. The order is chaos, light, worlds, vegetable forms,
animal life, then man. There is no reason to pause here. This is
not perfection, not even perpetuity. Original plans are not
accomplished, nor original force exhausted. In another world, free
from sickness, sorrow, pain, and death, perfection of abode is
offered. Perfection of inhabitant is necessary; and as the creative
power is everywhere present for the various uplifts and refinements
of matter, it is everywhere present with appropriate power for
the uplifting and refinement of mind and spirit.
[Page 269]
SUMMARY OF LATEST DISCOVERIES AND CONCLUSIONS.
_Movements on the Sun._--The discovery and measurement of the up-rush,
down-rush, and whirl of currents about the sunspots, also of the
determination of the velocity of rotation by means of the spectroscope,
as described (page 53), is one of the most delicate and difficult
achievements of modern science.
_Movement of Stars in Line of Sight_ (page 51).--The following
table shows this movement of stars, so far as at present known:
---------------------------------------------------------------
| APROACHING. || RECEDING. |
|------------------------------||-------------------------------|
| Map. | Name. | Rate || Map. | Name. | Rate |
| | | per sec. || | | per sec. |
|-------|-----------|----------||--------|-----------|----------|
|Fig. 71|Arcturus | 55 miles ||Fig. 69 |Sirius | 20 miles |
| " 72|Vega | 50 " ||Fr'piece|Betelguese | 22 " |
| " 73|a Cygni | 39 " || " |Rigel | 15 " |
| " 69|Pollux | 49 " ||Fig. 69 |Castor | 25 " |
| " 67|Dubhe | 46 " || " 70 |Regulus | 15 " |
---------------------------------------------------------------
_Sun's Appearance._--This was formerly supposed to be an even,
regular, dazzling brightness, except where the spots appeared.
But the sun's surface is now known to be mottled with what are
called rice grains or willow leaves. But the rice grains are as
large as the continent of America. The spaces between are called
pores. They constitute an innumerable number of small spots. This
appearance of the general surface is well portrayed in the cut
on page 92.
_Close Relation between Sun and Earth._-Men always knew that the
earth received light from the sun. They subsequently discovered
that the earth was momentarily held by the power [Page 270] of
gravitation. But it is a recent discovery that the light is one of
the principal agents in chemical changes, in molecular grouping and
world-building, thus making all kinds of life possible (p. 30-36).
The close connection of the sun and the earth will be still farther
shown in the relation of sun-spots and auroras. One of the most
significant instances is related on page 19, when the earth felt the
fall of bolides upon the sun. Members of the body no more answer to
the heart than the planets do to the sun.
_Hydrogen Flames._--It has been demonstrated that the sun flames
200,000 miles high are hydrogen in a state of flaming incandescence
(page 85).
_Sun's Distance._--The former estimate, 95,513,794 miles, has been
reduced by nearly one-thirtieth. Lockyer has stated it as low as
89,895,000 miles, and Proctor, in "Encyclopædia Britannica," at
91,430,000 miles, but discovered errors show that these estimates
are too small. Newcomb gives 92,400,000 as within 200,000 miles
of the correct distance. The data for a new determination of this
distance, obtained from the transit of Venus, December 8th, 1874,
have not yet been deciphered; a fact that shows the difficulty
and laboriousness of the work. Meanwhile it begins to be evident
that observations of the transit of Venus do not afford the best
basis for the most perfect determination of the sun's distance.
Since the earth's distance is our astronomical unit of measure, it
follows that all other distances will be changed, when expressed
in miles, by this ascertained change of the value of the standard.
_Oxygen in the Sun._--In 1877 Professor Draper announced the discovery
of oxygen lines in the spectrum of the sun. The discovery was doubted,
and the methods used were criticised by Lockyer and others, but
later and more delicate experiments substantiate Professor Draper's
claim to the discovery. The elements known to exist in the sun
are salt, iron, hydrogen, [Page 271] magnesium, barium, copper,
zinc, cromium, and nickel. Some elements in the sun are scarcely, if
at all, discoverable on the earth, and some on the earth not yet
discernible in the sun.
_Substance of Stars._--Aldebaran (_Frontispiece_) shows salt, magnesium,
hydrogen, calcium, iron, bismuth, tellurium, antimony, and mercury.
Some of the sun's metals do not appear. Stars differ in their very
substance, and will, no doubt, introduce new elements to us unknown
before.
The theory that all nebulæ are very distant clusters of stars is
utterly disproved by the clearest proof that some of them are only
incandescent gases of one or two kinds.
_Discoveries of New Bodies._--Vulcan, the planet nearest the sun
(page 138). The two satellites of Mars were discovered by Mr. Hall,
U. S. Naval Observatory, August 11th, 1877 (page 161). "The outer
one is called Diemas; the inner, Phobus.
Sir William Herschel thought he discovered six satellites of Uranus.
The existence of four of them has been disproved by the researches of
men with larger telescopes. Two new ones, however, were discovered
by Mr. Lassell in 1846.
_Saturn's Rings_ are proved to be in a state of fluidity and contraction
(page 171).
_Meteors and Comets._--The orbits of over one hundred swarms of
meteoric bodies are fixed: their relation to, and in some cases
indentity with, comets determined. Some comets are proved to be
masses of great weight and solidity (page 133).
_Aerolites._-Some have a texture like our lowest strata of rocks.
There is a geology of stars and meteors as well as of the earth. M.
Meunier has just received the Lalande Medal from the Paris Academy
for his treatise showing that, so far as our present knowledge can
determine, some of these meteors once belonged to a globe developed
in true geological epochs, and which has been separated into fragments
by agencies with which we are not acquainted.
[Illustration: Fig. 82.--Horizontal Pendulum.]
_The Horizontal Pendulum._--This delicate instrument is [Page 272]
represented in Fig. 82. It consists of an upright standard, strongly
braced; a weight, _m_, suspended by the hair-spring of a watch, B D,
and held in a horizontal position by another watch-spring, A C. The
weight is deflected from side to side by the slightest influence.
The least change in the level of a base thirty-nine inches long that
could be detected by a spirit-level is 0".1 of an arc--equal to
raising one end 1/2068 of an inch. But the pendulum detects a
raising of one end 1/36000000 of an inch. To observe the movements
of the pendulum, it is kept in a dark room, and a ray of light is
directed to the mirror, _m_, and thence reflected upon a screen.
Thus the least movement may be enormously magnified, and read and
measured by the moving spot on the screen. It has been discovered
that when the sun rises it has sufficient attraction to incline this
instrument to the east; when it sets, to incline it to the west. The
same is true of the moon. When either is exactly overhead or
underfoot, of course there is no deflection. The mean deflection
caused by the moon at rising or setting is 0".0174; by the sun,
0".008. Great results are expected from this instrument hardly known
as yet: among others, whether gravitation acts instantly or consumes
time in coming from the sun. This will be shown by the time of the
change of the pendulum from east to west when the sun reaches the
zenith, and _vice versa_ when it crosses the nadir. The sun will be
best studied without light, in the quiet and darkness of some deep
mine.
[Page 273]
_Light of Unseen Stars._--From careful examination, it appears
that three-fourths of the light on a fine starlight night comes
from stars that cannot be discerned by the naked eye. The whole
amount of star light is about one-eightieth of that of the full
moon.
_Lateral Movements of Stars_, page 226-28.
_Future Discoveries_--_A Trans-Neptunian Planet._--Professor Asaph
Hall says: "It is known to me that at least two American astronomers,
armed with powerful telescopes, have been searching quite recently for
a trans-Neptunian planet. These searches have been caused by the fact
that Professor Newcomb's tables of Uranus and Neptune already begin
to differ from observation. But are we to infer from these errors of
the planetary tables the existence of a trans-Neptunian planet? It
is possible that such a planet may exist, but the probability is, I
think, that the differences are caused by errors in the theories of
these planets. * * * A few years ago the remark was frequently made
that the labors of astronomers on the solar system were finished, and
that henceforth they could turn their whole attention to sidereal
astronomy. But to-day we have the lunar theory in a very discouraging
condition, and the theories of Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus,
and Neptune all in need of revision; unless, indeed, Leverrier's
theories of the last two planets shall stand the test of observation.
But, after all, such a condition of things is only the natural
result of long and accurate series of observations, which make
evident the small inequalities in the motions, and bring to light
the errors of theory."
Future discoveries will mostly reveal the laws and conditions of
the higher and finer forces. Already Professor Loomis telegraphs
twenty miles without wire, by the electric currents between mountains.
We begin to use electricity for light, and feel after it for a
motor. Comets and Auroras show its presence between worlds, and
in the interstellar spaces. Let another Newton arise.
[Page 274]
SOME ELEMENTS OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM
------------------------------------------------------------------------
| | | | Mean Dist. | | |
| | | | from Sun. | | |
| | | |-------------------| Mean |Density.|
| | | | Earth's| |Diameter |[Earth] |
| Name. | Sign. | Masses. | Dist. | Millions |in Miles.| = 1. |
| | | | as 1. | of Miles.| | |
|-----------|--------|------------|--------|----------|---------|--------|
| Sun |[Symbol]| Unity | | | 860,000 | 0.255 |
| Mercury |[Symbol]|1/5000000(?)| 0.387 | 35-3/4| 2,992 | 1.21 |
| Venus |[Symbol]| 1/425000 | 0.723 | 66-3/4| 7,660 | 0.85 |
| Earth |[Symbol]| 1/326800 | 1. | 92-1/3| 7,918 | 1. |
| Mars |[Symbol]| 1/2950000 | 1.523 | 141 | 4,211 | 0.737 |
| Asteroids | (No.) | | | | | |
| Jupiter |[Symbol]| 1/1047 | 5.203 | 480 | 86,000 | 0.243 |
| Saturn |[Symbol]| 1/3501 | 9.538 | 881 | 70,500 | 0.133 |
| Uranus |[Symbol]| 1/22600 | 19.183 | 1771 | 31,700 | 0.226 |
| Neptune |[Symbol]| 1/19380 | 30.054 | 2775 | 34,500 | 0.204 |
------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------------------
| | | Gravity | | |
| | Axial | at | | Orbital |
| | Revolu- | Surface. | Periodic | Velocity |
| Name. | tion | [Earth] | Time. | in Miles |
| | | = 1 | | per sec. |
|-----------|---------------|----------|-----------|----------|
| Sun | 25 to 26d | 27.71 | | |
| Mercury | 24h 5m(?) | 0.46 | 87.97d | 29.55 |
| Venus | 23h 21m(?) | 0.82 | 224.70d | 21.61 |
| Earth | 23h 56m 4s | 1. | 365.26d | 18.38 |
| Mars | 24h 37m 22.7s | 0.39 | 686.98d | 14.99 |
| Asteroids | | | | |
| Jupiter | 9h 55m 20s | 2.64 | 11.86yrs | 8.06 |
| Saturn | 10h 14m | 1.18 | 29.46yrs | 5.95 |
| Uranus | Unknown. | 0.90 | 84.02yrs | 4.20 |
| Neptune | Unknown. | 0.89 | 164.78yrs | 3.36 |
-------------------------------------------------------------
[Page 275]
EXPLANATION OF ASTRONOMICAL SYMBOLS.