Recreations in Astronomy Part 17

Since the opening revelations of the past show an unsearchable wisdom in the Word, has that Word any prophecy concerning mysteries not yet understood, and events yet in the future? There are certain problems as yet insolvable. We have grasped many clews, and followed them far into labyrinths of darkness, but not yet through into light.

We ask in vain, "What is matter?" No man can [Page 237] answer. We trace it up through the worlds, till its increasing fineness, its growing power, and possible ident.i.ty of substance, seem as if the next step would reveal its spirit origin. What we but hesitatingly stammer, the Word boldly a.s.serts.

We ask, "What is force?" No man can answer. We recognize its various grades, each subordinate to the higher--cohesion dissolvable by heat; the affinity of oxygen and hydrogen in water overcome by the piercing intensity of electric fire; rivers seeking the sea by gravitation carried back by the sun; rock turned to soil, soil to flowers; and all the forces in nature measurably subservient to mind. Hence we partly understand what the Word has always taught us, that all lower forces must be subject to that which is highest.

How easily can seas be divided, iron made to swim, water to burn, and a dead body to live again, if the highest force exert itself over forces made to be mastered. When we have followed force to its highest place, we always find ourselves considering the forces of mind and spirit, and say, in the words of the Scriptures, "G.o.d is spirit."

We ask in vain what is the end of the present condition of things.

We have read the history of our globe with great difficulty--its prophecy is still more difficult. We have asked whether the stars form a system, and if so, whether that system is permanent. We are not able to answer yet. We have said that the sun would in time become as icy cold and dead as the moon, and then the earth would wander darkling in the voids of s.p.a.ce. But the end of the earth, as prophesied in the Word, is different: "The heavens will pa.s.s away with [Page 238] a rushing noise, and the elements will be dissolved with burning heat, and the earth and the works therein will be burned up." The latest conclusions of science point the same way. The great zones of uncondensed matter about the sun seem to const.i.tute a resisting medium as far as they reach. Encke's comet, whose orbit comes near the sun, is delayed. This gives gravitation an overwhelming power, and hence the orbit is lessened and a revolution accomplished more quickly. Faye's comet, which wheels beyond the track of Mars, is not r.e.t.a.r.ded. If the earth moves through a resisting substance, its ultimate fall into the sun is certain. Whether in that far future the sun shall have cooled off, or will be still as hot as to-day, Peter's description would admirably portray the result of the impact. Peters description, however, seems rather to indicate an interference of Divine power at an appropriate time before a running down of the system at present in existence, and a re-endowment of matter with new capabilities.

After thousands of years, science discovered the true way to knowledge.

It is the Baconian way of experiment, of trial, of examining the actual, instead of imagining the ideal. It is the acceptance of the Scriptural plan. "If a man wills to do G.o.d's will, he shall know."

Oh taste and see! In science men try hypotheses, think the best they can, plan broadly as possible, and then see if facts sustain the theory. They have adopted the Scriptural idea of accepting a plan, and then working in faith, in order to acquire knowledge. Fortunately, in the work of salvation the plan is always perfect. But, in order to make the trial under the most favorable circ.u.mstances, there must be faith. The faith of [Page 239] science is amazing; its a.s.sertions of the supersensual are astounding. It affirms a thousand things that cannot be physically demonstrated: that the flight of a rifle-ball is parabolic; that the earth has poles; that gages are made of particles; that there are atoms; that an electric light gives ten times as many rays as are visible; that there are sounds to which we are deaf, sights to which we are blind; that a thousand objects and activities are about us, for the perception of which we need a hundred senses instead of five. These faiths have nearly all led to sight; they have been rewarded, and the world's wealth of knowledge is the result. The Word has ever a.s.serted the supersensuous, solicited man's faith, and ever uplifted every true faith into sight. Lowell is partly right when he sings:

"Science was Faith once; Faith were science now, Would she but lay her bow and arrows by, And aim her with the weapons of the time."

Faith laid her bow and arrows by before men in pursuit of worldly knowledge discovered theirs.

What becomes of the force of the sun that is being spent to-day?

It is one of the firmest rocks of science that there can be no absolute destruction of force. It is all conserved somehow. But how? The sun contracts, light results, and leaps swiftly into all encircling s.p.a.ce. It can never be returned. Heat from stars invisible by the largest telescope enters the tastimeter, and declares that that force has journeyed from its source through incalculable years.

There is no encircling dome to reflect all this force back upon its sources. Is it lost? Science, in defence of its own dogma, should [Page 240] a.s.sign light a work as it flies in the s.p.a.ce which we have learned cannot be empty. There ought to be a realm where light's inconceivable energy is utilized in building a grander universe, where there is no night. Christ said, as he went out of the seen into the unseen, "I go to prepare a place for you;" and when John saw it in vision the sun had disappeared, the moon was gone, but the light still continued.

Science finds matter to be capable of unknown refinement; water becomes steam full of amazing capabilities: we add more heat, superheat the steam, and it takes on new apt.i.tudes and uncontrollable energy.

Zinc burned in acid becomes electricity, which enters iron as a kind of soul, to fill all that body with life. All matter is capable of transformation, if not transfiguration, till it shines by the light of an indwelling spirit. Scripture readers know that bodies and even garments can be transfigured, be made astrapton (Luke xxiv.

4), shining with an inner light. They also look for new heavens and a new earth endowed with higher powers, fit for perfect beings.

When G.o.d made matter, so far as our thought permits us to know, he simply made force stationary and unconscious. Thereafter he moves through it with his own will. He can at any time change these forces, making air solid, water and rock gaseous, a world a cloud, or a fire-mist a stone. He may at some time restore all force to consciousness again, and make every part of the universe thrill with responsive joy. "Then shall the mountains and the hills break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field clap their hands." One of these changes is to come to the earth. [Page 241] Amidst great noise the heaven shall flee, the earth be burned up, and all their forces be changed to new forms. Perhaps it will not then be visible to mortal eyes. Perhaps force will then be made conscious, and the flowers thereafter return our love as much as lower creatures do now. A river and tree of life may be consciously alive, as well as give life. Poets that are nearest to G.o.d are constantly hearing the sweet voices of responsive feeling in nature.

"For his gayer hours She has a voice of gladness and a smile, And eloquence of beauty; and she glides Into his darker musings with a mild And gentle sympathy, that steals away Their sharpness ere he is aware."

Prophets who utter G.o.d's voice of truth say, "The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for holy men, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose. It shall blossom abundantly and rejoice, even with joy and singing."

Distinguish clearly between certainty and surmise. The certainty is that the world will pa.s.s through catastrophic changes to a perfect world. The grave of uniformitarianism is already covered with gra.s.s.

He that creates promises to complete. The invisible, imponderable, inaudible ether is beyond our apprehension; it transmits impressions 186,000 miles a second; it is millions of times more capable and energetic than air. What may be the bounds of its possibility none can imagine, for law is not abrogated nor designs disregarded as we ascend into higher realms. Law works out more beautiful designs with more absolute certainty. Why [Page 242] should there not be a finer universe than this, and disconnected from this world altogether--a fit home for immortal souls? It is a necessity.

G.o.d filleth all in all, is everywhere omnipotent and wise. Why should there be great vacuities, barren of power and its creative outgoings? G.o.d has fixed the stars as proofs of his agency at some points in s.p.a.ce. But is it in points only? Science is proud of its discovery that what men once thought to be empty s.p.a.ce is more intensely active than the coa.r.s.er forms of matter can be. But in the long times which are past Job glanced at earth, seas, clouds, pillars of heaven, stars, day, night, all visible things, and then added: "Lo! these are only the outlying borders of his works. What a whisper of a word we hear of _Him!_ The thunder of his power who can comprehend?"

Science discovers that man is adapted for mastery in this world.

He is of the highest order of visible creatures. Neither is it possible to imagine an order of beings generically higher to be connected with the conditions of the material world. This whole secret was known to the author of the oldest writing. "And G.o.d blessed them, and G.o.d said unto them: Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." The idea is never lost sight of in the sacred writings. And while every man knows he must fail in one great contest, and yield himself to death, the later portions of the divine Word offer him victory even here. The typical man is commissioned to destroy even death, and make man a sharer in the victory. [Page 243] Science babbles at this great truth of man's position like a little child; Scripture treats it with a breadth of perfect wisdom we are only beginning to grasp.

Science tells us that each type is prophetic of a higher one. The whale has bones prophetic of a human hand. Has man reached perfection?

Is there no prophecy in him? Not in his body, perhaps; but how his whole soul yearns for greater beauty. As soon as he has found food, the savage begins to carve his paddle, and make himself gorgeous with feathers. How man yearns for strength, subduing animal and cosmic forces to his will! How he fights against darkness and death, and strives for perfection and holiness! These prophecies compel us to believe there is a world where powers like those of electricity and luminiferous ether are ever at hand; where its waters are rivers of life, and its trees full of perfect healing, and from which all unholiness is forever kept. What we infer, Scripture affirms.

Science tells us there has been a survival of the fittest. Doubtless this is so. So in the future there will be a survival of the fittest.

What is it? Wisdom, gentleness, meekness, brotherly kindness, and charity. Over those who have these traits death hath no permanent power. The caterpillar has no fear as he weaves his own shroud; for there is life within fit to survive, and ere long it spreads its gorgeous wings, and flies in the air above where once it crawled. Man has had two states of being already. One confined, dark, peculiarly nourished, slightly conscious; then he was born into another--wide, differently nourished, and intensely [Page 244] conscious. He knows he may be born again into a life wider yet, differently nourished, and even yet more intensely conscious. Science has no hint how a long ascending series of developments crowned by man may advance another step, and make man isaggelos--equal to angels. But the simplest teaching of Scripture points out a way so clear that a child need not miss the glorious consummation.

When Ura.n.u.s hastened in one part of its...o...b..t, and then r.e.t.a.r.ded, and swung too wide, men said there must be another attracting world beyond; and, looking there, Neptune was found. So, when individual men are so strong that nations or armies cannot break down their wills; so brave, that lions have no terrors; so holy, that temptation cannot lure nor sin defile them; so grand in thought, that men cannot follow; so pure in walk, that G.o.d walks with them--let us infer an attracting world, high and pure and strong as heaven. The eleventh chapter of Hebrews is a roll-call of heroes of whom this world was not worthy. They were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection. The world to come influenced, as it were, the orbits of their souls, and when their bodies fell off, earth having no hold on them, they sped on to their celestial home. The tendency of such souls necessitates such a world.

The worlds and the Word speak but one language, teach but one set of truths. How was it possible that the writers of the earlier Scriptures described physical phenomena with wonderful sublimity, and with such penetrative truth? They gazed upon the same heaven that those men saw who ages afterward led the world in knowledge.

These latter were near-sighted, and absorbed [Page 245] in the pictures on the first veil of matter; the former were far-sighted, and penetrated a hundred strata of thickest material, and saw the immaterial power behind. The one cla.s.s studied the present, and made the gravest mistakes; the other pierced the uncounted ages of the past, and uttered the profoundest wisdom. There is but one explanation. He that planned and made the worlds inspired the Word.

Science and religion are not two separate departments, they are not even two phases of the same truth. Science has a broader realm in the unseen than in the seen, in the source of power than in the outcomes of power, in the sublime laws of spirit than in the laws of matter; and religion sheds its beautiful light over all stages of life, till, whether we eat or whether we drink, or whatsoever we do, we may do all for the glory of G.o.d. Science and religion make common confession that the great object of life is to learn and to grow. Both will come to see the best possible means, for the attainment of this end is a personal relation to a teacher who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

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XII.

THE ULTIMATE FORCE.

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with G.o.d, and the Word was G.o.d. The same was in the beginning with G.o.d. 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 s.p.a.ce 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 s.p.a.ce 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.

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XII.

_THE ULTIMATE FORCE._

The universe is G.o.d'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 G.o.d, and men with souls attuned listening.

To what voices shall we listen first? Stand on the sh.o.r.e 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, Ma.s.sachusetts, 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 G.o.d only on the Alpine heights, in every tuft of gra.s.s, 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-cla.s.s 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 s.p.a.ces 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...o...b..t 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 cl.u.s.tered suns, galaxies, and nebulae, 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, nebulae, 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 G.o.d'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 G.o.d. 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 pa.s.s 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."