Recreations in Astronomy Part 18

Where? I read an old book speaking of these matters, and it says of G.o.d, 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-cla.s.s energy to deteriorate to a lower cla.s.s. 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 s.p.a.ce 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, ma.s.s, 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 s.p.a.ce. 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 gla.s.s 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 pa.s.s 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 quant.i.ty of combining power, in quality of combining power. They combine with different substances, in certain exact a.s.signable quant.i.ties. 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 rehea.r.s.e 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 s.p.a.ce it occupies.

We can put eight or ten similar bulks of different substances into a gla.s.s 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 s.p.a.ce. The Sage of Concord advises you to hitch your wagon to a star. But this is. .h.i.tching 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d'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 G.o.d'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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d's revelation to him. "By faith," says the author of Hebrews, "we understand the worlds were framed by the word of G.o.d, 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 G.o.d, 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]

G.o.d's intimate relation to matter is explained. No wonder the forces respond to his will; no wonder pantheism--the idea that matter is G.o.d--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 G.o.d'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 G.o.d clothing the gra.s.s of the field, feeding the sparrows, giving snow like wool and scattering h.o.a.r-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--G.o.d'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 superinc.u.mbent ma.s.s, 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 gra.s.s 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-cla.s.s 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 s.p.a.ce--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 paeans, 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 const.i.tutionally arranged to be overcome; higher powers are const.i.tutionally 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 cla.s.s 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 gra.s.s becoming flesh, and of all high forces const.i.tutionally 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 G.o.d's hand as tools, and thrill with his wisdom and creative processes, a body fitted for G.o.d'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 G.o.d, and then we will have heaven. An immanent G.o.d 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 G.o.d, be more full of his power.

To the long-wandering aeneas, his divine mother sometimes came to cheer his heart and to direct his steps. But the G.o.ddess 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 G.o.d in her; to our ardent love, she reveals an indwelling G.o.d 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 G.o.d'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 G.o.dliness, looking for and hastening the coming [Page 265] of the day of G.o.d, 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 G.o.d 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 s.p.a.ce. 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 s.p.a.ce, 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 G.o.d's dear Son. He hears that a man in Christ is a new creation: old things pa.s.s 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 G.o.d with his heart, better than he knows G.o.d'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 G.o.d."

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 s.p.a.ces between are called pores. They const.i.tute 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 princ.i.p.al 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 "Encyclopaedia 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.