This is the basic fact in wireless telegraphy. At Cape Cod there is a transmitting station consisting of four steel towers with a bunch of wires suspended from the top and meeting at a common point like an inverted cone. If the power be applied to the apex of this cone the wires begin to tremble; and the current, oscillating at a rate say of nine hundred thousand vibrations per second, creates a series of corresponding vibrations in the ether, just as a stone cast into a lake sends out concentric circles. This ether wave or message speeds outward with incalculable rapidity in search of its receiver; and it will cross the ocean to find it.
Now, there is such a receiver at Poldhu, in Cornwall, where the wires are precisely attuned to the transmitter at Cape Cod; that is, their vibrations are the same, say nine hundred thousand per second; so that the message sent from Cape Cod meets no response until it finds its sympathetic station at Poldhu, and this attracts and welcomes it.
Marconi's system of wireless telegraphy is not an invention, but a discovery of a natural law or process which has been going on continuously through all the realms of space since time began.
The sun as the great source and center of energy in our solar system is constantly sending out messages of light and life to his family of planets. It is a scientific fact clearly proven that a ray of light is an electric wireless message from the sun to the earth, and it could not be received unless the earth attracted it, and was attuned to it. For here the same law prevails between sun and earth that no message can be received except by some object which is sympathetically attuned to it.
Prof. Pupin suggests that a beam of light representing a certain number of vibrations per second, intended to convey the color red, is sent forth from the sun. It speeds through space until it reaches the earth; where intent upon its eager quest it passes unresting through all the meadows, since no grass-blade is adjusted to receive it; no daisy or buttercup, no lily or heliotrope being disposed to welcome it; it passes over all gardens until it finds a rose; and here it pauses and finds welcome. Why? Because the rose has a natural affinity for it, and like two lovers in mutual affection they meet and embrace each other, and are blended in the harmonious union of nature's electric law of life, growth and beauty. The same law of mutual attraction and wireless telegraphy creates the lofty elm, the towering oak, the blade of grass and the waving fields of golden grain in the Autumnal harvest.
Dr. Burrell makes an apt and beautiful illustration of these truths of nature in their analogy to spiritual laws. He says: "This process which has been discovered to be so prevalent in nature has infinite field and scope of operation in the province of spiritual things. God as the great transmitter of truth bears to the spiritual world a relation corresponding to that of the sun in the natural world. Assuming that there is a God, and that we are created in his image and after his likeness, it follows as an inevitable conclusion that He will somehow reveal himself to his children and hold converse with them. But here is the application of the principal referred to: The man who would hear the wireless messages of God must Himself be attuned or adjusted to the character of God."
This is superlative truth that all wise men should consider and not have occasion to lament, like Charles Darwin, at the close of his long life of physical investigation, that he had starved his spiritual nature. For our thoughts depend on our receptive natures and our lives are just what we make them, and our future is according to our character and the inscrutable laws of life and destiny.
O! the wisdom of the wisest; O! the goodness of the good!
Gleaning through the sweep of ages where Divinity hath stood,