CHAPTER XV THIS ELECTRIC UNIVERSE IS SELF-SUSTAINING AND ETERNAL
The natural beauty and utility of the world is vast and varied. The grandeur and strength of the universe is boundless and enduring. Nature is Deity, thinking in visible thoughts of beauty and power, and speaking in visible tones of life, motion and harmony.
All things in nature combine beauty with utility and while full of change are constant and enduring. The same electric laws, force and substance which gives luminous brilliancy to countless suns, and paints the aurora and the rainbow the rosy hues of dawn and the crimson glories of sunset, give color to the ruddy cheeks of youth, and red corpuscle to the arterial blood that brings health and strength to human forms.
These same electric laws, force and substance hold their sceptre of power through all the universe. Under electric law atoms and molecules embrace each other and evolve visible forms of life; and suns glow with warmth and light, and keep their appointed distances in the circling mazes of the sky. And by the grasp of electric energy these life-giving suns carry their family of life-bearing worlds upon their mysterious voyage through the realms of measureless space.
All nature is a visible expression of Omnipotent Deity, all the universe is a symbol of creative power and wisdom which is boundless and enduring, and proclaims that our world, the sun and the universe are eternal and enduring.
The question of the continued existence of our solar system is a fascinating subject to most of our astronomers; they seem never to be weary of looking forward to a time when the light of the sun will expire with age, or it will be destroyed by some great catastrophe. I have no such apprehensions. First, because in the six or eight thousand years of human history on this planet there is no record of any sun or star being blotted out, or any planet being destroyed. The sun, stars and planets are substantially the same as they were when Babylon flourished, when Abraham was a sun worshiper, and when the angels sang on the plains of Bethlehem. As far as human knowledge and science goes, not a single star has faded from the glittering hosts of night's jewelled crown.
Second, because the same electric force that started suns and planets on their grand velocities and fixed their orbits is not only an attracting force, but also a repelling force of marvelous power. And while suns and planets attract each other they also repel each other, and make each keep their respective distance under the law of electro-magnetism by which opposite poles attract and like poles repel each other. If you place the opposite poles of a horseshoe magnet together they will attract each other and cling together until a superior force overcomes their mutual attraction; but if you reverse them and put their like poles together, they will not cling together, but will repulse each other.
In chemistry molecules of opposite polarity unite, and this is called chemical affinity; molecules of like polarity will not unite, and this is called chemical repulsion. Magnets attract only when their poles are reversed, or when they are oppositely electrified, and suns and planets do the same. The sun as the great central magnet, or electric generator, has the power both to attract and to repel. The planets are kept in their orbits by both the sun's attraction and its repulsion. In the summer, when the earth gets four millions of miles nearer the sun, there is a repelling force from the sun that sends it off again, or it would continue to approach the sun until it would fall into his spacious bosom. No law of gravitation or balancing force of planets could do this. The centrifugal force of electric repulsion in the sun does for the earth what all the balancing force of the planets could not do if they were all swung in the circling orbit of Mars.