Recreations in Astronomy / With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work

by Henry White Warren

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 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 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 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 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 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.