Keely and His Discoveries: Aerial Navigation

by Mrs. Bloomfield H. Moore

“It matters little whether the law grants or refuses liberty to new ideas, for they make their way all the same; they come into existence without the law, and they are all the better for this than if they had grown in full legality. When a river which has overflown its banks pours onward, you may erect dykes to arrest its progress, but the flood continues to rise; you may work with eager energy and employ skilful labourers to make good all the fissures, but the flood will continue to rise until the torrent has surmounted the obstacle, or until, by making a circuit of the dyke, it comes back by some other way to inundate the land which you have attempted to protect from it.”

These are the advanced views of Ernest Renan, who still sees nothing before us but a fresh cataclysm, a general upheaval and chaos, terrible disturbances when human intelligence will be checkmated, thrown off the rails so to speak, by events as yet unparalleled. We have not yet suffered sufficiently, he says, to see the kingdom of heaven. When a few millions of men have died of hunger, when thousands have devoured one another, when the brains of the others, carried off their balance by these darksome scenes, have plunged into extravagancies of one kind and another, then life will begin anew. Suffering has been for man the mistress and the revealer of great things. Order is an end, not a beginning; but out of respect for the rights of bears and lions are we to open the bars of a menagerie? Are these beasts to be let loose upon men? No, for humanity and civilization must be saved at any cost. But these problems, which make up the capital question of the nineteenth century, are, in a speculative sense, insoluble; they will be solved by brute force, says Renan. The crowd behind is ever pressing forward; those in the foremost ranks are toppled over into the yawning gulf, and when their bodies have filled up the abyss, the last comers pass over on the level.

But let us suppose that what pseudo-science has wrested from us, true science is ready to restore; ready to offer all that Renan himself tells us is necessary to open the way for the elevation of the people, by giving all men a share in the delights of education; thus widening the basis of the brotherhood of humanity, and making room for all at the banqueting-table of knowledge, enabling men to be “perfect in their measure,” for “absolute equality is as impossible in humanity as it would be in the animal reign. Each part is perfect in the hierarchy of the parts when it is all that it can be, and does well all that it ought to do.”

Let us suppose that true science offers confirmation of all that revelation has taught of the attributes of the Creator of all things, reiterating the promise of a time when this knowledge shall be spread over the face of the whole earth and made known to all men. Let us imagine that, in addition to the opening of these floodgates of knowledge, the time is drawing near when machinery, unknown now, will be employed to help the workman in his task, and abridge his hours of labour, leaving leisure for the cultivation of his mind. Aristotle has told us what would be the result, “if every instrument could work of its own accord, if the spindles worked of themselves, if the bow played the violin without being held, the contractors could do without workmen and the masters without slaves.” Man would so master nature that material requirements would no longer be the supreme motive, and human activity would be directed towards the things of the mind. In such a state of existence men of intelligence would “conquer the infinite.”

We are living in a period of wondrous revelations of the power of God, and the crowning discovery of this epoch promises the fulfilment of Scripture prophecy in a dispensation of harmony and peace, that will restore to mankind that measure of faith in God and immortality, which can alone give strength “to endure the evil days without feeling the weight of them” that lie between the present time and the realization of our hopes for the perfection of humanity. With the knowledge that lies in this new revelation of the power of the All-Mighty, no hopes seem chimerical or Utopian. We shall all be as gods, when the fulness of the love of God and the power of God is made known to, and understood by, all men. Tossing as we are in a seething whirlpool of scepticism, threatened as are the nations with dangers on all sides, if we were bereft of our God, as the leading lights of science would have us believe, there would be no hope for humanity. But though the anchor of ancient faiths has been swept away by materialism, the sheet-anchor of faith by science has been let down from heaven, as it were in our hour of peril, for the saving of the peoples: teaching as often before that the world lies in the bosom of God, like a child in its mother’s arms, who with watchful solicitude ministers to its wants as they arise.

Religion as revealed to us by our Holy Master, Jesus Christ, is to know and to love the truth of things. When this religion is understood and practised, then, and not before, will the earth be full of the knowledge that it is God who is, and that all the rest only appears to be. If anarchy and disorder would but wait for this time to arrive, no devastating cataclysms, no destroying whirlwinds, will come as forerunners to prepare the way, as in the past, for progress. The light now dawning will usher in “the new order of things,” and we may expect that an era of material prosperity will soon set in, such as the world has never dreamed of; arresting the outbreak of barbarism which seems near at hand. There are some who contend that this revelation of an unknown force will, in the hands of anarchists, put back the progress of civilization and enlightenment for centuries; there are others who proclaim that it will take the bread from the mouths of the hungry and swell the sums amassed by capitalists. But history shows that discovery heralds progress, and walks with it hand in hand. With the costless and unlimited power which will be made available, in every direction where power is required, all works of improvement will be carried out on a far grander scale than has ever been anticipated. The great polar stream, with its exhaustless supply of energy, places at our disposal a force as harmless as the current that draws its keeper to the magnet. We have but to “hook our machinery on to the machinery of nature,” and we have a safe and harmless propelling and controlling force, the conditions of which when once set up remain for ever, perpetual molecular action the result. Another step made toward the conquering of the material world which must precede the advent of the reign of the spirit.

Schlegel foresaw that the only hope for a brotherhood of humanity lay in the thorough religious regeneration of the State and of science, and that through these combined powers the underlying purpose of Eternal Mind is to be made known, covering the earth with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the beds of the seas, obtaining a complete triumph for Christianity.

It would fill with despair the hearts of those who are working to bring about this end (so slow, so retrograde at times does the evolution seem to be) did they not know that they have an Invincible Power working with them.

History has again repeated itself, and truth has once more had its birth in a stable. A star has arisen in the West which heralds to all races what the Star of Bethlehem heralded in Judea, viz. the coming of the time when the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the Lord. There are both Magi and shepherds now, as of old, who have watched for the rising of this star, and who were the first to behold the gold and crimson light of the approaching dawn; in which Faith, which modern science has crucified and laid away in its sepulchre, will have its resurrection and dwell on earth for evermore—the tabernacle of God with men.