The earth in the circle of its orbit passed through the tail of Halley's comet in May, 1910, and we hadn't even a pyrotechnical display of fire rockets to celebrate the occasion. In fact there was not a single celestial indication of the passage and we would not have known only for the calculations of the astronomer. The passing of a comet now, as far as fear is concerned, means no more, in fact not as much, as the passing of an automobile.
Science no doubt has made wonderful strides in our time, but far as it has gone, it has but opened for us the first few pages of the book of the heavens—the last pages of which no man shall ever read. For aeons upon aeons of time, worlds and suns, and systems of worlds and suns, revolved through the infinity of space, before man made his appearance on the tiny molecule of matter we call the earth, and for aeons upon aeons, for eternity upon eternity, worlds and suns shall continue to roll and revolve after the last vestige of man shall have disappeared, nay after the atoms of earth and sun and all his attending planets of our system shall have amalgamated themselves with other systems in the boundlessness of space; destroyed, obliterated, annihilated, they shall never be, for matter is indestructible. When it passes from one form it enters another; the dead animal that is cast into the earth lives again in the trees and shrubs and flowers and grasses that grow in the earth above where its body was cast. Our earth shall die in course of time, that is, its particles will pass into other compositions and it will be so of the other planets, of the suns, of the stars themselves, for as soon as the old ones die there will ever be new forms to which to attach themselves and thus the process of world development shall go on forever.
The nebulae which astronomers discover throughout the stellar space are extended masses of glowing gases of different forms and are worlds in process of formation. Such was the earth once. These gases solidify and contract and cool off until finally an inhabited world, inhabited by some kind of creatures, takes its place in the whirling galaxy of systems.
The stars which appear to us in a yellow or whitish yellow light are in the heyday of their existence, while those that present a red haze are almost burnt out and will soon become blackened, dead things disintegrating and crumbling and spreading their particles throughout space. It is supposed this little earth of ours has a few more million years to live, so we need not fear for our personal safety while in mortal form.
To us ordinary mortals the mystery as well as the majesty of the heavens have the same wonderful attraction as they had for the first of our race. Thousands of years ago the black-bearded shepherds of Eastern lands gazed nightly into the vaulted dome and were struck with awe as well as wonder in the contemplation of the glittering specks which appeared no larger than the pebbles beneath their feet.
We in our time as we gaze with unaided eye up at the mighty disk of the so called Milky Way, no longer regard the scintillating points glittering like diamonds in a jeweler's show-case, with feelings of awe, but the wonder is still upon us, wonder at the immensity of the works of Him who built the earth and sky, who, "throned in height sublime, sits amid the cherubim," King of the Universe, King of kings and Lord of lords. With a deep faith we look up and adore, then reverently exclaim,—"Lord, God! wonderful are the works of Thy Hands."
CHAPTER XVI
CAN WE COMMUNICATE WITH OTHER WORLDS?
Vastness of Nature—Star Distances—Problem of Communicating with
Mars—The Great Beyond.
A story is told of a young lady who had just graduated from boarding school with high honors. Coming home in great glee, she cast her books aside as she announced to her friends;—"Thank goodness it is all over, I have nothing more to learn. I know Latin and Greek, French and German, Spanish and Italian; I have gone through Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry, Conic Sections and the Calculus; I can interpret Beethoven and Wagner, and—but why enumerate?—in short, 'I know everything.'"