The Penn's Grove record., 1912-05-10

EE
not, my speculative friend, mil
lions of dollars, but, to begin
with, in millions Of miles.
Where were you last year at
this time? Just where you are now
and signing for some experience Of
travel" do you say? Why, my dear
sir. or madam, you have travelled some
hundreds OF millions of miles in this
twelvemonth and still are travelling.
What Is Panama or Constantinople or
Pekin in comparison with this great
journey Of the sun and its attendant
earth! While you have been longing
to go from Boston to Lynn to Visi:
friends, you have in fact traversed an
unimaginable breadth of space. The
difficulty of getting started is In your
imagination. The yeriest Lob-lie-by.
the-tire, in the remotest hamlet-eVen
that woman who lived for sixty years
within sight of the passing trains and
never stepped on board of one oil
them-is a far traveller.
Yes, but you say, that cosmic travel
is both unimaginable and unsatisfac
tory. Lynn and Boston are at least
real places where houses stand and
taxes are collected. One gets the ex
element of the crowded station and
may look out of the car window. But
u World-spiral round the Fastening
sun is like going from nowhither to
nowhere. There are neither stations
nor stops nor scenery.
Two Views of Lies Journey.
1t is quite true, of course, in one
sense, that the pleasures Of this
prodigious journey are largely out Of
sight. But do not the world and your
fellow travellers take on a different
aspect because you are not marooned
in some corner of the universe, but
travel in the midst of stars and suns!
These thoughts may not appeal tc
you. Perhaps your imagination is sc
make it work at all in this direction
Then you, are like the fly that buzzes
in a moving railroad car. 1t is IN
aware that its ear has moved from
Boston and will arrive in Montreal
So long as it finds food and occupa
ton, the journey is a matter Of iRdit.
ference. The fly is happy-let it buzz
and find no fault with its limitations.
1t will be quite as much at home In
Canada as Massachusetts. And Sc
are we, except that age draws on, in
all the stages of our unimaginable
i1,-r nh rI-iIo-4 DoorJno+iap
like the exactest research, cannot
grasp and picture the facts and i'm,
plications of this planetary and solar
fight-a journey where to stop would
be humiliation, and in which We have
no hint Of destination. Did we star
from anywhere? We can only guess
Are we bound for anywhere? We
can never know. Some of our friends
the astronomers, have reasoned thai
we are bound from a collision anC
catastrophe to a collision and catas
trophe. Others incline to guess tina
barring accidents-our journey nal
be endless.
The first effect of this thinking II
millions Of miles was to make mai
seem Insignificant and God remote
The poet Young, who told US that "Ar
undevout astronomer is mad" nigh
come back to find astronomers Of thii
degree of madness not uncommon
God, regarded as the artiticer, mus
certainly seem far away when W
consider the unthinkable distances We
-z-.. aal 49, 1roo+or enooae Ua die
r Man seems puny in the limita
lions Of his being and his knowledge
How slow Jul steps beside the stlen
onrush Of the earth. A mile a minute
is fast travelling for train or flight
But the sun flies, they estimate, som
sixteen miles a second-well TOWARD
a thousand miles while our Chicago
limited passes from milepost to mile
post on its journey. And the speed
of light from star to star is mucf
more than a hundred thousand time:
as great as that of the rolling train
How slow is mar in the midst OF the
swift movements of the universe, How
little is man, who thinks the little
earth so large.
Good In the New knowledge.
Yet the second and the real efee
of this new knowledge was different
1t helped displace the thought OF Coo
as the artiicer. 1t gave man real dig
nifty and close relations in a Larger
universe. How little and cramped thu
ancient maps of the earth in space
In fact, space, as we think of 1t, haC
no real existence for the ancients
They did not get outside the CLOSED
box in which sun, planets and star
went circling round the earth. In al
good faith many of them believed tina
Jerusalem was the physical center o
all things. IN place Of that concei
of our human Importance, we have
gained the thought of God as the sou
of the universe and made the ole
doctrine of his presence everywhere
something more than a cold dogma
II we can no longer localize the New
Jerusalem there was a man, | re
member, who wrote a book to prove
that the globe within the sun was oul
heaven), we are learning to think
that this earth is given US to make as
much like heaven as we can. And al
these things the Good Book told Ut