{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_15807/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_15807","id":"gutenberg_15807","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15807","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Nature/Gardening/Animals","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Religion and science","Science -- Juvenile literature"],"text":"E-text prepared by Al Haines\n\n\n\nNote: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this\n      file which includes the original illustrations.\n      See 15807-h.htm or 15807-h.zip:\n      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/5/8/0/15807/15807-h/15807-h.htm)\n      or\n      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/5/8/0/15807/15807-h.zip)\n\n\n\n\n\nAMONG THE FORCES\n\n  Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of\n  THY hands.--Psalm viii, 6\n\nby\n\nHENRY WHITE WARREN, LL.D.\n\nOne of the Bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church\nAuthor of \"Recreations in Astronomy,\" \"The Bible in the World's\nEducation,\" etc.\n\nNew York: Eaton & Mains\nCincinnati: Curts & Jennings\n\n1898\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n[Frontispiece: Old Faithful Geyser.]\n\n\n\n\nE. I. W.\n\nEximia Inter Vires.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n  Why Written\n  The Man Who Needed 452,696 Barrels of Water\n  The Sun's Great Horses\n  Old Sun Help\n  Moon Help\n  More Moon Help\n  Star Help\n  Help from Insensible Seas\n  The Fairy Gravitation\n  More Gravitation\n  The Fairy Pulls Great Loads\n  The Fairy Draws Greater Loads\n  The Fairy Works a Pump Handle\n  The Help of Inertia\n  One Plant Help\n  Gas Help\n  Natural Affection of Metals\n  Natural Affection Between Metal and Liquid\n  Natural Affection of Metal and Gas\n  Hint Help\n  Creations Now in Progress\n  Some Curious Behaviors of Atoms\n  Mobility of Seeming Solids\n  The Next World to Conquer\n  Our Enjoyment of Nature's Forces\n  The Matterhorn\n  The Grand Canon of the Colorado River.\n  The Yellowstone Park Geysers\n  Sea Sculpture\n  The Power of Vegetable Life\n  Spiritual Dynamics\n  When This World is Not\n\n\n\n\nLIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS\n\n  Old Faithful Geyser . . . . Frontispiece\n  Breaking Waves\n  Incline at Mauch Chunk\n  The Head of the Toboggan Slide.\n  The Big Trees\n  The Matterhorn\n  The Punch Bowl, Yellowstone Geysers.\n  Formation of the Grotto Geyser\n  Bee-Hive Geyser\n  Pulpit Terrace and Bunsen Peak\n  \"The Breakers,\" Santa Cruz, Cal.\n  The Work and the Worker, Santa Cruz, Cal.\n  Yellow Chili Squash in Harness\n  Squash Grown Under Pressure\n  A Natural Bridge, Santa Cruz, Cal.\n  An Excavated Arch, Santa Cruz, Cal\n  A Double Natural Arch, Santa Cruz, Cal.\n  A Triple Natural Arch, Santa Cruz, Cal.\n  Remains of a Quadruple Natural Arch\n  Arch Remains, Side Wall Broken\n\n\n\n\nAMONG THE FORCES\n\n\nWHY WRITTEN\n\nFairies, fays, genii, sprites, etc., were once supposed to be helpful\nto some favored men.  The stories about these imaginary beings have\nalways had a fascinating interest.  The most famous of these stories\nwere told at Bagdad in the eleventh century, and were called _The\nArabian Nights' Entertainment_.  Then men were said to use all sorts of\nobedient powers, sorceries, tricks, and genii to aid them in getting\nwealth, fame, and beautiful brides.\n\nBut I find the realities of to-day far greater, more useful and\ninteresting, than the imaginations of the past.  The powers at work\nabout us are far more kindly and powerful than the Slave of the Ring or\nof the Lamp.\n\nThe object of writing this series of papers about applications of\npowers to the service of man, their designed king, is manifold.  I\ndesire all my readers to see what marvelous provision the Father has\nmade for his children in this their nursery and schoolhouse.  He has\nalways been trying to crowd on men more helps and blessings than they\nwere willing to take.  From the first mist that went up from the Garden\nthe power of steam has been in every drop of water.  Yet men carried\ntheir burdens.  Since the first storm the swiftness and power of\nlightning have been trying to startle man into seeing that in it were\nspeed and force to carry his thought and himself.  But man still\nplodded and groaned under loads that might have been lifted by physical\nforces.  I have seen in many lands men bringing to their houses water\nfrom the hills in heavy stone jars.  Gravitation was meant to do that\nwork, and to make it leap and laugh with pearly spray in every woman's\nkitchen.  The good Father has offered his all-power on all occasions to\nall men.\n\nI desire that the works of God should keep their designed relation to\nthought.  He says, Consider the lilies; look into the heavens; number\nthe stars; go to the ant; be wise; ask the beasts, the fowl, the\nfishes; or \"talk even to the earth, and it showeth thee.\"\n\nEvery flower and star, rainbow and insect, was meant to be so\nprovocative of thought that any man who never saw a human book might be\nlargely educated.  And every one of these thoughts is related to man's\nbest prosperity and joy.  He is a most regal king if he achieve the\ndesigned dominion over a thousand powerful servitors.\n\nIt is well to see that God's present actual powers in full play about\nus are vastly beyond all the dreams of Arabian imagination.  It leads\nus to expect greater things of him hereafter.  That human imagination\ncould so dream is proof of the greatness of its Creator.  But that he\nhas actually surpassed those dreams is prophecy of more greatness to\ncome.\n\nI desire that my readers of this generation shall be the great thinkers\nand inventors of the next.  There are amazing powers just waiting to be\nrevealed.  Draw aside the curtain.  We have not yet learned the A B C\nof science.  We have not yet grasped the scepters of provided dominion.\nThose who are most in the image and likeness of the Cause of these\nforces are most likely to do it.\n\n\n\n\nTHE MAN WHO NEEDED 452,696 BARRELS OF WATER\n\nA man once had a large field of wheat.  He had toiled hard to clear the\nland, plow the soil, and sow the seed.  The crop grew beautifully and\nwas his joy by day and by night.  But when it was just ready to head\nout it suddenly stopped growing for want of moisture.  It looked as if\nall his hard work would be in vain.  The poor farmer thought of his\nwife and children, who were likely to starve in the coming winter.  He\nshed many tears, but they could not moisten one little stalk.\n\nSuddenly he said, \"I will water it myself.\"  The field was a mile\nsquare, and it needed an inch of water over it all.  He quickly figured\nout that there were 27,878,400 square feet in a square mile.  On every\ntwelve square feet a cubic foot of water was needed.  A cubic foot of\nwater weighs sixty-two and a third pounds.  Hence it would require\n74,754 tons of water.  To draw this amount 74,754 teams, each drawing a\nton, would be required.  But they would tramp the wheat all down.\nBesides, the nearest water in sufficient quantity was the ocean, one\nthousand miles away over the mountains.  It would take three months to\nmake the journey.  And, worse than all else, the water of the ocean is\nso salt that it would ruin the crop.\n\n[Illustration: Breaking Waves.]\n\nAlas! there were three impossibilities--so many teams, so many\nmiles, so long time--and two ruins if he could overcome the\nimpossibilities--trampling down the wheat and bringing so much salt.\nAlas, alas! what could he do but see the poor wheat die of thirst and\nhis poor wife and children die of hunger?\n\nSuddenly he determined to ask the sun to help him.  And the sun said he\nwould.  That was a very little thing for such a great body to do.  So\nhe heated the air over the ocean till it became so thirsty that it\ndrank plenty of water, choosing only the sweet fresh water and leaving\nall the salt in the ocean.  Then the warm air rose, because the heat\nhad expanded it and made it lighter, and the other air rushed down the\nmountains all over that side of the continent to take its place.  Then\nthe warm air went landward in an upper current and carried its load of\nwater in great piles and mountains of clouds; it lifted them over the\ngreat ranges of mountains and rained down its thousands of tons of\nsweet water a thousand miles from the sea, so gently that not a stalk\nof wheat was trampled down, nor was a single root made acrid by any\ntaste of brine.\n\nBesides the precious drink the sun brought the most delicate food for\nthe wheat.  There was carbonic acid, that makes soda water so\ndelicious, besides oxygen, that is so stimulating, nitrogen, ammonia,\nand half a dozen other things that are so nutritious to growing plants.\n\nThus the wheat grew up in beauty, headed out abundantly, and matured\nperfectly.  Then the farmer stopped weeping for laughter, and in his\njoy he remembered to thank, not the sun, nor the wind, but the great\nOne who made them both.\n\n\n\n\nTHE SUN'S GREAT HORSES\n\nThere was once a man who had thousands of acres of mighty forests in\nthe distant mountains.  They were valueless there, but would be\nexceedingly valuable in the great cities hundreds of miles away, if he\ncould only find any power to transport them thither.  So he looked for\na team that could haul whole counties of forests so many miles.  He saw\nthat the sun drew the greatest loads, and he asked it to help him.  And\nthe sun said that was what he was made for; he existed only to help\nman.  He said that he had made those great forests to grow for a\nthousand years so as to be ready for man when he needed them, and that\nhe was now ready to help move them where they were wanted.\n\nSo he told the man who owned the forest that there was a great power,\nwhich men called gravitation, that seemed to reside in the center of\nthe earth and every other world, but that it worked everywhere.  It\nheld the stones down to the earth, made the rain fall, and water to run\ndown hill; and if the man would arrange a road, so that gravitation and\nthe sun could work together, the forest would soon be transported from\nthe mountains to the sea.\n\nSo the man made a trough a great many miles long, the two sides coming\ntogether like a great letter V.  Then the sun brought water from the\nsea and kept the trough nearly full year after year.  The man put into\nit the lumber and logs from the great forests, and gravitation pulled\nthe lumber and water ever so swiftly, night and day, miles away to the\nsea.\n\nHow I have laughed as I have seen that perpetual stream of lumber and\ntimber pour out so far from where the sun grew them for man.  For the\nsun never ceased to supply the water, and gravitation never ceased to\npull.\n\nThis man who relentlessly cut down the great forests never said, \"How\ngood the sun is!\" nor, \"How strong is gravitation!\" but said\ncontinually, \"How smart I am!\"\n\n\n\n\nOLD SUN HELP\n\nHolland is a land that is said to draw twenty feet of water.  Its\nsurface is below sea level.  Since 1440 they have been recovering land\nfrom the sea.  They have acquired 230,000 acres in all.  Fifty years\nago they diked off 45,000 acres of an arm of the sea, called Haarlem\nMeer, that had an average depth of twelve and three quarters feet of\nwater, and proposed to pump it out so as to have that much more fertile\nland.  They wanted to raise 35,000,000 tons of water a month a distance\nof ten feet, to get through in time.  Who could work the handle?\n\nThe sun would evaporate two inches a year, but that was too slow.  So\nthey used the old force of the sun, reservoired in former ages.  Coal\nis condensed sunshine, still keeping all the old light and power.  By a\nsuitable engine they lifted 112 tons ten feet at every stroke, and in\n1848, five years after they began to apply old sun force, 41,675 acres\nwere ready for sale and culture.\n\nThe water that accumulates now, from rain and infiltration, is lifted\nout by the sun force as exhibited in wind on windmills.  They\ngroaningly work while men sleep.\n\nThe Netherlandish engineers are now devising plans to pump out the\nZuyder Zee, an area of two thousand square miles.  There is plenty of\npower of every kind for anything, material, mental, spiritual.  The\nproblem is the application of it.  The thinker is king.\n\nThis is only one instance of numberless applications of old sun force.\nIn this country coal does more work than every man, woman, and child in\nthe whole land.  It pumps out deep mines, hoists ore to the surface,\nspeeds a thousand trains, drives great ships, in face of waves and\nwinds, thousands of miles and faster than transcontinental trains.  It\ndigs, spins, weaves, saws, planes, grinds, plows, reaps, and does\neverything it is asked to do.  It is a vast reservoir of force, for the\naccumulation of which thousands of years were required.\n\n\n\n\nMOON HELP\n\nAt Foo-Chow, China, there is a stone bridge, more than a mile long,\nuniting the two parts of the city.  It is not constructed with arches,\nbut piers are built up from the bottom of the river and great granite\nstringers are laid horizontally from pier to pier.  I measured some of\nthese great stone stringers, and found them to be three feet square and\nforty-five feet long.  They weigh over thirty tons each.\n\nHow could they be lifted, handled, and put in place over the water on\nslender piers?  How was it done?  There was no Hercules to perform the\nmighty labor, nor Amphion to lure them to their place with the music of\nhis golden lyre.\n\nTradition says that the Chinese, being astute astronomers, got the moon\nto do the work.  It was certainly very shrewd, if they did.  Why not\nuse the moon for more than a lantern?  Is it not a part of the \"all\nthings\" over which man was made to have dominion?\n\nWell, the Chinese engineers brought the great granite blocks to the\nbridge site on floats, and when the tide lifted the floats and stones\nthey blocked up the stones on the piers and let the floats sink with\nthe outgoing tide.  Then they blocked up the stones on the floats\nagain, and as the moon lifted the tides once more they lifted the\nstones farther toward their place, until at length the work was done\nfor each set of stones.\n\nDear, good moon, what a pull you have!  You are not merely for the\ndelight of lovers, pleasant as you are for that, but you are ready to\ndo gigantic work.\n\nNo wonder that the Chinese, as they look at the solid and enduring\ncharacter of that bridge, name it, after the poetic and flowery habit\nof the country, \"The Bridge of Ten Thousand Ages.\"\n\n\n\n\nMORE MOON HELP\n\nYears ago, before there were any railroads, New York city had thousands\nof tons of merchandise it wished to send out West.  Teams were few and\nslow, so they asked the moon to help.  It was ready; had been waiting\nthousands of years.\n\nWe shall soon see that it is easy to slide millions of tons of coal\ndown hill, but how could we slide freight up from New York to Albany?\n\nIt is very simple.  Lift up the lower end of the river till it shall be\ndown hill all the way to Albany.  But who can lift up the end of the\nriver?  The moon.  It reaches abroad over the ocean and gathers up\nwater from afar, brings it up by Cape Hatteras and in from toward\nEngland, pours it in through the Narrows, fills up the great harbor,\nand sets the great Hudson flowing up toward Albany.  Then men put their\nbig boats on the current and slide up the river.  Six hours later the\nmoon takes the water out of the harbor and lets other boats slide the\nother way.\n\nNew York itself has made use of the moon to get rid of its immense\namount of garbage and sewage.  It would soon breed a pestilence, and\nthe city be like the buried cities of old; but the moon comes to its\naid, and carries away and buries all this foul breeder of a pestilence,\nand washes all the harbor and bay with clean floods of water twice a\nday.  Good moon!  It not only lights, but works.\n\nThe tide in New York Harbor rises only about five feet; up in the Bay\nof Fundy it ramps, rushes, raves, and rises more than fifty feet high.\n\nIn former times men used to put mill wheels into the currents of the\ntides; when they rushed into little bays and salt ponds they turned the\nwheels one way; when out, the other.\n\n\n\n\nSTAR HELP\n\n  \"We for whose sake all Nature stands,\n  And stars their courses move.\"\n\nDo the stars, that are so far away and seem so small, send us any help?\nAssuredly.  Nothing exists for itself.  All is for man.\n\nMagnetism tells the sailor which way he is going.  Stars not only do\nthis, when visible, but they also tell just where on the round globe he\nis.  A glance into their bright eyes, from a rolling deck, by an\nuneducated sailor, aided by the tables of accomplished scholars, tells\nhim exactly where he is--in mid Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Arctic, or\nAntarctic Ocean, or at the mouth of the harbor he has sought for\nmonths.  We lift up our eyes higher than the hills.  Help comes from\nthe skies.\n\nThis help was started long since, with providential foresight and care.\nIs he steering by the North Star?  A ray of guidance was sent from that\nlighthouse in the sky half a century before his need, that it might\narrive just at the critical time.  It has been ever since on its way.\n\nThe stars give us, on land and sea, all our reliable standards of time.\nThere is no other source.  They are reliable to the hundredth part of a\nsecond.\n\nThe Italian physicians, in their ignorance of the origin of a disease,\nnamed it the influenza, because they imagined that it came from the\ninfluence of the stars.  No!  There is nothing malign in the sweet\ninfluences of the Pleiades.\n\nThe stars are of special use as a mental gymnasium.  On their lofty\nbars and trapezes the mind can swing itself higher and farther than on\nany other material thing.  Infinity and omnipotence are factors in\ntheir problems.  They also fill the soul of the rapt beholder with\nadoring wonder.  They are the greatest symbols of the unweariableness\nof the power and of the minuteness of the knowledge of God.  He calleth\nall their millions by name, and for the greatness of his power not one\nfaileth to come.\n\nNumber the stars of a clear Eastern sky, if you are able.  So\nmultitudinous and enduring shall the influence of one good man be.\n\n\n\n\nHELP FROM INSENSIBLE SEAS\n\nSuppose one has been at sea a month.  He has tacked to every point of\nthe compass, been driven by gales, becalmed in doldrums.  At length\nEuroclydon leaps on him, and he lets her drive.  And when for many days\nand nights neither sun nor stars appear, how can he tell where he is,\nwhich way he drives, where the land lies?\n\nThere is an insensible ocean.  No sense detects its presence.  It has\ngulf streams that flow through us, storms whose waves engulf us, but we\nfeel them not.  There are various intensities of its power, the north\nend of the world not having half as much as the south.  There are two\nplaces in the north half of the world that have greater intensity than\nthe rest, and only one in the south.  It looks as if there were\nunsoundable depths in some places and shoals in others.\n\nThe currents do not flow in exactly the same direction all the time,\nbut their variations are within definite limits.\n\nHow shall we detect these steady currents when wind and waves are in\ntumultuous confusion?  They are always present.  No winds blow them\naside, no waves drench their subtle fire, no mountains make them\nswerve.  But how shall we find them?\n\nFloat a bit of magnetic ore in a pail of water, or suspend a bit of\nmagnetized steel by a thread, and these currents make the ore or needle\npoint north and south.  Now let waves buffet either side, typhoons\nroar, and maelstroms whirl; we have, out of the invisible, insensible\nsea of magnetic influence, a sure and steady guide.  Now we can sail\nout of sight of headlands.  We have in the darkness and light, in calm\nand storm, an unswerving guide.  Now Columbus can steer for any new\nworld.\n\nDoes not this seem like a spiritual force?  Lodestone can impart its\nqualities to hard steel without the impairment of its own power.  There\nis a giving that does not impoverish, and a withholding that does not\nenrich.\n\nWherever there is need there is supply.  The proper search with\nappropriate faculties will find it.  There are yet more things in\nheaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy.\n\n\n\n\nTHE FAIRY GRAVITATION\n\nThe Germans imagine that they have fairy kobolds, sprites, and gnomes\nwhich play under ground and haunt mines.  I know a real one.  I will\ngive you his name.  It is called \"Gravitation.\"  The name does not\nsound any more fairylike than a sledge hammer, but its nature and work\nare as fairylike as a spider's web.  I will give samples of his helpful\nwork for man.\n\nIn the mountains about Saltzburg, south of Munich, are great thick beds\nof solid salt.  How can they get it down to the cities where it is\nneeded?  Instead of digging it out, and packing it on the backs of\nmules for forty miles, they turn in a stream of water and make a little\nlake which absorbs very much salt--all it can carry.  Then they lay a\npipe, like a fairy railroad, and gravitation carries the salt water\ngently and swiftly forty miles, to where the railroads can take it\neverywhere.  It goes so easily!  There is no railroad to build, no car\nto haul back, only to stand still and see gravitation do the work.\n\nHow do they get the salt and water apart?  O, just as easily.  They ask\nthe wind to help them.  They cut brush about four feet long, and pile\nit up twenty feet high and as long as they please.  Then a pipe with\nholes in it is laid along the top, the water trickles down all over the\nloose brush, and the thirsty wind blows through and drinks out most of\nthe water.  They might let on the water so slowly that all of it would\nbe drunk out by the wind, leaving the solid salt on the bushes.  But\nthey do not want it there.  So they turn on so much water that the\nthirsty wind can drink only the most of it, and the rest drops down\ninto great pans, needing only a little evaporation by boiling to become\nbeautiful salt again, white as the snows of December.\n\nThere are other minerals besides salt in the beds in the mountains,\nand, being soluble in water, they also come down the tiny railroad with\nmusical laughter.  How can we separate them, so that the salt shall be\npure for our tables?\n\nThe other minerals are less avaricious of water than salt, so they are\nprecipitated, or become solid, sooner than salt does.  Hence with nice\ncare the other minerals can be left solid on the bushes, while the salt\nbrine falls off.  Afterward pure water can be turned on and these other\nminerals can be washed off in a solution of their own.  No fairies\ncould work better than those of solution and crystallization.\n\n\n\n\nMORE GRAVITATION\n\nAt Hutchinson, Kan., there are great beds of solid rock salt four\nhundred feet below the surface.  Men want to get and use two thousand\nbarrels a day.  How shall they get it to the top of the ground?  They\nmight dig a great well--or, as the miners say, sink a shaft--pump out\nthe water, go down and blast out the salt, and laboriously haul it up\nin defiance of gravitation.  No; that is too hard.  Better ask this\nstrong gravitation to bring it up.\n\nBut does it work down and up?  Did any one ever know of gravitation\nraising anything?  O yes, many things.  A balloon may weigh as much as\na ton, but when inflated it weighs less than so much air; so the\nheavier air flows down under and shoulders it up.  When a heavy weight\nand a light one are hung over a pulley, the light one goes up because\ngravity acts more on the other.  Water poured down a long tube will\nrise if the tube is bent up into a shorter arm.\n\nExactly.  So we bore a four-inch hole down to the salt and put in an\niron tube.\n\nWe do not care about the water.  It is no bother.  Then inside of this\ntube we put a two-inch tube that is a few feet higher.  Now pour water\ndown the small longer tube.  It saturates itself with salt, and comes\nflowing over the top of the shorter tube as easily as water runs down\nhill.  Multiply the wells, dry out the water, and you have your two\nthousand barrels of salt lifted every day--just as easy as thinking!\n\nWe want a steady, unswerving force that will pull our clock hands with\nan exact motion day and night, year in and year out.  We hang up a\nstring, and ask gravitation to take hold and pull.  We put on some lead\nor brass for a handle, to take hold of.  It takes hold and pulls,\nunweariedly, unvaryingly, and ceaselessly.\n\nIt turns single water-wheels with a power of more than twelve hundred\nhorses.\n\nIt holds down houses, so that they are not blown away.  It was made to\nserve man, and it works without a grumble.\n\nThus the higher force in nature always prevails over the lower, and the\ngreater amount over the less amount of the same force.  What is the\nhighest force?\n\n\n\n\nTHE FAIRY PULLS GREAT LOADS\n\nFar back in the hills west of Mauch Chunk, Pa., lie great beds of coal.\nThey were made under the sea long ages ago, raised up, roofed over by\nthe Allegheny Mountains, and kept waiting as great reservoirs of power\nfor the use of man.\n\nBut how can these mountains be gotten to the distant cities by the sea?\nFaith in what power can say to these mountains, \"Be thou removed far\nhence, and cast into the sea?\"  It is easy.\n\nAlong the winding sides of the mountains have been laid two rails like\nsteel ribbons for a dozen miles, from the coal beds to water and\nrailroad transportation.  Put a half dozen loaded cars on the track,\nand with one man at the brake, lest gravitation should prove too\nwilling a helper, away they go, through the springtime freshness or the\nautumn glory, spinning and singing down to the point of universal\ndistribution.\n\n[Illustration: Incline at Mauch Chunk.]\n\nOn one occasion the brake for some reason would not work.  The cars\njust flew like an arrow.  The man's hair stood up from fright and the\nwind.  Coming to a curve the cars kept straight on, ran down a bank,\ndashed right into the end of a house and spilled their whole load in\nthe cellar.  Probably no man ever laid in a winter's supply of coal so\nquickly or so undesirably.\n\nBut how do we get the cars back?  It is pleasant sliding down hill on a\nrail, but who pulls the sled back?  Gravitation.  It is just as willing\nto work both ways as one way.\n\nThink of a great letter X a dozen miles long.\n\nLay it down on the side against three or four rough hills.  Bend the X\ntill it will fit the curves and precipices of these hills.  That is the\ndouble track.  Now when loaded cars have come down one bar of the X by\ngravity, draw them up by a sharp incline to the upper end of the other\nbar, and away they go by gravity to the other end.  Draw them up one\nmore incline, and they are ready to take a new load and buzz down to\nthe bottom again.\n\nI have been riding round the glorious mountain sides in a horseless,\nsteamless, electricityless carriage, and been delighted to find\nhundreds of tons of coal shooting over my head at the crossings of the\nX, and both cars were drawn in opposite directions by the same force of\ngravity in the heart of the earth.\n\nIf you do not take off your hat and cheer for the superb force of\ngravitation, the wind is very apt to take it off for you.\n\n\n\n\nTHE FAIRY DRAWS GREATER LOADS\n\nPittsburg has 5,000,000 tons of coal every year that it wishes to send\nSouth, much of it as far as New Orleans--2,050 miles.  What force is\nsufficient for moving such great mountains so far?  Any boy may find it.\n\nTie a stone to the end of a string, whirl it around the finger and feel\nit pull.  How much is the pull?  That depends on the weight of the\nstone, the length of the string, and the swiftness of the whirl.  In\nthe case of David's sling it pulled away hard enough to crash into the\nhead of Goliath.  Suppose the stone to be as big as the earth (8,000\nmiles in diameter), the length of the string to be its distance from\nthe sun (92,500,000 miles), and the swiftness of flight the speed of\nthe earth in its orbit (1,000 miles a minute).  The pull represents the\npower of gravitation that holds the earth to the sun.\n\nIf we use steel wires instead of gravitation for this purpose, each\nstrong enough to support half a score of people (1,500 pounds), how\nmany would it take?  We would need to distribute them over the whole\nearth: from pole to pole, from side to side, over all the land and sea.\nThen they would need to be so near together that a mouse could not run\naround among them.\n\nHere is a measureless power.  Can it be gotten to take Pittsburgh coal\nto New Orleans?  Certainly; it was made to serve man.  So the coal is\nput on great flatboats, 36 x 176 feet, a thousand tons to a boat, and\ngravitation takes the mighty burden down the long toboggan slide of the\nOhio and Mississippi Rivers to the journey's end.  How easy!\n\n[Illustration: The Head of the Toboggan Slide.]\n\nOne load sent down was 43,000 tons.  The flatboats were lashed together\nas one solid boat covering six and one half acres, more space than a\nwhole block of houses in a city, with one little steamboat to steer.\nThere is always plenty of power; just belt on for anything you want\ndone.  This is only one thing that gravitation does for man on these\nrivers.  And there are many rivers.  They serve the savage on his log\nand the scientist in his palace steamer with equal readiness.\n\n\n\n\nTHE FAIRY WORKS A PUMP HANDLE\n\nThe Slave of the Ring could take Aladdin into a cave of wealth, and by\nspeaking the words, \"Open Sesame,\" Ali Baba was admitted into the cave\nthat held the treasures of the forty thieves.  But that is very little.\nI have just come from a cave in Virginia City, Nev., from which men\ntook $120,000,000.\n\nIn following the veins of silver the miners went down 3,500 feet--more\nthan three fifths of a mile.  There it was fearfully hot, but the main\ntrouble was water.  They had dug a deep, deep well.  How could they get\nthe water out?  Pumps were of no use.  A column of water one foot\nsquare of that height weighs 218,242 pounds.  Who could work the other\nend of the pump handle?\n\nThey thought of evaporating the water and sending it up as steam.  But\nit was found that it would take an incredible amount of coal.  They\nthought of separating it into oxygen and hydrogen, and then its own\nlightness would carry it up very quickly.  But they had no power that\nwould resolve even quarts into their ultimate elements, where tons\nwould be required.\n\nSo they asked gravitation to help them.  It readily offered to do so.\nIt could not let go its hold of the water in the mine, nor anywhere\nelse, for fear everything would go to pieces, but it offered to\novercome force with greater force.  So it sent the men twenty miles\naway in the mountains to dig a ditch all the way to the mine, and then\ngravitation brought water to a reservoir four hundred feet above the\nmouth of the mine.  Now a column of this water one foot square can be\ntaken from this higher reservoir down to the bottom of the mine and\nweigh 25,000 pounds more than a like column that comes from the bottom\nto the top.  This extra 25,000 pounds is an extra force available to\nlift itself and the other water out of the deep well, and they turn the\ngreater force into a pump and work it in the cylinder as if it were\nsteam.  It lifts not only the water that works the pump, but the other\nwater also out of the mine by gravitation.  So man gets the water out\nby pouring more water in.\n\n\n\n\nTHE HELP OF INERTIA\n\nSince the time of David many boys have swung pebbles by a string, or\nsling, and felt the pull of what we call a centrifugal (center-fleeing)\nforce.  David utilized it to one good purpose.  Goliath was greatly\nsurprised; such a thing never entered his head before.  Whether a stone\nor an idea enters one's head depends on the kind of head he has.\n\nWe utilize this force in many ways now.  Some boys swing a pail of milk\nover their heads, and if swung fast enough the centrifugal force\novercomes the force of gravitation, and the milk does not fall.  That\nis not utilizing the force.  It often terrorizes the careful mother,\nanxious for the safety of the milk.\n\nBut in the arts of practical life we do utilize this force, which is\nonly inertia.\n\nOnce it took a long time for molasses to drain out of a hogshead of\ndamp sugar.  Now it is put into a great tub, with holes in the side,\nwhich is made to revolve rapidly, and the molasses flies out.  In the\nbest laundries clothes are not wrung out, to the great damage of tender\nfabrics, but are put into such a tub and whirled nearly dry.  So fifty\nyards of woolen cloth just out of the dye vat--who could wring it?  It\nis coiled in a tub called a wizard, and whirled.\n\nMuddy water is put through a process called clarification.  It is the\nsame, except that there are no holes in the vessel.  The heavier\nparticles of dirt, that would settle in time, take the outside, leaving\nperfectly clean water in the middle.  A perpendicular perforated pipe,\nwith a faucet below, drains off all the clear water and leaves all the\nmud.  Milk is brought in from the milking and put into a separator;\nwhirl it, and the heavier milk takes the outside of the whirling mass,\nand the lighter cream can be drawn off from the middle.  It is far more\nperfectly separated than by any skimming.\n\nA rotary snowplow slices off two feet of a ten-foot drift at each\nrevolution, and by centrifugal force flings it out of the cutting with\na speed that a hundred navvies or dagos cannot equal.\n\n\n\n\nONE PLANT HELP\n\nA thousand acres of land on Cape Cod were once blown away.  This wind\nexcavation was ten feet deep.  It was not an extraordinary wind, but\nextraordinary land.  It was made of rock ground up into fine sand by\nthe waves on the shore.\n\nIn all the deserts of the world the wind blows the itinerant sand on\nits far journeys.  If the wind is moderate it heaps the sand up into\nlittle hills, some of them six hundred feet high, around any\nobstruction, and then blows the sand up the slanting face of the hill\nand over the top, where it falls out of the wind on the leeward side.\nIn this way the hill is always traveling.  In North Carolina hills\nstart inland, and travel right on, burying a house or farm if it be in\nthe way, but resurrecting it again on the other side as the hill goes\non.  Anyone may see these hills at the south end of Lake Michigan, as\nhe approaches Chicago, west of San Francisco, all along up the Columbia\nRiver--the sand having come on the wings of the wind from the coast.\n\nBut to see the whole visible world on a march one needs to go to a\nreally large desert.  The Pyramids and the Sphinx have been partly\nburied, and parts of the valley of the Nile threatened, by hordes of\nsand hills marching in from the desert; cities have been buried and\nharbors filled up.  Many of the harbors of the ancient civilizations\nare mere miasmatic marshes now.  This is partly in consequence of the\nsilt brought in by the rivers; but where the rivers do not flow in it\nis because the sand blows in along the shore.  Harbors are especially\nendangered when their protection from the waves consists of a bank of\nsand, as on Cape Cod and the Sandy Hook below the Narrows of the harbor\nof New York.\n\nHow can man combat part of the continent on the move, driven by the\nceaseless powers of the air?  By a humble plant or two.  The movement\nof the sand hills that threaten to destroy the marvelous beauty of the\ngrounds of the Hotel del Monte at Monterey is stopped by planting dwarf\npines.  The sand dunes that prevent much of Holland from being\nreconquered by the sea are protected with great care by willows, etc.,\nand the coast sands of parts of eastern France have been sown with sea\npine and broom.\n\nThe tract of a thousand acres on Cape Cod had been protected by humble\nbeach grass.  Some careless herder let the cows eat it in places, and\naway went part of a township.  It is now a punishable crime on Cape Cod\nto destroy beach grass.\n\n\n\n\nGAS HELP\n\nThis refers to more than stump speech-making.  The old Romans drove\nthrough solid rock numerous tunnels similar to the one for draining\nLago de Celano, fifty miles east of Rome.  This one was three and a\nhalf miles long, through solid rock, and every chip cost a blow of a\nhuman arm to dislodge it.  Of course the process was very slow.\n\nWe do works vastly greater.  We drive tunnels three times as long for\ndouble-track railways through rock that is held down by an Alp.  We use\ncommon air to drill the holes and a thin gas to break the rock.  The\nMont Cenis tunnel required the removal of 900,000 cubic yards of rock.\nNear Dover, England, 1,000,000,000 tons of cliff were torn down and\nscattered over fifteen acres in an instant.  How was it done?  By gas.\n\nThere are a dozen kinds of solids which can be handled--some of them\nfrozen, thawed, soaked in water, with impunity--but let a spark of fire\ntouch them and they break into vast volumes of uncontrollable gas that\nwill rend the heart out of a mountain in order to expand.\n\nGunpowder was first used in 1350; so the old Romans knew nothing of its\npower.  They flung javelins a few rods by the strength of the arm; we\nthrow great iron shells, starting with an initial velocity of fifteen\nhundred feet a second and going ten miles.  The air pressure against\nthe front of a fifteen-inch shell going at that speed is 2,865 pounds.\nThat ton and a half of resistance of gas in front must be much more\nthan overcome by gas behind.\n\nBut the least use of explosives is in war; not over ten per cent is so\nused.  The Mont Cenis tunnel took enough for 200,000,000 musket\ncartridges.  As much as 2,000 kegs have been fired at once in\nCalifornia to loosen up gravel for mining, and 23 tons were exploded at\nonce under Hell Gate, at New York.\n\nHow strong is this gas?  As strong as you please.  Steam is sometimes\nworked at a pressure of 400 pounds to the inch, but not usually over\n100 pounds.  It would be no use to turn steam into a hole drilled in\nrock.  The ordinary pressure of exploded gas is 80,000 pounds to the\nsquare inch.  It can be made many times more forceful.  It works as\nwell in water, under the sea, or makes earthquakes in oil wells 2,000\nfeet deep, as under mountains.\n\nThe wildest imagination of Scheherezade never dreamed in _Arabian\nNights_ of genii that had a tithe of the power of these real forces.\nHer genii shut up in bottles had to wait centuries for some fisherman\nto let them out.\n\n\n\n\nNATURAL AFFECTION OF METALS\n\n\"Sacra fames auri.\"  The hunger for gold, which in men is called\naccursed, in metals is justly called sacred.\n\nIn all the water of the sea there is gold--about 400 tons in a cubic\nmile--in very much of the soil, some in all Philadelphia clay, in the\nPactolian sands of every river where Midas has bathed, and in many\nrocks of the earth.  But it is so fine and so mixed with other\nsubstances that in many cases it cannot be seen.  Look at the ore from\na mine that is giving its owners millions of dollars.  Not a speck of\ngold can be seen.  How can it be secured?  Set a trap for it.  Put down\nsomething that has an affinity--voracious appetite, unslakable thirst,\nmetallic affection--for gold, and they will come together.\n\nWe have heard of potable gold--\"_potabile aurum_.\"  There are metals to\nwhich all gold is drinkable.  Mercury is one of them.  Cut transverse\nchannels, or nail little cleats across a wooden chute for carrying\nwater.  Put mercury in the grooves or before the cleats, and shovel\nauriferous gravel and sand into the rushing water.  The mercury will\nbibulously drink into itself all the fine invisible gold, while the\nunaffectionate sand goes on, bereaved of its wealth.\n\nPut gold-bearing quartz under an upright log shod with iron.  Lift and\ndrop the log a few hundred times on the rock, until it is crushed so\nfine that it flows over the edge of the trough with constantly going\nwater, and an amalgam of mercury spread over the inclined way down\nwhich the endusted water flows will drink up all the gold by force of\nnatural affection therefor.\n\nNeither can the gold be seen in the mercury.  But it is there.  Squeeze\nthe mercury through chamois skin.  An amalgam, mostly gold, refuses to\ngo through.  Or apply heat.  The mercury flies away as vapor and the\ngold remains.\n\nIf thou seekest for wisdom as for silver, and searchest for her as for\nhid treasure, thou shalt find.\n\n\n\n\nNATURAL AFFECTION BETWEEN METAL AND LIQUID\n\nA little boy had a silver mug that he prized very highly, as it was the\ngift of his grandfather.  The boy was not born with a silver spoon in\nhis mouth, but, what was much better, he had a mug often filled with\nwhat he needed.\n\nOne day he dipped it into a glass jar of what seemed to him water, and\nletting go of it saw it go to the bottom.  He went to find his father\nto fish it out for him.  When he came back his heavy solid mug looked\nas if it were made of the skeleton leaves of the forest when the green\nchlorophyll has decayed away in the winter and left only the gauzy\nveins and veinlets through which the leaves were made.  Soon even this\nfretwork was gone, and there was no sign of it to be seen.  The liquid\nhad eaten or drank the solid metal up, particle by particle.  The\nliquid was nitric acid.\n\nThe poor little boy had often seen salt, and especially sugar, absorbed\nin water, but never his  precious solid silver mug, and the bright\ntears rolled down his cheeks freely.\n\nBut his father thought of two things: First, that the blue tint told\nhim that the jeweler had sold for silver to the grandfather a mug that\nwas part copper; and secondly, that he would put some common salt into\nthe nitric acid--which it liked so much better than silver that it\ndropped the silver, just as a boy might drop bread when he sought to\nfill his hands with cake.\n\nSo the father recovered the invisible silver and made it into a\nprecious mug again.\n\n\n\n\nNATURAL AFFECTION OP METAL AND GAS\n\nA man was waked up one night in a strange house by a noise he could not\nunderstand.  He wanted a light, and wanted it very much, but he had no\nmatches that would take fire by the heat of friction.  He knew of many\nother ways of starting a fire.  If water gets to the cargo of lime in a\nvessel it sets the ship on fire.  It is of no use to try to put it out\nby water, for it only makes more heat.  He knew that dried alum and\nsugar suitably mixed would burst into flame if exposed to the air; that\nnitric acid and oil of turpentine would take fire if mixed; that flint\nstruck by steel would start fire enough to explode a powder magazine;\nand that Elijah called down from heaven a kind of fire that burned\ntwelve \"barrels\" of water as easily as ordinary water puts out ordinary\nfire.  But he had none of these ways of lighting his candle at\nhand--not even the last.\n\nSo he took a bit of potassium metal, bright as silver, out of a bottle\nof naphtha, put it in the candle wick, touched it with a bit of\ndripping ice, and so lighted his candle.\n\nThe potassium was so avaricious of oxygen that it decomposed the water\nto get it.  Indeed, it was a case of mutual affection.  The oxygen\npreferred the company of potassium to that of the hydrogen in the\nwater, and went to it even at the risk of being burned.\n\nI was so interested in seeing a bit of silver-like metal and water take\nfire as they touched that I forgot all about the occasion of the noise.\n\n\n\n\nHINT HELP\n\nBenjamin C. B. Tilghman, of Philadelphia, once went into the lighthouse\nat Cape May, and, observing that the window glass was translucent\nrather than transparent, asked the keeper why he put ground glass in\nthe windows.  \"We do not,\" said the keeper.  \"We put in the clear\nglass, and the wind blows the sand against it and roughens the outer\nsurface like ground glass.\"  The answer was to him like the falling\napple to Newton.  He put on his thinking cap and went out.  It was\nbetter than the cap of Fortunatus to him.  He thought, \"If nature does\nthis, why cannot I make a fiercer blast, let sand trickle into it, and\nso hurl a million little hammers at the glass, and grind it more\nswiftly than we do on stones with a stream of wet sand added?\"\n\nHe tried jets of steam and of air with sand, and found that he could\nroughen a pane of glass almost instantly.  By coating a part of the\nglass with hot beeswax, applied with a brush, through a stencil, or\ncovering it with paper cut into any desired figures, he could engrave\nthe most delicate and intricate patterns as readily as if plain.  Glass\nis often made all white, except a very thin coating of brilliant\ncolored glass on one side.  This he could cut through, leaving letters\nof brilliant color and the general surface white, or _vice versa_.\n\nSeal cutting is a very delicate and difficult art, old as the Pharaohs.\nProtect the surface that is to be left, and the sand blast will cut out\nthe required design neatly and swiftly.\n\nThere is no known substance, not even corundum, hard enough to resist\nthe swift impact of myriads of little stones.\n\nIt will cut more granite into shape in an hour than a man can in a day.\n\nSurely no one will be sorry to learn that General Tilghman sold part of\nhis patents, taken out in October, 1870, for $400,000, and receives the\nuntold benefits of the rest to this day.  So much for thinking.\n\nNature gives thousands of hints.  Some can take them; some can only\ntake the other thing.  The hints are greatly preferred by nature and\nman.\n\n\n\n\nCREATIONS NOW IN PROGRESS\n\nThe forces of creation are yet in full play.  Who can direct them?\nRewards greater than Tilghman's await the thinker.  We are permitted\nnot only to think God's thoughts after him, but to do his works.\n\"Greater works than these that I do shall he do who believeth on me,\"\nsays the Greatest Worker.  Great profit incites to do the work noted\nbelow.\n\nCarbon as charcoal is worth about six cents a bushel; as plumbago, for\nlead pencils or for the bicycle chain, it is worth more; as diamond it\nhas been sold for $500,000 for less than an ounce, and that was\nregarded as less than half its value.  Such a stone is so valuable that\n$15,000 has been spent in grinding and polishing its surface.  The\nglazier pays $5.00 for a bit of carbon so small that it would take\nabout ten thousand of them to make an ounce.\n\nWhy is there such a difference in value?  Simply arrangement and\ncompactness.  Can we so enormously enhance the value of a bushel of\ncharcoal by arrangement and compression?  Not very satisfactorily as\nyet.  We can apply almost limitless pressure, but that does not make\ndiamonds.  Every particle must go to its place by some law and force we\nhave not yet attained the mastery of.\n\nWe do not know and control the law and force in nature that would\nenable us to say to a few million bricks, stones, bits of glass, etc.,\n\"Fly up through earth, water, and air, and combine into a perfect\npalace, with walls, buttresses, towers, and windows all in exact\narchitectural harmony.\"  But there is such a law and force for\ncrystals, if not for palaces.  There is wisdom to originate and power\nto manage such a force.  It does not take masses of rock and stick them\ntogether, nor even particles from a fluid, but atoms from a gas.  Atoms\nas fine as those of air must be taken and put in their place, one by\none, under enormous pressure, to have the resulting crystal as compact\nas a diamond.\n\nThe force of crystallization is used by us in many inferior ways, as in\nmaking crystals of rock candy, sulphur, salt, etc., but for the making\nof diamonds it is too much for us, except in a small way.\n\nWhile we cannot yet use the force that builds large white diamonds we\ncan use the diamonds themselves.  Set a number of them around a section\nof an iron tube, place it against a rock, at the surface or deep down\nin a mine, cause it to revolve rapidly by machinery, and it will bore\ninto the rock, leaving a core.  Force in water, to remove the dust and\nchips, and the diamond teeth will eat their way hundreds of feet in any\ndirection; and by examining the extracted core miners can tell what\nsort of ore there is hundreds of feet in advance.  Hence, they go only\nwhere they know that value lies.\n\n\n\n\nSOME CURIOUS BEHAVIORS OF ATOMS\n\nUltimate atoms of matter are asserted to be impenetrable.  That is, if\na mass of them really touched each other, that mass would not be\ncondensible by any force.  But atoms of matter do not touch.  It is\nthinkable, but not demonstrable, that condensation might go on till\nthere were no discernible substance left, only force.\n\nMatter exists in three states: solid, liquid, and gas.  It is thought\nthat all matter may be passed through the three stages--iron being\ncapable of being volatilized, and gases condensed to liquids and\nsolids--the chief difference of these states being greater or less\ndistance between the constituent atoms and molecules.  In gas the\nparticles are distant from each other, like gnats flying in the air; in\nliquids, distant as men passing in a busy street; in solids, as men in\na congregation, so sparse that each can easily move about.  The\ncongregation can easily disperse to the rarity of those walking in the\nstreet, and the men in the street condense to the density of the\ncongregation.  So, matter can change in going from solids to liquids\nand gases, or _vice versa_.  The behavior of atoms in the process is\nsurpassingly interesting.\n\nGold changes its density, and therefore its thickness, between the two\ndies of the mint that make it money.  How do the particles behave as\nthey snuggle up closer to each other?\n\nTake a piece of iron wire and bend it.  The atoms on the inner side\nbecome nearer together, those on the outside farther apart.  Twist it.\nThe outer particles revolve on each other; those of the middle do not\nmove.  They assume and maintain their new relations.\n\nHang a weight on a wire.  It does not stretch like a rubber thread, but\nit stretches.  Eight wires were tested as to their tensile strength.\nThey gave an average of forty-five pounds, and an elongation averaging\nnineteen per cent of the total length.  Then a wire of the same kind\nwas given time to adjust itself to its new and trying circumstances.\nForty pounds were hung on one day, three pounds more the next day, and\nso on, increasing the weights by diminishing quantities, till in sixty\ndays it carried fifty-seven pounds.  So it seems that exercise\nstrengthened the wire nearly twenty-seven per cent.\n\nWhile those atoms are hustling about, lengthening the wire and getting\na better grip on one another, they grow warm with the exercise.  Hold a\nthick rubber band against your lip--suddenly stretch it.  The lip\neasily perceives the greater heat.  After a few moments let it\ncontract.  The greater coldness is equally perceptible.\n\nA wire suspending thirty-nine pounds being twisted ninety-five full\nturns lengthened itself one sixteen-hundredth of its length.  Being\nfurther twisted by twenty-five turns it shortened itself one fourth of\nits previous elongation.  During the twisting some sections took far\nmore torsion than others.  A steel wire supporting thirty-nine pounds\nwas twisted one hundred and twenty times and then allowed to untwist at\nwill.  It let out only thirty-eight turns and retained eighty-two in\nthe new permanent relation of particles.  A wire has been known to\naccommodate itself to nearly fourteen hundred twists, and still the\natoms did not let go of each other.  They slid about on each other as\nfreely as the atoms of water, but they still held on.  It is easier to\nconceive of these atoms sliding about, making the wire thinner and\nlonger, when we consider that it is the opinion of our best physicists\nthat molecules made of atoms are never still.  Masses of matter may be\nstill, but not the constituent elements.  They are always in intensest\nactivity, like a mass of bees--those inside coming out, outside ones\ngoing in--but the mass remains the same.\n\nThe atoms of water behave extraordinarily.  I know of a boiler and\npipes for heating a house.  When the fire was applied and the\ntemperature was changed from that of the street to two hundred degrees,\nit was easy to see that there was a whole barrel more of it than when\nit was let into the boiler.  It had been swollen by the heat, but it\nwas nothing but water.\n\nMobile, flexible, and yielding as water seems to be, it has an\nobstinacy quite remarkable.  It was for a long time supposed to be\nabsolutely incompressible.  It is nearly so.  A pressure that would\nreduce air to one hundredth of its bulk would not discernibly affect\nwater.  Put a ton weight on a cubic inch of water; it does not flinch\nnor perceptibly shrink, yet the atoms of water do not fill the space\nthey occupy.  They object to being crowded.  They make no objection to\nhaving other matter come in and possess the space unoccupied by them.\n\nAir so much enjoys its free, agile state, leaping over hills and\nplains, kissing a thousand flowers, that it greatly objects to being\ncondensed to a liquid.  First we must take away all the heat.  Two\nhundred and ten degrees of heat changes water to steam filling 1,728\ntimes as much space.  No amount of pressure will condense steam to\nwater unless the heat is removed.  So take heat away from air till it\nis more than two hundred degrees below zero, and then a pressure of\nabout two hundred atmospheres (14.7 pounds each) changes common air to\nfluid.  It fights desperately against condensation, growing hot with\nthe effort, and it maintains its resilience for years at any point of\npressure short of the final surrender that gives up to become liquid.\n\nPerhaps sometime we shall have the pure air of the mountains or the sea\ncondensed to fluid and sold by the quart to the dwellers in the city,\nto be expanded into air once more.\n\nThe marvel is not greater that gas is able to sustain itself under the\nawful pressure with its particles in extreme dispersion, than that what\nwe call solids should have their molecules in a mazy dance and yet keep\ntheir strength.\n\nSince this world, in power, fineness, finish, beauty, and adaptations,\nnot only surpasses our accomplishment, but also is past our finding out\nto its perfection, it must have been made by One stronger, finer, and\nwiser than we are.\n\n\n\n\nMOBILITY OF SEEMING SOLIDS\n\nWhen a human breath, or the white jet of a steam whistle, or the black\ncough of a locomotive smokestack is projected into the air it is easy\nto see that the air is mobile.  Its particles easily roll over one\nanother in voluminously infolding wreaths.  The same is seen in water.\nThe crest of a wave falls over a portion of air, imprisoning it for a\nmoment, and the mingled air and water of different densities prevent\nthe light of the sun or sky from going straight down into the black\ndepths and being lost, but by being reflected and turned back it shows\nlike beautiful white lace, constantly created and dissolved with a\nthousandfold more beauty than any that ever came from human hands.  All\nthe three shifting elements of the swift creations are mobile.  This\nseems to be the case because these elements are not solid.  The\nparticles have plenty of room to play about each other, to execute mazy\ndances and minuets with vastly more space than substance.\n\nExtend the thought a little.  Things that seem to us most solid are\nequally mobile.  An iron wire seems solid.  It is so; some parts much\nmore so than others.  The surface that has been in closest contact with\nthe die as the wire was drawn through, reducing its size by one half,\nperhaps, is vastly more dense than the inner parts that have not been\nso condensed.  File away one tenth of a wire, taking it all from the\nsurface, and you weaken the tensile strength of the wire one half.\n\nBut, dense and solid as this iron is, its particles are as mobile\nwithin certain limits as the particles of air.  An electric message\nsent through a mile of wire is not anything transmitted; matter is not\ntransferred, but the particles are set to dancing in wavy motion from\nend to end.  Particles are leaping within ordered limits and according\nto regular laws as really as the clouds swirl and the air trembles into\nsong through the throat of a singer.  When a wire is made sensitive by\nelectricity the breath of a child can make it vibrate from end to end,\nensouled with the child's laughter or fancies.  Nay, more, and far more\nwonderful, the wire will be sensitive to the number of vibrations of a\ncertain note of music, and no receiver at the other end will gather up\nits sensitive tremblings unless it is pitched to the keynote of the\nvibrations sent.  In this way eight sets of vibrations have been sent\non one wire both ways at the same time, and no set of signals has in\nany way interfered with the completeness and audibility of the rest.\nSixteen sets of waltzes were being performed at one and the same time\nby the particles of one wire without confusion.  Because the air is\ntransmitting the notes of an organ from the loft to the opposite end of\nthe church, it is not incapable of bringing the sound of a voice in an\nopposite direction to the organist from the other end of the church.\n\nThe extreme mobility of steel is seen when the red-hot metal is plunged\ninto water.  Instantly every particle takes a new position, making it a\nhundredfold more hard than before it was heated.  But these particles\nof transferred steel are still mobile.   A man's razor does not cut\nsmoothly.  It is dull, or has a ragged edge that is more inclined to\ndraw tears than cut hairs.  He draws the razor over the tender palm of\nhis hand a few times, rearranges the particles of the edge and builds\nthem out into a sharper form.  Then the razor returns to the lip with\nthe dainty touch of a kiss instead of a saw.  Or the tearful man dips\nthe razor in hot water and the particles run out to make a wider blade\nand, of course, a thinner, sharper edge.  Drop the tire of a wagon\nwheel into a circular fire.  As the heat increases each particle says\nto its neighbor, \"Please stand a little further off; this more than\nJuly heat is uncomfortable.\"  So the close friends stand a little\nfurther apart, lengthening the tire an inch or two.  Then, being taken\nout of the fire and put on the wheel and cooled, the particles snuggle\nup together again, holding the wheel with a grip of cold iron.  Mobile\nand loose, with plenty of room to play, as the particles have, neither\nwire nor tire loses its tensile strength.  They hold together, whether\narms are locked around each other's waist, or hand clasps hand in\nfarther reach.  What change has come to iron when it has been made red\nor white hot?  Its particles have simply been mobilized.  It differs\nfrom cold iron as an army in barracks and forts differs from an army\nmobilized.  Nothing has been added but movement.  There is no caloric\nsubstance.  Heat is a mode of motion.  The particles of iron have been\nmade to vibrate among themselves.  When the rapidity of movement\nreaches four hundred and sixty millions of millions of vibrations per\nsecond it so affects the eye that we say it is red-hot.  When other\nsystems of vibration have been added for yellow, etc., up to seven\nhundred and thirty millions of millions for the violet, and all\ncontinue in full play, the eye perceives what we call white heat.  It\nis a simple illustration of the readiness of seeming solids to vibrate\nwith almost infinite swiftness.\n\nI have been to-day in what is to me a kind of heaven below--the\nworkshop of my much-loved friend, John A. Brashear, in Allegheny, Pa.\nHe easily makes and measures things to one four-hundred-thousandth of\nan inch of accuracy.  I put my hand for a few seconds on a great piece\nof glass three inches thick.  The human heat raised a lump detectable\nby his measurements.  We were testing a piece of glass half an inch\nthick; and five inches in diameter.  I put my two thumbnails at the two\nsides as it rested on its bed, and could see at once that I had\ncompressed the glass to a shorter diameter.  We twisted it in so many\nways that I said, \"That is a piece of glass putty.\"  And yet it was the\nfirmest texture possible to secure.  Great lenses are so sensitive that\none cannot go near them without throwing them discernibly out of shape.\nIt were easy to show that there is no solid earth nor immovable\nmountains.  I came away saying to my friend, \"I am glad God lets you\ninto so much of his finest thinking.\"  He is a mechanic, not a\ntheologian.  This foremost man in the world in his fine department was\nlately but a \"greasy mechanic,\" an engineer in a rolling mill.\n\nBut for elasticity and mobility nothing approaches the celestial ether.\nIts vibrations reach into millions of millions per second, and its\nwave-lengths for extreme red light are only .0000266 of an inch long,\nand for extreme violet still less--.0000167 of an inch.\n\nIt is easier molding hot iron than cold, mobile things than immobile.\nThis world has been made elastic, ready to take new forms.  New\ncreations are easy, for man, even--much more so for God.  Of angels,\nMilton says:\n\n    \"Thousands at his bidding speed,\n  And post o'er land and ocean without rest.\"\n\nNo less is it true of atoms.  In him all things live and move.  Such\nintense activities could not be without an infinite God immanent in\nmatter.\n\n\n\n\nTHE NEXT WORLD TO CONQUER\n\nMan's next realm of conquest is the celestial ether.  It has higher\npowers, greater intensities, and quicker activities than any realm he\nhas yet attempted.\n\nWhen the emissory or corpuscular theory of light had to be abandoned a\nmedium for light's interplay between worlds had to be conceived.  The\nexistence of an all-pervasive medium called the luminiferous ether was\nlaunched as a theory.  Its reality has been so far demonstrated that\nbut very few doubters remain.\n\nWhat facts of its conditions and powers can be known?  It differs\nalmost totally from our conceptions of matter.  Of the eighteen\nnecessary properties of matter perhaps only one, extension, can be\npredicated of it.  It is unlimited, all-pervasive; even where worlds\nare non-attractive, does not accumulate about suns or other bodies; has\nno structure, chemical relations, nor inertia; is not heatable, and is\nnot cognizable by any of our present senses.  Does it not take us one\nstep toward an apprehension of the revealed condition of spirit?\n\nRecall its actual activities.  Two hundred and fifty-eight vibrations\nof air per second produce on the ear the sensation we call _do_, or _C_\nof the soprano scale; five hundred and sixteen give the upper _C_, or\nan octave above.  So the sound runs up in air till, above, say,\nthirty-five thousand vibrations per second, there is plenty of sound\ninaudible to our ears.  But not inaudible to finer ears.  To them the\nmorning stars sing together in mighty chorus:\n\n  \"Forever singing as they shine,\n  'The hand that made us is divine.'\"\n\nElectricity has as great a variety of vibrations as sound.  Since some\nkinds of electricity do not readily pass through space devoid of air,\nthough light and heat do, it seems likely that some of the lower\nintensities and slower vibrations of electricity are not in ether but\nin air.  Certainly some of the higher intensities are in ether.\nBetween two hundred and four hundred millions of millions of vibrations\nof ether per second are the different sorts of heat.  Between four\nhundred and eight hundred vibrations are the different colors of light.\nBeyond eight hundred vibrations there is plenty of light, invisible to\nour eyes, known as chemical rays and probably the Roentgen rays.\nBeyond these are there vibrations for thought-transference?  Who\nknoweth?\n\nThese familiar facts are called up to show the almost infinite\ncapacities and intensities of the ether.  Matter is more forceful, as\nit is less dense.  Rock is solid, and has little force except obstinate\nresistance.  Steam is rarer and more forceful.  Gases suddenly born of\ndynamite touched by fire in the rock under a mountain have the\ntremendous pressure of eighty thousand pounds to the square inch.\nEther is so rare that its density, compared with water, is represented\nby a decimal fraction with twenty-seven ciphers before it.\n\nWhen the worlds navigate this sea, do they plow through it as a ship\nthrough the waves, forcing them aside, or as a sieve letting the water\nthrough it?  Doubtless the sieve is the better symbol.  Certainly the\nvibrations flow through solid glass and most solid diamond.  To be\nsure, they are a little hampered by the solid substance.  The speed of\nlight is reduced from one hundred and eighty thousand miles a second in\nspace to one hundred and twenty thousand in glass.  If ether can so\nreadily go through such solids, no wonder that a spirit body could\nappear to the disciples, \"the doors being shut.\"\n\nMarvelous discoveries in the capacities of ether have been made lately.\nIn 1842 Joseph Henry found that electric waves in the top of his house\nprovoked action in a wire circuit in the cellar, through two floors and\nceilings, without wire connections.  More than twenty years ago\nProfessor Loomis, of the United States coast survey, telegraphed twenty\nmiles between mountains by electric impulses sent from kites.  Last\nyear Mr. Preece, the cable being broken, sent, without wires, one\nhundred and fifty-six messages between the mainland and the island of\nMull, a distance of four and a half miles.  Marconi, an Italian, has\nsent recognizable signals through seven or eight thick walls of the\nLondon post-office, and three fourths of a mile through a hill.\nJagadis Chunder Bose, of India, has fired a pistol by an electric\nvibration seventy-five feet away and through more than four feet of\nmasonry.  Since brick does not elastically vibrate to such\ninfinitesimal impulses as electric waves, ether must.  It has already\nbeen proven that one can telegraph to a flying train from the overhead\nwires.  Ether is a far better medium of transmission than iron.  A wire\nwill now carry eight messages each way, at the same time, without\ninterference.  What will not the more facile ether do?\n\nSuch are some of the first vague suggestions of a realm of power and\nknowledge not yet explored.  They are mere auroral hints of a new dawn.\nThe full day is yet to shine.\n\nLike timid children, we have peered into the schoolhouse--afraid of the\nunknown master.  If we will but enter we shall find that the Master is\nour Father, and that he has fitted up this house, out of his own\ninfinite wisdom, skill, and love, that we may be like him in wisdom and\npower as well as in love.\n\n\n\n\nOUR ENJOYMENT OF NATURE'S FORCES\n\nWe are a fighting race; not because we enjoy fights, but we enjoy the\nexercise of force.  In early times when we knew of no forces to handle\nbut our own, and no object to exercise them on but our fellow-men,\nthere were feuds, tyrannies, wars, and general desolation.  In the\nThirty Years' War the population of Germany was starved and murdered\ndown from sixteen millions to less than five millions.\n\nBut since we have found field, room, and ample verge for the play of\nour forces in material realms, and have acquired mastery of the superb\nforces of nature, we have come to an era of peace.  We can now use our\nforces and those of nature with as real a sense of dominion and mastery\non material things, resulting in comfort, as formerly on our\nfellow-men, resulting in ruin.  We now devote to the conquest of nature\nwhat we once devoted to the conquest of men.  There is a fascination in\nlooking on force and its results.  Some men never stand in the presence\nof an engine in full play without a feeling of reverence, as if they\nstood in the presence of God--and they do.\n\nThe turning to these forces is a characteristic of our age that makes\nit an age of adventure and discovery.  The heart of equatorial Africa\nhas been explored, and soon the poles will hold no undiscovered secrets.\n\nAmong the great monuments of power the mountains stand supreme.  All\nthe cohesions, chemical affinities, affections of metals, liquids, and\ngases are in full play, and the measureless power of gravitation.  And\nyet higher forces have chasmed, veined, infiltrated, disintegrated,\nmolded, bent the rocky strata like sheets of paper, and lifted the\nwhole mass miles in air as if it were a mere bubble of gas.\n\nThe study of these powers is one of the fascinations of our time.  Let\nme ask you to enjoy with me several of the greatest manifestations of\nforce on this world of ours.\n\n\nTHE MONTE ROSA\n\nMany of us in America know little of one of the great subjects of\nthought and endeavor in Europe.  We are occasionally surprised by\nhearing that such a man fell into a crevasse, or that four men were\nkilled on the Matterhorn, or five on the Lyskamm, and others elsewhere,\nand we wonder why they went there.  The Alps are a great object of\ninterest to all Europe.  I have now before me a catalogue of 1,478\nworks on the Alps for sale by one bookseller.  It seems incredible.  In\nthis list are over a dozen volumes describing different ascents of a\nsingle mountain, and that not the most difficult.  There are\npublications of learned societies on geology, entomology, paleontology,\nbotany, and one volume of _Philosophical and Religious Walks about Mont\nBlanc_.  The geology of the Alps is a most perplexing problem.  The\nsummit of the Jungfrau, for example, consists of gneiss granite, but\ntwo masses of Jura limestone have been thrust into it, and their ends\nfolded over.\n\nIt is the habit, of the Germans especially, to send students into the\nAlps with a case for flowers, a net for butterflies, and a box for\nbugs.  Every rod is a schoolhouse.  They speak of the \"snow mountains\"\nwith ardent affection.  Every Englishman, having no mountains at home,\nspeaks and feels as if he owned the Alps.  He, however, cares less for\ntheir flowers, bugs, and butterflies than for their qualities as a\ngymnasium and a measure of his physical ability.  The name of every\nmountain or pass he has climbed is duly burnt into his Alpenstock, and\nthe said stock, well burnt over, is his pride in travel and a grand\ntestimonial of his ability at home.\n\nThere are numerous Alpine clubs in England, France, and Italy.  In the\ngrand exhibition of the nation at Milan the Alpine clubs have one of\nthe most interesting exhibits.  This general interest in the Alps is a\ntestimony to man's admiration of the grandest work of God within reach,\nand to his continued devotion to physical hardihood in the midst of the\nenervating influences of civilization.  There is one place in the world\ndevoted by divine decree to pure air.  You are obliged to use it.\nToiling up these steeps the breathing quickens fourfold, till every\nparticle of the blood has been bathed again and again in the perfect\nair.  Tyndall records that he once staggered out of the murks and\ndisease of London, fearing that his lifework was done.  He crawled out\nof the hotel on the Bell Alp and, feeling new life, breasted the\nmountain, hour after hour, till every acrid humor had oozed away, and\nevery part of his body had become so renewed that he was well from that\ntime.  In such a sanitarium, school of every department of knowledge,\ntraining-place for hardihood, and monument of Nature's grandest work,\nman does well to be interested.\n\nYou want to ascend these mountains?  Come to Zermatt.  With a wand ten\nmiles long you can touch twenty snow-peaks.  Europe has but one higher.\nTwenty glaciers cling to the mountain sides and send their torrents\ninto the little green valley.  Try yourself on Monte Rosa, more\ndifficult to ascend than Mont Blanc; try the Matterhorn, vastly more\ndifficult than either or both.  A plumbline dropped from the summit of\nMonte Rosa through the mountain would be seven miles from Zermatt.  You\nfirst have your feet shod with a preparation of nearly one hundred\ndouble-pointed hobnails driven into the heels and soles.  In the\nafternoon you go up three thousand one hundred and sixteen feet to the\nRiffelhouse.  It is equal to going up three hundred flights of stairs\nof ten feet each; that is, you go up three hundred stories of your\nhouse--only there are no stairs, and the path is on the outside of the\nhouse.  This takes three hours--an hour to each hundred stories; after\nthe custom of the hotels of this country, you find that you have\nreached the first floor.  The next day you go up and down the Goerner\nGrat, equal to one hundred and seventy more stories, for practice and a\nview unequaled in Europe.  Ordering the guide to be ready and the\nporter to call you at one o'clock, you lie down to dream of the\nglorious revelations of the morrow.\n\nThe porter's rap came unexpectedly soon, and in response to the\nquestion, \"What is the weather?\" he said, \"Not utterly bad.\"  There is\nplenty of starlight; there had been through the night plenty of live\nthunder leaping among the rattling crags, some of it very interestingly\nnear.  We rose; there were three parties ready to make the ascent.  The\nlightning still glimmered behind the Matterhorn and the Weisshorn, and\nthe sound of the tumbling cataracts was ominously distinct.  Was the\nstorm over?  The guides would give no opinion.  It was their interest\nto go, it was ours to go only in good weather.  By three o'clock I\nnoticed that the pointer on the aneroid barometer, that instrument that\nhas a kind of spiritual fineness of feeling, had moved a tenth of an\ninch upward.  I gave the order to start.  The other parties said, \"Good\nfor your pluck!  _Bon voyage, gute reise_,\" and went to bed.  In an\nhour we had ascended one thousand feet and down again to the glacier.\nThe sky was brilliant.  Hopes were high.  The glacier with its vast\nmedial moraines, shoving along rocks from twenty to fifty feet long,\nwas crossed in the dawn.  The sun rose clear, touching the snow-peaks\nwith glory, and we shouted victory.  But in a moment the sun was\nclouded, and so were we.  Soon it came out again, and continued clear.\nBut the guide said, \"Only the good God knows if we shall have clear\nweather.\"  Men get pious amid perils.  I thought of the aneroid, and\nfelt that the good God had confided his knowledge to one of his\nservants.\n\nLeaving the glacier, we came to the real mountain.  Six hours and a\nhalf will put one on the top, but he ought to take eight.  I have no\nfondness for men who come to the Alps to see how quickly they can do\nthe ascents.  They simply proclaim that their object is not to see and\nenjoy, but to boast.  We go up the lateral moraine, a huge ridge fifty\nfeet high, with rocks in it ten feet square turned by the mighty plow\nof ice below.  We scramble up the rocks of the mountain.  Hour after\nhour we toil upward.  At length we come to the snow-slopes, and are all\nfour roped together.  There are great crevasses, fifty or a hundred\nfeet deep, with slight bridges of snow over them.  If a man drops in\nthe rest must pull him out.  Being heavier than any other man of the\nparty I thrust a leg through one snow-bridge, but I had just fixed my\nice ax in the firm abutment and was saved the inconvenience and delay\nof dangling by a rope in a chasm.  The beauty of these cold blue ice\nvaults cannot be described.  They are often fringed with icicles.  In\none place they had formed from an overhanging shelf, reached the\nbottom, and then the shelf had melted away, leaving the icicles in an\napparently reversed condition.  We passed one place where vast masses\nof ice had rolled down from above, and we saw how a breath might start\na new avalanche.  We were up in one of nature's grandest workshops.\n\nHow the view widened!  How the fleeting cloud and sunshine heightened\nthe effect in the valley below!  The glorious air made us know what the\nman meant who every morning thanked God that he was alive.  Some have\nlittle occasion to be thankful in that respect.\n\nHere we learned the use of a guide.  Having carefully chosen him, by\ntestimony of persons having experience, we were to follow him; not only\ngenerally, but step by step.  Put each foot in his track.  He had\ntrodden the snow to firmness.  But being heavier than he it often gave\nway under my pressure.  One such slump and recovery takes more strength\nthan ten regular steps.  Not so in following the Guide to the fairer\nand greater heights of the next world.  He who carried this world and\nits burden of sin on his heart trod the quicksands of time into such\nfirmness that no man walking in his steps, however great his sins, ever\nbreaks down the track.  And just so in that upward way, one fall and\nrecovery takes more strength than ten rising steps.\n\nMeanwhile, what of the weather?  Uncertainty.  Avalanches thundered\nfrom the Breithorn and Lyskamm, telling of a penetrative moisture in\nthe air.  The Matterhorn refused to take in its signal flags of storm.\nStill the sun shone clear.  We had put in six of the eight hours' work\nof ascent when snow began to fall.  Soon it was too thick to see far.\nWe came to a chasm that looked vast in the deception of the storm.  It\nwas only twenty feet wide.  Getting round this the storm deepened till\nwe could scarcely see one another.  There was no mountain, no sky.  We\nhalted of necessity.  The guide said, \"Go back.\"  I said, \"Wait.\"  We\nwaited in wind, hail, and snow till all vestige of the track by which\nwe had come--our only guide back if the storm continued--was lost\nexcept the holes made by the Alpenstocks.  The snow drifted over, and\ndid not fill these so quickly.\n\nNot knowing but that the storm might last two days, as is frequently\nthe case, I reluctantly gave the order to go down.  In an hour we got\nbelow the storm.  The valley into which we looked was full of brightest\nsunshine; the mountain above us looked like a cowled monk.  In another\nhour the whole sky was perfectly clear.  O that I had kept my faith in\nmy aneroid!  Had I held to the faith that started me in the\nmorning--endured the storm, not wavered at suggestions of peril, defied\napparent knowledge of local guides--and then been able to surmount the\ndifficulty of the new-fallen snow, I should have been favored with such\na view as is not enjoyed once in ten years; for men cannot go up all\nthe way in storm, nor soon enough after to get all the benefit of the\ncleared air.  Better things were prepared for me than I knew;\nindications of them offered to my faith; they were firmly grasped, and\nheld almost long enough for realization, and then let go in an hour of\ndarkness and storm.\n\nI reached the Riffelhouse after eleven hours' struggle with rocks and\nsoftened snow, and said to the guide, \"To-morrow I start for the\nMatterhorn.\"  To do this we go down the three hundred stories to\nZermatt.\n\nEvery mountain excursion I ever made has been in the highest degree\nprofitable.  Even this one, though robbed of its hoped-for culmination,\nhas been one of the richest I have ever enjoyed.\n\n\n\n\nTHE MATTERHORN\n\nThe Matterhorn is peculiar.  I do not know of another mountain like it\non the earth.  There are such splintered and precipitous spires on the\nmoon.  How it came to be such I treated of fully in _Sights and\nInsights_.  It is approximately a three-sided mountain, fourteen\nthousand seven hundred and eighteen feet high, whose sides are so steep\nas to be unassailable.  Approach can be made only along the angle at\nthe junction of the planes.\n\n[Illustration: The Matterhorn.]\n\nIt was long supposed to be inaccessible.  Assault after assault was\nmade on it by the best and most ambitious Alp climbers, but it kept its\nvirgin height untrodden.  However, in 1864, seven men, almost\nunexpectedly, achieved the victory; but in descending four of them were\nprecipitated, down an almost perpendicular declivity, four thousand\nfeet.  They had achieved the summit after hundreds of others had\nfailed.  They had reveled in the upper glories, deposited proof of\ntheir visit, and started to return.  According to law, they were roped\ntogether.  According to custom, in a difficult place all remain still,\nholding the rope, except one who carefully moves on.  Croz, the first\nguide, was reaching up to take the feet of Mr. Haddow and help him down\nto where he stood.  Suddenly Haddow's strength failed, or he slipped\nand struck Croz on the shoulders, knocking him off his narrow footing.\nThey two immediately jerked off Rev. Mr. Hudson.  The three falling\njerked off Lord Francis Douglas.  Four were loose and falling; only\nthree left on the rocks.  Just then the rope somehow parted, and all\nfour dropped that great fraction of a mile.  The mountain climber makes\na sad pilgrimage to the graves of three of them in Zermatt; the fourth\nprobably fell in a crevasse of the glacier at the foot, and may be\nbrought to the sight of friends in perhaps two score years, when the\nriver of ice shall have moved down into the valleys where the sun has\npower to melt away the ice.  This accident gave the mountain a\nreputation for danger to which an occasional death on it since has\nadded.\n\nEach of these later unfortunate occurrences is attributable to personal\nperversity or deficiency.  Peril depends more on the man than on\ncircumstances.  One is in danger on a wall twenty feet high, another\nsafe on a precipice of a thousand feet.  No man has a right to peril\nhis life in mere mountain climbing; that great sacrifice must be\nreserved for saving others, or for establishing moral principle.\n\nThe morning after coming from Monte Rosa myself and son left Zermatt at\nhalf past seven for the top of the Matterhorn, twelve hours distant,\nunder the guidance of Peter Knubel, his brother, and Peter Truffer,\nthree of the best guides for this work in the country.  In an hour the\ndwellings of the mountain-loving people are left behind, the tree limit\nis passed soon after, the grass cheers us for three hours, when we\nenter on the wide desolation of the moraines.  Here is a little chapel.\nI entered it as reverently and prayed as earnestly for God's will, not\nmine, to be done as I ever did in my life, and I am confident that amid\nthe unutterable grandeur that succeeded I felt his presence and help as\nfully as at any other time.\n\nAt ten minutes of two we were roped together and feeling our way\ncarefully in the cut steps on a glacier so steep that, standing erect,\none could put his hand upon it.  We were on this nearly an hour.  Just\nas we left it for the rocks a great noise above, and a little to the\nsouth, attracted attention.  A vast mass of stone had detached itself\nfrom the overhanging cliff at the top, and falling on the steep slope\nhad broken into a hundred pieces.  These went bounding down the side in\nlong leaps.  Wherever one struck a cloud of powdered stone leaped into\nthe air, till the whole mountain side smoked and thundered with the\ngrand cannonade.  The omen augured to me that the mountain was going to\ndo its best for our reception and entertainment.  Fortunately these\nrock avalanches occur on the steep, unapproachable sides, and not at\nthe angle where men climb.\n\nHow the mountain grew upon us as we clung to its sides!  When the great\nobjects below had changed to littleness the heights above seemed\ngreater than ever.  At half past four we came to a perpendicular height\nof twenty feet, with a slight slope above.  Down this precipice hung a\nrope; there was also an occasional projection of an inch or two of\nstone for the mailed foot.  At the top, on a little shelf, under\nhundreds of feet of overhanging rock, some stones had been built round\nand over a little space for passing the night.  The rude cabin occupied\nall the width of the shelf, so that passing to its other end there was\nnot room to walk without holding on by one's hands in the crevices of\nthe wall.  We were now at home; had taken nine hours to do what could\nbe done in eight.  What an eyrie in which to sleep!  Below us was a\nsheer descent, of a thousand or two feet, to the glacier.  Above us\ntowered the crest of the mountain, seemingly higher than ever.  The\nsharp shadow of the lofty pyramid lengthened toward Monte Rosa.  Italy\nlifted up its mountains tipped with sunshine to cheer us.  The Obernese\nAlps, beyond the Rhone, answered with numerous torches to light us to\nour sleep.  According to prearrangement, at eight o'clock we kindled a\nlight on our crag to tell our friends in Zermatt that we had\naccomplished the first stage of our journey.  They answered instantly\nwith a cheery blaze, and we lay down to sleep.\n\nWhen four of us lay together I was so crowded against the wall that I\nthought if it should give way I could fall two thousand feet out of bed\nwithout possibility of stopping on the way.  The ice was two feet thick\non the floor, and by reason of the scarcity of bedding I was reminded\nof the damp, chilly sheets of some unaired guest-chambers.  I do not\nthink I slept a moment, but I passed the night in a most happy,\nthoughtful, and exultant frame of mind.\n\nAt half past three in the morning we were roped together--fifteen feet\nof rope between each two men--for the final three or four hours' work.\nIt is everywhere steep; it is every minute hands and feet on the rocks;\nsometimes you cling with fingers, elbows, knees, and feet, and are\ntempted to add the nose and chin.  Where it is least steep the guide's\nheels are right in your face; when it is precipitous you only see a\nline of rope before you.  We make the final pause an hour before the\ntop.  Here every weight and the fear that so easily besets one must be\nlaid aside.  No part of the way has seemed so difficult; not even that\njust past--when we rounded a shoulder on the ice for sixty feet,\nsometimes not over twenty inches wide, on the verge of a precipice four\nthousand feet high.  To this day I can see the wrinkled form of that\nfar-down glacier below, though I took care not to make more than one\nglance at it.\n\nThe rocks become smoother and steeper, if possible.  A chain or rope\ntrails from above in four places.  You have good hope that it is well\nsecured, and wish you were lighter, as you go up hand over hand.  Then\na beautiful slope for hands, knees, and feet for half an hour, and the\ntop is reached at half past six.\n\nThe view is sublime.  Moses on Pisgah could have had no such vision.\nHe had knowledge added of the future grandeur of his people, but such a\nrevelation as this tells so clearly what God can do for his people\nhereafter that that element of Moses's enjoyment can be perceived, if\nnot fully appreciated.  All the well-known mountains stand up like\nfriends to cheer us.  Mont Blanc has the smile of the morning sun to\ngreet us withal.  Monte Rosa chides us for not partaking of her\nprepared visions.  The kingdoms of the world--France, Switzerland,\nItaly--are at our feet.  One hundred and twenty snow-peaks flame like\nhuge altar piles in the morning sun.  The exhilarant air gives ecstasy\nto body, the new visions intensity of feeling to soul.  The Old World\nhas sunk out of sight.  This is Mount Zion, the city of God.  New\nJerusalem has come down out of heaven adorned as a bride for her\nhusband.  The pavements are like glass mingled with fire.  The gates of\nthe morning are pearl.  The walls, near or far according to your\nthought, are like jasper and sapphire.  The glory of God and of the\nLamb lightens it.\n\nBut we must descend, though it is good to be here.  It is even more\ndifficult and tedious than the ascent.  _Non facilis descensus_.  With\nyour face to the mountain you have only the present surface and the\neffort for that instant.  But when you turn your back on the mountain\nthe imminent danger appears.  It is not merely ahead, but the sides are\nmuch more dangerous.  On the way down we had more cannonades.  In six\nhours we were off the cliffs, and by half past three we had let\nourselves down, inch by inch, to Zermatt, a distance of nine thousand\nfour hundred feet.\n\nLooking up to the Matterhorn this next morning after the climb, I feel\nfor it a personal affection.  It has put more pictures of grandeur into\nmy being than ever entered in such a way before.  It is grand enough to\nbear acquaintance.  People who view it from a distance must be\nstrangers.  It has been, and ever will be, a great example and lofty\nmonument of my Father's power.  He taketh up the isles as a very little\nthing; he toucheth the mountains and they smoke.  The strength of the\nhills is his also; and he has made all things for his children, and\nwaits to do greater things than these.\n\n\n\n\nTHE GRAND CANON OF THE COLORADO RIVER\n\nBefore me lies a thin bit of red rock, rippled as delicately as a\nwoman's hair, bearing marks of raindrops that came from the south.  It\nwas once soft clay.  It was laid down close to the igneous Archaean\nrocks when Mother Earth was in her girlhood and water first began to\nflow.  More clay flowed over, and all was hardened into rock.  Many\nstrata, variously colored and composed, were deposited, till our bit of\nbeauty was buried thousands of feet deep.  The strata were tilted\nvariously and abraded wondrously, for our earth has been treated very\nmuch as the fair-armed bread-maker treats the lump of dough she doubles\nand kneads on the molding board.  Other rocks of a much harder nature,\ncomposed in part of the shells of inexpressible multitudes of Ocean's\ninfusoria, were laid down from the superincumbent sea.  Still the\ndelicate ripple marks were preserved.  Nature's vast library was being\nformed, and on this scrap of a leaf not a letter was lost.\n\nBeside this stone now lies another of the purest white.  It once flowed\nas water impregnated with lime, and clung to the lower side of a rock\nnow as high above the sea as many a famous mountain.  The water\ngradually evaporated, and the lime still hung like tiny drops.  Between\nthe two stones now so near together was once a perpendicular distance\nof more than a mile of impenetrable rock.  How did they ever get\ntogether?  Let us see.\n\nAfter the rock making, by the deposit of clay, limestone, etc., this\nvast plain was lifted seven thousand feet above the sea and rimmed\nround with mountains.  Perhaps in being afterward volcanically tossed\nin one of this old world's spasms an irregular crack ripped its way\nalong a few hundred miles.  Into this crack rushed a great river,\nperhaps also an inland ocean or vast Lake Superior, of which Salt Lake\nmay be a little remnant puddle.  These tumultuous waters proceeded to\npulverize, dissolve, and carry away these six thousand feet of rock\ndeposited between the two stones.  There was fall enough to make forty\nNiagaras.\n\nI was once where a deluge of rain had fallen a few days before in a\nmountain valley.  It tore loose some huge rocks and plunged down a\nprecipice of one thousand feet.  The rock at the bottom was crushed\nunder the frightful weight of the tumbling superincumbent mass, and\nevery few minutes the top became the bottom.  In one hour millions of\ntons of rock were crushed to pebbles and spread for miles over the\nplain, filling up a whole village to the roofs of the houses.  I knew\nthree villages utterly destroyed by a rush of water only ten feet deep.\nWater and gravitation make a frightful plow.  Here some prehistoric\nMississippi turned its mighty furrows.\n\nThe Colorado River is one of our great rivers.  It is over two thousand\nmiles long, reaches from near our northern to beyond our southern\nborder, and drains three hundred thousand square miles of the west side\nof the Rocky Mountains.  Great as it remains, it is a mere thread to\nwhat it once was.  It is easy to see that there were several epochs of\nwork.  Suppose the first one took off the upper limestone rock to the\ndepth of several thousand feet.  This cutting is of various widths.\nJust here it is eighteen miles wide; but as such rocks are of varying\nhardness there are many promontories that distinctly project out, say,\nhalf a mile from the general rim line, and rising in the center are\nvarious Catskill and Holyoke mountains, with defiantly perpendicular\nsides, that persisted in resisting the mighty rush of waters.  The\nouter portions of their foundations were cut away by the mighty flood\nand, as the ages went by, occasionally the sides thundered into the\nchasm, leaving the wall positively perpendicular.\n\nWe may now suppose the ocean waters nearly exhausted and only the\nmighty rivers that had made that ocean were left to flow; indeed, the\nrising Sierras of some range unknown at the present may have shut off\nwhole oceans of rain.  The rivers that remained began to cut a much\nnarrower channel into the softer sand and clay-rock below.  From the\ngreat mountain-rimmed plateau rivers poured in at the sides, cutting\nlateral canons down to the central flow.  Between these stand the\nlittle Holyokes aforesaid, with greatly narrowed base.\n\nI go down with most reverent awe and pick the little ripple-rain-marked\nleaf out of its place in the book of nature, a veritable table of stone\nwritten by the finger of God, and bring it up and lay it alongside of\none formed, eons after, at the top.  They be brothers both, formed by\nthe same forces and for the same end.\n\nStanding by this stupendous work of nature day after day, I try to\nstretch my mind to some large computation of the work done.  A whole\nday is taken to go down the gorge to the river.  It takes seven miles\nof zigzag trail, sometimes frightfully steep, along shelves not over\ntwo feet wide, under rock thousands of feet above and going down\nthousands of feet below, to get down that perpendicular mile.  It was\nan immense day's work.\n\nThe day was full of perceptions of the grandeur of vast rock masses\nnever before suggested, except by the mighty mass of the Matterhorn\nseen close by from its Hoernli shoulder.\n\nThere was the river--a regular freight train, running day and night,\nthe track unincumbered with returning cars (they were returned by the\nelevated road of the upper air)--burdened with dissolved rock and earth.\n\nA slip into this river scarcely seemed to wet the foot; it seemed\nrather to coat it thickly with mud rescued from its plunge toward the\nsea.  What unimaginable amounts the larger river must have carried in\nuncounted ages!  In the short time the Mississippi has been at work it\nhas built out the land at its mouth one hundred miles into the Gulf.\n\nIn the side canon down which we worked our sublime and toilful way it\nwas easy to see the work done.  Sometimes the fierce torrent would pile\nthe bottom of a side canon with every variety of stone, from the wall a\nmile high, into one tremendous heap of conglomerate.  The next rush of\nwaters would tear a channel through this and pour millions of tons into\nthe main river.  For years Boston toiled, in feeble imitation of\nMilton's angels, to bring the Milton Hills into the back Bay and South\nBoston Flats.  Boston made more land than the city originally\ncontained, but it did not move a teaspoonful compared with these\nexcavations.\n\nThe section traversed that day seemed while we were in it like a mighty\nchasm, a world half rent asunder, full of vast sublimities, but the\nnext day, seen from the rim as a part of the mighty whole, it appeared\ncomparatively little.  One gets new meanings of the words almighty,\neternity, infinity, in the presence of things done that seem to require\nthem all.\n\nIn 1869 Major J. W. Powell, aided by nine men, attempted to pass down\nthis tumultuous river with four boats specially constructed for the\npurpose.  In ninety-eight days he had made one thousand miles, much of\nit in extremest peril.  For weeks there was no possibility of climbing\nto the plateau above.\n\nAny great scene in nature is like the woman you fall in love with at\nfirst sight for some pose of head, queenly carriage, auroral flush of\ncolor, penetrative music of voice, or a glance of soul through its\nillumined windows.  You do not know much about her, but in long years\nof heroic endurance of trials, in the great dignity of motherhood, in\nthe unspeakable comfortings that are scarcely short of godlike, and in\nthe supernal, ineffable beauty and loveliness that cover it all, you\nfind a richness and worth of which the most ardent lover never dreamed.\nThe first sight of the canon often brings strong men to their knees in\nawe and adoration.  The gorge at Niagara is one hundred and fifty feet\ndeep; it is far short of this, which is six thousand six hundred and\nforty.  Great is the first impression, but in the longer and closer\nacquaintance every sense of beauty is flooded to the utmost.\n\nThe next morning I was out before \"jocund day stood tiptoe on the\nbreezy mountain tops.\"  I have seen many sunrises In this world and one\nother: I have watched the moon slowly rolling its deep valleys for\nweeks into its morning sunlight.  I knew what to expect.  But nature\nalways surpasses expectations.  The sinuosities of the rim sent back\ntheir various colors.  A hundred domes and spires, wind sculptured and\nwater sculptured, reached up like Memnon to catch the first light of\nthe sun, and seemed to me to break out into Memnonian music.  As the\nworld rolled the steady light penetrated deeper, shadows diminished,\nlight spaces broadened and multiplied, till it seemed as if a new\ncreation were veritably going forward and a new \"Let there be light\"\nhad been uttered.  I had seen it for the first time the night before in\nthe mellow light of a nearly full moon, but the sunlight really seemed\nto make, in respect to breadth, depth, and definiteness, a new creation.\n\nOne peculiar effect I never noticed elsewhere.  It is well known that\nthe blue sky is not blue and there is no sky.  Blue is the color of the\natmosphere, and when seen in the miles deep overhead, or condensed in a\njar, it shows its own true color.  So, looking into this inconceivable\ncanon, the true color came out most beauteously.  There was a\nbackground of red and yellowish rocks.  These made the cold blue blush\nwith warm color.  The sapphire was backed with sardonyx, and the bluish\nwhite of the chalcedony was half pellucid to the gold chrysolite behind\nit.  God was laying the foundation of his perfect city there, and the\nlight of it seemed fit for the redeemed to walk in, and to have been\nmade by the luminousness of Him who is light.\n\nOne great purpose of this world is its use as significant symbol and\nhint of the world to come.  The communication of ideas and feelings\nthere is not by slow, clumsy speech, often misunderstood, originally\nmade to express low physical wants, but it is by charade, panorama,\nparable, and music rolling like the voice of many waters in a storm.\nThe greatest things and relations of earth are as hintful of greater\nthings as a bit of float ore in the plains is suggestive of boundless\nmines in the upper hills.  So the joy of finding one lost lamb in the\nwilderness tells of the joy of finding and saving a human soul.  One\nshould never go to any of God's great wonders to see sights, but to\nlive life; to read in them the figures, symbols, and types of the more\nwonderful things in the new heavens and the new earth.\n\nThe old Hebrew prophets and poets saw God everywhere in nature.  The\nfloods clap their hands and the hills are joyful together before the\nLord.  Miss Proctor, in the Yosemite, caught the same lofty spirit, and\nsang:\n\n  \"Perpetual masses here intone,\n    Uncounted censers swing,\n  A psalm on every breeze is blown;\n  The echoing peaks from throne to throne\n    Greet the indwelling King;\n  The Lord, the Lord is everywhere,\n  And seraph-tongued are earth and air.\"\n\n\n\n\nTHE YELLOWSTONE PARK GEYSERS\n\n\nTHEIR ESSENTIAL FACTS AND CAUSES\n\nI have been to school.  Dame Nature is a most kind and skillful\nteacher.  She first put me into the ABC class, and advanced me through\nconic sections.  The first thing in the geyser line she showed me was a\nmound of rock, large as a small cock of hay, with a projection on top\nlarge as a shallow pint bowl turned upside down.  In the center of this\nwas a half-inch hole, and from it every two seconds, with a musical\nchuckle of steam, a handful of diamond drops of water was ejected to a\nheight of from two to five feet.  I sat down with it half an hour,\ncompelled to continuous laughter by its own musical cachinnations.\nThere were all the essentials of a geyser.  There was a mound, not\nalways existent, built up by deposits from the water supersaturated\nwith mineral.  It might be three feet high; it might be thirty.  There\nwas the jet of water ejected by subterranean forces.  It might be half\nan inch in diameter; it might be three hundred feet, as in the case of\nthe Excelsior geyser.  It might rise six inches; it might rise two\nhundred and fifty feet.  There was the interval between the jets.  It\nmight be two seconds; it might be weeks or years.\n\n[Illustration: Formation of the Grotto Geyser.]\n\nA subsequent lesson in my Progressive Geyser Reader was the \"Economic.\"\nHere was a round basin ten feet in diameter, very shallow, with a hole\nin the middle about one foot across.  The water was perfectly calm.\nBut every six minutes a sudden spurt of water and steam would rise\nabout thirty feet, for thirty seconds, and then settle economically,\nwithout waste of water, into the pool, sinking with pulsations as on an\nelastic cushion a foot below the bottom of the pool.  One could stride\nthe opening like a colossus for five and one half minutes without fear.\nHe might be using the calm depth for a mirror.  But stay a moment too\nlong and he is scalded to death by the sudden outburst.\n\nThe next lesson required more patience and gave more abundant reward.\nI found a great raised platform on which stood a castellated rock, more\nthan twenty feet square, that had been built up particle by particle\ninto a perfect solid by deposits from the fiery flood.  In the center\nwas a brilliant orange-colored throat that went down into the bowels of\nthe earth.  That was not the geyser--it was only the trump through\nwhich the archangel was to blow.  I had heard the preliminary tuning of\nthe instrument.\n\nThe guide book said the grand play of this \"Castle\" geyser began from\neight to thirty hours after a previous exhibition, and was preceded by\njets of water fifteen to twenty feet high, and that these continued\nfive or six hours before the grand eruption.  I hovered near the grand\nstand till the full thirty hours and the six predictive hours were\nover, and then, as the thunder above roared threateningly and the rain\nfell suggestively, I took a rubber coat and camped on the trail of that\nfamous spouter.\n\nGeysers are more than a trifle freaky.  \"Old Faithful\" is a notable\nexception.  Every sixty-five minutes, with almost the regularity of\nstar time, he throws his column of hissing water one hundred and fifty\nfeet high.  Others are irregular, sometimes playing every three hours\nfor a few times, and then taking a rest for three or more days.  This\nCastle geyser is not registered to be quiet more than thirty hours, nor\nto indulge in preparatory spouts for more than six hours.  When I\nfinally camped to watch it out all these premonitory symptoms had been\nduly exhibited.  I first carefully noted the frequency and height of\nthe spouts, that any change might foretell the grand finale.  There\nwere ten spouts to the minute, and an average height of twenty feet.\nHours went by with no hint of a change: ten to the minute, twenty feet\nin height.  People by the dozen came and asked when it would go off.  I\nsaid, \"Liable to go any minute; it is long past due now.\"  Stage loads\nof tourists, scheduled to run on time, drove up, waited a few minutes,\nand drove on, as if the grand object of the trip was to make time--not\nto see the grandeur they had come a thousand miles to enjoy.  A\nphotographer set up his camera to catch a shadow of the great display.\nHe stood, sometimes air-bulb in hand, an hour or two, then folded his\ncamera tent and stole away.  Five hours had passed and night was near.\nEverybody was gone.  I lay down on the ground to convince myself that I\nwas perfectly patient.  I attained so nearly to Nirvana that a little\nground squirrel came and ran over me, kissing my hand in a most\nfriendly way.\n\nSix hours of waiting were nearly over when, without a single previous\nhint of change, one descending spout was met by an ascending one, and a\nvast column of hissing water rose, with a sound of continuous thunder,\none hundred feet in air; and stood there like a pillar of cloud in the\ndesert.  The air throbbed as in a cannonade, and the sun brushed away\nall clouds as if he could not bear to miss a sight he had seen perhaps\na million times.  Then the top of this upward Niagara bent over like\nthe calyx of a calla, and the downward Niagara covered all that\nelevated masonry with a rushing cascade.  Shifting my position a\nlittle, I could see that the sun was thrilling the whole glorious\noutpour with rainbows.  At such times one can neither measure nor\nexpress emotions by words.  In the thunder which anyone can hear there\nis always, for all who can receive it, the ineffably sweet voice of the\nFather saying, \"Thou art my beloved son, and all this grand display is\nfor thy precious sake.\"\n\nIn sixteen minutes the flow of waters ceased, and a rush of saturated\nsteam succeeded.  At the same time the fierce swish of ascending waters\nand of descending cascades ceased, and a clear, definite note, as of a\ntrumpet, exceeding long and loud, was blown.  No archangel could have\ndone better.  As the steam rolled skyward it was condensed, and a very\nheavy rain fell on about an acre at the east as it was drifted by the\nair.  It looked more like lines of water than separated drops.  I found\nit thoroughly cooled by its flight in the upper air.\n\nI climbed the huge natural masonry, and stood on the top.  I could have\nput my hand into the hot rushing of measureless power.  What a sight it\nwas!  There were the brilliant colors of the throat, open, three feet\nwide, and the dazzling whiteness of the steam.  At thirty-two minutes\nfrom the beginning the steam suddenly became drier, like that close to\nthe spout of a kettle, or close to the whistle of an engine.  All pure\nsteam is invisible.  At the same time the note of the trumpet\ndistinctly changed.  The heavy rain at the east as suddenly stopped.\nThe air could absorb the present amount of moisture.  One could see\nfarther down the terrible throat that seemed about to be rent asunder.\nThe awful grandeur was becoming too much for human endurance.  The\ncontorted forms of rocks on the summit began to take the forms and\nheads of dragons, such as the Chinese carve on their monuments.  The\nawful column began to change its effect from terror to fascination, and\nI knew how Empedocles felt when he flung himself into the burning\nAetna.  It was time to get down and stand further off.\n\n[Illustration: Bee-Hive Geyser.]\n\nThe long waiting had been rewarded.  \"To patient faith the prize is\nsure.\"  The grand tumult began to subside.  It was beyond all my\nexpectations.  Nature never disappoints, for she is of God and in her\nhe yet immanently abides.  The next day the sky and all the air were\nfull of falling rain.  How could it be otherwise?  It was the geyser\nreturning to earth.  I sought the place.  The awful trumpet was silent,\nand the steam exhaled as gently as a sleeping baby's breath.\n\nOnly one more lesson will be recited at present.  I had just arrived in\ncamp when they told me that the Splendid geyser, after two days of\nquiet, was showing signs of uneasiness.  I immediately went out to\nstudy my lesson.  There was a little hill of very gentle slopes, a\nlittle pool at the top, three holes at the west side of it, with a\ndozen sputtering hot springs scattered about, while in a direct line at\nthe east, within one hundred and forty feet, were the Comet, the Daisy,\nand another geyser.  The Daisy was a beauty, playing forty feet high\nevery two or four hours.   All the slopes were constantly flowing with\nhot water.  This general survey was no sooner taken than our glorious\nSplendid began to play.  The roaring column, tinted with the sunset\nglories, gradually climbed to a height of two hundred feet, leaned a\nlittle to the southeast, and bent like a glorious arch of triumph to\nthe earth, almost as solid on its descending as on its ascending side.\nNo wonder it is named \"Splendid.\"\n\nWhoever has studied waterfalls of great height--I have seen nearly\nforty justly famous falls--has noticed that when a column or mass of\nwater makes the fearful plunge smaller masses of water are constantly\nfeathered off at the sides and delayed by the resistance of the air,\nwhile the central mass hurries downward by its concentrated weight.\nThe general appearance is that of numerous spearheads with serrated\nedges, feathered with light, thrust from some celestial armory into the\nwrithing pool of agonized waters below.  In the geyser one gets this\neffect both in the ascending and in the descending flood.\n\nFour times that first night dear old Splendid lured me from my bed to\nwatch her Titanic play in the full light of the moon.  During all this\ntime not a hot spring ceased its boiling, nor a smaller geyser its\nwondrous play, for this gigantic outburst of power that might well have\nabsorbed every energy for a mile around.  Obviously they have no\nconnection.  Then my beloved Splendid settled into a three-days' rest.\n\nThese are the essential facts of geyser display.  There are very many\nvariations of performance in every respect, I have seen over twenty\ngeysers in almost jocular, and certainly in overwhelmingly magnificent,\nactivity.\n\n  \"To him who in the love of nature holds\n  Communion with her visible forms, she speaks\n  A various language.\"\n\n\nWHAT ARE THE CAUSES?\n\nWhat is the power that can throw a stream of water two by six feet over\nthe tops of the highest skyscrapers of Chicago?  It is heat manifested\nin the expansive power of steam.  Scientists have theorized long and\nexperimented patiently to read the open book of this tremendous\nmanifestation of uncontrollable energy.  At first the form and action\nof a teakettle was supposed to be explanatory.  Everyone knows that\nwhen steam accumulates under the lid it forces a gentle stream of water\nfrom the higher nozzle.  This fact was made the basis of a theory to\naccount for geysers by Sir George Mackenzie in 1811.  But to suppose\nthat nature has gone into the teakettle manufacturing business to the\nextent of thirty such kettles in a space of four square miles was seen\nto be preposterous.  So the construction theory was given up.\n\nBut suppose a tube (how it is made will be explained later), large or\nsmall, regular or irregular, to extend far into the earth, near or\nthrough any great source of heat resulting from condensation,\ncombustion, chemical action, or central fire.  Now suppose this tube to\nbe filled with water from surface or subterranean sources.  Heat\nconverts water, under the pressure of one atmosphere, or fifteen pounds\nto the square inch, into steam at a temperature of two hundred and\ntwelve degrees.  But under greater pressure more heat is required to\nmake steam.  The water never leaps and bubbles in an engine boiler.\nThe awful pressure compels it to be quiet.  A cubic inch of water will\nmake a cubic foot--one thousand seven hundred and twenty-eight times as\nmuch--of steam under the pressure of one atmosphere.  But under the\npressure of a column of water one thousand feet high, giving a pressure\nof four hundred and thirty-two pounds to the square inch at the bottom,\nwater becomes steam, if at all, only by great heat.  Every engineer\nknows that the pressure exerted by steam increases by great geometrical\nratios as the heat increases by small arithmetical ratios.  Steam made\nby two hundred and twelve degrees exerts a pressure, as we have said,\nof fifteen pounds.\n\nTo simply double the two hundred and twelve degrees of heat increases\nthe steam pressure twenty-three times.\n\nNow suppose the subterranean tube or lake of Old Faithful to be freshly\nfilled with its million gallons of water.  Sufficient heat makes steam\nunder any pressure.  It rises up the tube and is condensed to water\nagain by the colder water above.  Hence no commotion.  But the whole\nvolume of water grows hotter for an hour.  When it is too hot to absorb\nthe steam, and the tube is too narrow to let the amount made bubble up\nthrough the water, it lifts the whole mass with a sudden jerk.  The\ninstant the pressure of the water is taken off in any degree, the water\nbelow, that was kept water by the pressure, breaks into steam most\nvoluminously, and the measureless power floods the earth and sky with\nwater and steam.\n\nIt is also known that superheated steam suddenly takes on such great\npower that no boiler can hold it.  Once let the water in a boiler get\nvery low and no boiler can hold the force of the resultant superheated\nsteam.  The same heat that, applied to water, gives perfect safety,\napplied to steam gives utter destruction.  Hence the amazing force of\nthe vast jets of the geyser that follow the first spurts.\n\nAs soon as the steam is blown off the subterranean waterworks fill the\ntube and the process is repeated.\n\nThis modus operandi was first proposed as a theory by Bunsen in 1846,\nand later was demonstrated by the artificial geyser of Professor J. H.\nJ. Muller, of Freiburg.\n\n[Illustration: Pulpit Terrace and Bunsen Peak.]\n\n\nMOUNDS OF MINERAL DEPOSITS\n\nI have the extremely difficult task of representing emotions by\nwords--glories of color and form seen by the eye by symbols meant to be\naddressed to the ear.  Before seeking to describe the diverse colors\nmade largely by one substance, let us remember that while silica, the\nprincipal part of these water-built mounds, is one of the three parts\nof granite, namely, the white crystal quartz, it is also the substance\nof the beautifully variegated jasper, the lapis lazuli, the green\nmalachite, and the opal, with its cloudy milk-whiteness through which\nflashes its heart of fire.  Silica and alumina combine to make common\nclay, but alumina forms itself into the red ruby, the golden-tinted\ntopaz, the violet oriental amethyst, the red, white, yellow, and violet\nsapphire, and the beautiful green emerald.  With substances of such\nrare capabilities we may expect rich results in color and form.\n\nWe turn now to deposits from water of these two substances, especially\nthe first.  About the Old Faithful geyser is a mound about one hundred\nand forty-five feet broad at the base, twelve feet high, jeweled over\nwith pools of beauty of every shape, beaded and fretted with glories of\ncolor never seen before except in the sky.  How were they made?\n\nWater is a general solvent.  It can take into its substance several\nsimilar bulks of other substances without greatly increasing its own,\nsome actually diminishing it.  Hot alkaline water will dissolve even\nsilica rock.  When water is saturated with sugar, salt, or other\nsubstance, if a little or much water is evaporated some of the\nsaturating substance must be deposited as a solid.  All crystals, as\nquartz or diamonds, have been made by deposits from water.  Hot water\ncan hold in solution much more of a solid than cold water.  Therefore,\nwhen hot water comes out of the earth and is cooled, some of the\nsaturating substance must be deposited as a solid.  It is done in\nvarious ways, especially two.\n\nSuppose a little pool with perpendicular sides, say twenty feet across.\nIt leaps and boils two feet high.  It deposits nothing till the water\ncomes to the cooling edge.  Then it builds up a wall where it\noverflows, and wherever it flows it builds.  The result is that you\nwalk up the gentle slopes of a broad flat cone, and find the little\nlakelet in a gorgeous setting, perfectly full at every point of the\ncircumference.  If there is but little overflow, the result may be to\ndeposit all the matter where it first cools, and make a perpendicular\nwall around the cup two or ten feet high.  If the overflow is too much\nto be cooled at once, the deposit may still be made fifty or one\nhundred feet from the point of issue.  If the overflow is sufficient,\nit may be building up every inch of a vast cone at once, every foot\nbeing wet.\n\n[Illustration: The Punch Bowl, Yellowstone Geysers.]\n\nMany minerals are held in solution and are deposited at various stages\nof evaporation.  Let us suppose the lake to have the bottom sloping\ntoward the abysmal center; the different minerals will be assorted as\nif with a sieve.  At the Sunlight Basin the edge is as flaming red as\none ever sees in the sunlit sky.  And every color ever seen in a sunset\nflames almost as brilliantly in the varying depths.  Suppose a low cone\nto be flooded only occasionally, as in the case of the Old Faithful\ngeyser.  The cooled water falling from the upper air builds up, under\nthe terrible drench of the cataract, walls three or four inches high,\nmaking pools of every conceivable shape, a few inches deep, in which\nare the most exquisite and varied colors ever seen by mortal eye.  You\nwalk about on these dividing walls and gaze into the beaded and\nimpearled pools of a hundred shades of different colors, never equaled\nexcept by that perpetual glory of the sunset.\n\nConsider the case of a pool that does not overflow.  Just as lakes that\nhave no outlet must grow more and more salt till some have become solid\nsalt beds, so must this pool, tossing its hot waves two or three feet\nhigh, evaporate its water and deposit its solids.  Where?  First,\nagainst the cooler sides of the rock under the water, tending to reduce\nthe opening to a mere throat.  Second, each wavelet tossed in air is\ncooled, and deposits on the edge, solid as quartz, a crust that\noverhangs the pool and tends to close it over as with hot ice.  It may\nbuild thus a mound fifteen feet high with an open throat in the middle.\nThus the pool has constructed an intermittent geyser.  If the water\nsupply continues, it also destroys itself.  The throat closes up by its\nown deposits.  It is a case of geyseral membranous croup.\n\nI exceedingly longed to try vivisection on a geyser, or at least take\none of half a hundred, drain it off, and make a post-mortem\nexamination.  On my very last day I found opportunity.  I found a dead\ngeyser, though not by any means yet cold.  It was still so hot that\npeople had given it an infernal name.  I squeezed myself down through\nits hot throat, which seemed a veritable open sepulcher, and found a\ncave about twenty-five feet deep, twelve feet wide, and about sixty\nfeet long.  It was elliptical in form, the sides coming together at a\nsharp angle at the ends, bottom, and top.  The way down to the fiery\nheart of the earth had simply grown up by deposits of silex on the\nsides and at the bottom.  The water had evaporated by the intense heat,\nand I was in the hot hollow that had once held an earthquake and\nvolcano.  When I squeezed up to the blessed upper air I was glad there\nwas no help from below.\n\nI could tell of mounds that grew so fast as to inclose the limbs of a\ntree, making the firmest kind of a ladder by which I climbed to the\ntop; of floods that overflowed acres of forest, leaving every tree\nfirmly planted in solid rock; of mounds hundreds of feet high, covering\ntwenty acres with forms of indescribable beauty--but I despair.  The\nhalf has not been told.  It cannot be.  Great and marvelous are all Thy\nworks, Lord God Almighty!  In wisdom hast Thou made them all.\n\nEmerson says: \"Whilst common sense looks at things or visible nature as\nreal and final facts, poetry, or the imagination which dictates it, is\na second sight, looking through these, and using them as types or words\nfor thoughts which they signify.\"  Using these faculties and not mere\neyesight, one must surely say: \"Since this world, in power, fineness,\nfinish, beauty, and adaptations not only surpasses our accomplishment,\nbut also is past our finding out to its perfection, it must have been\nmade by One stronger, finer, and wiser than we are.\"\n\n\n\n\nSEA SCULPTURE*\n\n*Reprinted from _The Chautauquan_.\n\n\nWhen the Russians charged on the Grivitza redoubt at Plevna they first\nlaunched one column of men that they knew would be all shot down long\nbefore they could reach it.  But they made a cloud of smoke under the\ncover of which a second column was launched.  They would all be shot\ndown.  But they carried the covering cloud so far that a third column\nbroke out of it and successfully carried the redoubt.  They carried it,\nbut ten thousand men lay on the death-smitten slope.\n\nSo the great ocean sends eight or ten thousand columns a day to charge\nwith flying banners of spray on the rocky ramparts of the shore at\nSanta Cruz, California.\n\nThere are not many things in the material world more sublime than a\nthousand miles of crested waves rushing with terrible might against the\nrocky shore.  While they are yet some distance from the land a small\nboat can ride their foaming billows, but as they approach the shallower\nplaces they seem to take on sudden rage and irresistible force.  Those\nroaring waves rear up two or three times as high.  They have great\nperpendicular fronts down which Niagaras are pouring.  The spray flies\nfrom their tops like the mane of a thousand wild horses charging in the\nwind.  No ship can hold anchor in the breakers.  They may dare a\nthousand storms outside, but once let them fall into the clutch of this\nresistless power and they are doomed.  The waves seem frantic with\nrage, resistless in force; they rush with fury, smite the cliffs with\nthunder, and are flung fifty feet into the air; with what effect on the\nrocks we will try to relate.\n\n[Illustration: \"The Breakers,\" Santa Cruz, Cal.]\n\nNo. 1 of our illustrations shows \"The Breakers,\" a two-story house of\nthat name where hospitality, grace, and beauty abide; where hundreds of\nroses bloom in a day, and where flowers, prodigal as creative\nprocesses, abound.  The breakers from which the house is named are not\nseen in the picture.  When the wind has been blowing hard, maybe one\nhundred miles out at sea, they come racing in from the point,\nfeather-crested, a dozen at once, to show how rolls the far Wairoa at\nsome other world's end.  All these pictures are taken in the calm\nweather, or there would be little seen besides the great leaps of\nspray, often fifty feet high.  At the bottom of the cliff appear the\nnodules and bowlders that were too hard to be bitten into dust and have\nfallen out of the cliff, which is fifty feet high, as the sea eats it\naway.  Some of these are sculptured into the likeness effaces and\nfigures, solemn and grotesque.  It is easy to find Pharaoh, Cleopatra,\nTantalus, represented here.\n\nThis house is at the beginning of the famous Cliff Drive that rounds\nthe lighthouse at the point and stretches away for miles above the\never-changing, now beautiful, now sublime, and always great Pacific,\nthat rolls its six thousand miles of billows toward us from Hong Kong.\nOccasionally the road must be set back, and once the lighthouse was\nmoved back from the cliffs, eaten away by the edacious tooth of the sea.\n\nAs Emerson says, \"I never count the hours I spend in wandering by the\nsea; like God it useth me.\"  There is a wideness like his mercy, a\npower like his omnipotence, a persistence like his patience, a length\nof work like his eternity.\n\nThe rocks of Santa Cruz, as in many other places, were laid in regular\norder, like the leaves of a book on its side.  But by various forces\nthey have been crumbled, some torn out, and in many places piled\ntogether.  These layers, beginning at the bottom, are as follows; (1)\nigneous granite, unstratified; (2) limestone laid down from life in the\nocean, metamorphosed by heat and all fossils thereby destroyed; (3)\nlimestone highly crystallized, composed of fossil shells and very hard;\n(4) sandstone, made under the sea from previous rock powdered, having\nhuge concretionary masses with a shell or a pebble as a nucleus around\nwhich the concretion has taken place; (5) shale from the sea also; (6)\nconglomerate, or drift, deposited by ice in the famous glacial cold\nsnap; (7) alluvium soil deposited in fresh water and composed partly of\norganic matter.  In our second illustration some of these layers, or\nstrata, may be distinguished.\n\n[Illustration: The Work and the Worker, Santa Cruz, Cal.]\n\nWhen the awful blows of the sea smite the rock, if it finds a place\nless hard than others, it wears into it a slight depression, after half\na hundred thousand strokes, more or less, and ever after, as the years\ngo by, it drives its wedges home in that place.  A shallow cave\nresults.  Then the waters converge on the sides of the cave and meet\nwith awful force in the middle.  Thus a tunnel is excavated, like a\ndrift in a mine, each wave making the tremendous charge and the\nreflowing surges bringing away all the detritus.  This tunnel may be\ndriven or excavated two hundred feet inland, under the shore.  At each\ninrush of the wave the air is terribly condensed before it.  It seeks\noutlet.  And so it happens that the air is driven up through some crack\nin the rock and the superincumbent earth, one or two hundred feet from\nthe shore, and a great hole appears in the ground from twenty to\nseventy feet deep.  Then the water spouts fiercely up and returning\ncarries back the earth and broken rock into the sea.\n\nNo. 3 of the illustrations here given represents such a great\nexcavation one hundred feet back from the shore.  It is one hundred and\nfifty feet long by ninety wide and over fifty feet deep.  All the\nmaterial had been carried out to sea by the refluent wave.  On the\nnatural bridge seen in front the great crowd in Broadway, New York,\nmight pass or a troop of cavalry could be maneuvered.  Through the arch\na ship with masts thirty feet high might enter at high tide.  Through\nthe abutment of the arch where the afternoon sun pours its brightness\nthe waves have cut other arches not visible in the picture.  When the\narches become too many or too wide the natural bridge will fall and be\ncarried out to sea like many another.\n\n[Illustration: A Natural Bridge, Santa Cruz, Cal.]\n\nBut what does the sea do with the harder parts of the cliff?  Its waves\nwear away the rock on each side and leave one or more long fingers\nreaching out into the sea.  The wear and tear on such a projection is\nimmense.  A strong swimmer may play with the breakers away from the\ncliff.  At exactly the right moment he may dive headlong through the\npearly green Niagara that has not yet fallen quite to his head and may\nsport in the comparatively quiet water beyond, while the wild ruin\nfalls with a sound of thunder on the beach.  But let him once be caught\nand dashed against the rocks and there is no more life or wholeness of\nbones within him.\n\nIn the swirl of converging currents between two rocky projections, as\nthe coarse sand and gravel is surged around a few hundred thousand\ntimes, there is a great tendency to wear through the wall of the\nprojecting finger.  It is often done.  Illustration No. 4 shows at low\ntide such a projection cut through.  Since the picture was taken the\nbridge has fallen, the detritus been carted away by the waves, and the\npier stands lonely in the sea.\n\n[Illustration: An Excavated Arch, Santa Cruz, Cal.]\n\nNo. 5 shows one bridge exceedingly frail and another more substantial\nnearer the famous Cliff Drive.  I go to the frail one every year with\nanxiety lest I shall find it has been carried away.  How I wish I could\nshow my readers the delicate sculpture and carving further back, nearer\nyet to the drive.  But note the various strata, the rocks worn to a\npoint as even the milder waves run over them; note the cracks that tell\nof the awful push and stress of the titanic struggle.\n\n[Illustration: A Double Natural Arch, Santa Cruz, Cal.]\n\nIllustration No. 6 shows three such under-hewn arches.  The long\nprojection of rock is so curved as to prevent the arches being fully\nseen in any one view.  I have waded and swam through these rocky\nvistas, and there, where any more than moderate waves would have\nmangled me against the tusks of the cruel rocks, I have found little\nspecimens of aquatic life by the millions, clinging fast to the rocks\nthat were home to them and protecting themselves by taking lime out of\nthe water and building such a solid wall of shell that no fierceness of\nthe wildest storm could work them harm.  All these seek their food from\nHim who feeds all life, and he heaves the ocean up to their mouths that\nthey may drink.\n\n[Illustration: A Triple Natural Arch, Santa Cruz, Cal.]\n\nNo. 7 shows what has been a quadruple arch, only one part of which is\nstill standing.  Out in the sea, lonely and by itself, appears a pier,\nscarcely emergent from the waves, which once supported an arch parallel\nto the one now standing and also one at right angles to the shore.  The\none now standing makes the fourth.  But the ever-working sea carves and\ncarries away arch and shore alike.  At some points a careful and even\nadmiring observer sees little change for years, but the remorseless\ntooth gnaws on unceasingly.\n\n[Illustration: Remains of a Quadruple Natural Arch, Santa Cruz, Cal.]\n\nOn the right near the point is seen a board sign.  It says here, as in\nmany other places, \"Danger.\"  Sometimes two converging waves meet at\nthe land, rise unexpectedly, sweep over the point irresistibly, and\ncarry away anyone who stands there.  One large and two small shreds of\nskin now gone from the palm of my left hand give proof of an experience\nthere that did not result quite so disastrously.\n\nThe illustration facing page 188 is another example of an arch cut\nthrough the rocky barrier of the shore.  But in this case the trend of\nthe less hard rock was at such an angle to the shore that the sea broke\ninto the channel once more, and then the combined waves from the two\nentrances forced the passage one hundred and forty paces inland.  It\nterminates in another natural bridge and deep excavation beyond, which\nare not shown in the picture.\n\n[Illustration: Arch Remains Side Wall Broken, Santa Clara, Cal.]\n\nWhat becomes of this comminuted rock, cleft by wedges of water, scoured\nover by hundreds of tons of sharp sand?  It is carried out by gentle\nundercurrents into the bay and ocean, and laid down where winds never\nblow nor waves ever beat, as gently as dust falls through the summer\nair.  It incloses fossils of the plant and animal life of to-day.\nThere rest in nature's own sepulcher the skeletons of sharks and whales\nof to-day and possibly of man.  Sometime, if the depths become heights,\nas they have in a thousand places in the past, a fit intelligence may\nread therein much of the present history of the world.  We say to that\ncoming age, as a past age has said to us, \"Speak to the earth and it\nshall teach thee, and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee.\"\n\n\n\n\nTHE POWER OF VEGETABLE LIFE\n\nI have a great variety of little masses of matter--some small as a\npin's blunt point, and none of them bigger than a pin's head.  They are\nsmooth, glossy, hard, exceedingly beautiful under the microscope, and\nclearly distinguishable one from another.  They have such intense\nindividuality, are so self-assertive, that by no process can those of\none kind be made to look or act like those of another.  These little\nmasses of matter are centers of incredible power.  They are seeds.\n\nSelect two for examination, and, unfolding, one becomes grass--soft,\nsucculent, a carpet for dainty feet, a rest for weary eyes, part food,\nbut mostly drink, for hungry beasts.  It exhausts all its energy\nquickly.  Grass today is, and to-morrow is cut down and withered, ready\nfor the oven.\n\nTry the other seed.  It is of the pin head size.  It is dark brown,\nhard-shelled, dry, of resinous smell to nostrils sensitive as a bird's.\nThe bird drops it in the soil, where the dews fall and where the sun\nkisses the sleeping princesses into life.\n\nNow the latent powers of that little center of force begin to play.\nThey first open the hard shell from the inside, then build out an arm\nwhite and tender as a nerve fiber, but which shall become great and\ntough as an oak.  This arm shuns the light and goes down into the dark\nground, pushing aside the pebbles and earth.  Soon after the seed\nthrusts out of the same crevice another arm that has an instinct to go\nupward to the light.  Neither of these arms is yet solid and strong.\nThey are beyond expression tender, delicate, and porous, but the one is\nto become great roots that reach all over an acre, and the other one of\nCalifornia's big trees, thirty feet in diameter and four hundred feet\nhigh.\n\nHow is it to be done?  By powers latent in the seed developing and\nexpanding for a thousand years.  What a power it must be!\n\nFirst, it is a power of selection--might we not say discrimination?\nThat little seed can never by any power of persuasion or environment be\nmade to produce grass or any other kind of a tree, as manzanita, mango,\nbanyan, catalpa, etc., but simply and only _sequoia gigantea_.\n\nThere are hundreds of shapes and kinds of leaves with names it gives\none a headache to remember.  But this seed never makes a single\nmistake.  It produces millions of leaves, but every one is\nawl-shaped--subulate.  Woods have many odors--sickening, aromatic,\nbalsamic, medicinal.  We go to the other side of the world to bring the\nodor of sandal or camphor to our nostrils.  But amid so many odors our\nseed will make but one.  It is resinous, like some of those odors the\nLord enjoyed when they bathed with their delicious fragrance the cruel\nsaw that cut their substance, and atmosphered with new delights the one\nwho destroyed their life.  The big tree, with subtle chemistry no man\ncan imitate, always makes its fragrance with unerring exactness.\n\n[Illustration: The Big Trees.]\n\nThere are thousands of seeds finished with a perfectness and beauty we\nare hardly acute enough to discover.  The microscopist revels in the\nforms of the dainty scales of its armor and the opalescent tints of its\ncolor.  The sunset is not more delicate and exquisite.  But the big\ntree never makes but one kind of seed, and leaves no one of its\nthousands unfinished.\n\nThe same is true of bark, grain of wood, method of putting out limbs,\noutline of the mass, reach of roots, and every other peculiarity.  It\ndiscriminates.\n\nBut how does it build itself?  Myriads of rootlets search the\nsurrounding country for elements it needs for making bark, wood, leaf,\nflower, and seed.  They often find what they want in other\norganizations or other chemical compounds.  But with a power of\nanalytical chemistry they separate what they want and appropriate it to\ntheir majestic growths.  But how is material conveyed from rootlet to\nveinlet of leaf hundreds of feet away?  The great tree is more full of\nchannels of communication than Venice or Stockholm is of canals, and it\nis along these watery ways of commerce that the material is conveyed.\nThese channels are a succession of cells that act like locks, set for\nthe perpendicular elevation of the freight.  The tiny boats run day and\nnight in the season, and though it is dark within, and though there are\na thousand piers, no freight that starts underground for a leaf is ever\nlanded on the way for bark or woody fiber.  Freight never goes astray,\nnor are express packages miscarried.  What starts for bark, leaf,\nfiber, seed, is deposited as bark, leaf, fiber, seed, and nothing else.\nThere are hundreds of miles of canals, but every boat knows where to\nland its unmarked freight.  Curious as is this work underground, that\nin the upper air is more so.  The tree builds most of its solid\nsubstance from the mobile and tenuous air.  Trees are largely condensed\nair.  By the magic chemistry of the sunshine and vegetable life the\ntree breathes through its myriad leaves and extracts carbon to be built\ninto wood.  Had we the same power to extract fuel from the air we need\nnot dig for coal.\n\nIn doing this work the power of life in the tree has to overcome many\nother kinds of force.  There is the power of cohesion.  How it holds\nthe particles of stone or iron together!  You can hardly break its\nforce with a great sledge.  But the power of life in the tree, or even\ngrass, must master the power of cohesion and take out of the\ndisintegrating rock what it wants.  So it must overcome the power of\nchemical affinity in water and air.  The substances it wants are in\nother combinations, the power of which must be overcome.\n\nGravitation is a great power, but the thousand tons of this tree's vast\nweight must be lifted and sustained in defiance of it.  So for a\nthousand years gravitation sees the tree rise higher and higher, till\nthe great lesson is taught that it is a weakling compared with the\npower of life.  There is not a place where one can put his finger that\nthere are not a dozen forces in full play, every one of which is\nplastic, elastic, and ready to yield to any force that is higher.  So\nthe tree stands, not mere lumber and cordwood, or an obstacle to be\ngotten rid of by fire, but an embodiment of life unexhausted for a\nthousand years.  The fairy-fingered breeze plays through its myriad\nharp strings.  It makes wide miles of air aromatic.  Animal life feeds\non the quintessence of life in its seeds.  But most of all it is an\nobject lesson that power triumphs over lesser power, and that the\nhighest power has dominion over all other power.\n\nThe great power of vegetable life was shown under circumstances that\nseemed the least favorable in the following experiment:\n\nIn the Agricultural College at Amherst, Mass., a squash of the yellow\nChili variety was put in harness in 1874 to see how much it would lift\nby its power of growth.\n\n[Illustration: Yellow Chili Squash in Harness.]\n\nIt was not an oak or mahogany tree, but a soft, pulpy, squashy squash\nthat one could poke his finger into, nourished through a soft,\nsucculent vine that one could mash between finger and thumb.  A good\nidea of the harness is given by the illustration.  The squash was\nconfined in an open harness of iron and wood, and the amount lifted was\nindicated by weights on the lever over the top.  There were, including\nseventy nodal roots, more than eighty thousand feet of roots and\nrootlets.  These roots increased one thousand feet in twenty-four\nhours.  They were afforded every advantage by being grown in a hot bed.\nOn August 21 it lifted sixty pounds.  By September 30 it lifted a ton.\nOn October 24 it carried over two tons.  The squash grew gnarled like\nan oak, and its substance was almost as compact as mahogany.  Its inner\ncavity was very small, but it perfectly elaborated its seeds, as usual.\n\nThe lever to indicate the weight had to be changed for stronger ones\nfrom time to time.  More weights were sought.  They scurried through\nthe town and got an anvil and pieces of railroad iron and hung them at\nvarying distances, as shown in the cut.  By the 31st of October it was\ncarrying a weight of five thousand pounds.  Then owing to defects of\nthe new contrivance the rind was broken through without showing what\nmight have been done under better conditions.  Every particle of the\nsquash had to be added and find itself elbow room under this enormous\npressure.  But life will assert itself.\n\n[Illustration: Squash in Cage.]\n\nNo wonder that the Lord, seeking some form of speech to represent his\npower in human souls, says, \"I am the vine, ye are the branches.\"  The\ntremendous life of infinite strength surges up through the vine and out\ninto all branches that are really vitally attached.  No wonder that\nmuch fruit is expected, and that one who knew most of this imparted\npower said, \"I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.\"\n\n\n\n\nSPIRITUAL DYNAMICS*\n\n*Reprinted from _The Study_.\n\nWill God indeed dwell upon the earth? asked Solomon.  Will God indeed\nwork with man on the earth? asks the pushing, working spirit of to-day.\nHas man a right to expect a special lending of the infinite power to\nhelp out his human endeavors?  Does God put special forces to open some\ndoors, close others, influence some men to come to his help, hinder\nothers, bring to bear influences benign, restrain those malign, and\ninvigorate a man's own powers so that his arm has the strength of ten,\nbecause his heart is pure enough for God to work in it and through it?\nIf this is so, in what fields, under what conditions, to what extent,\nand in accordance with what laws may we expect aid?\n\nFirst, it is evident that there is power not ourselves.  We did not\nmake this world.  We did not put into it even the lowest force,\ngravitation.  It is more than our minds can compass to measure its\npower.  We have no arithmetic to tell its power on every mote in the\nsunbeam, or flower, or grain-head bowing toward the earth, tree brought\ndown with a crash, or avalanche with thunder.  Much less can we measure\nthe power that holds the earth to the sun spite of its measureless\ncentrifugal force.  We did not make the next highest force, cohesion.\nThe particles of rock and iron cohere with so great an energy that\ngravitation cannot overcome it.  But it is not by our energy.  We did\nnot make the next highest force, chemical affinity, that masters both\ngravitation and cohesion.  Water, the result of chemical affinity\nbetween oxygen and hydrogen, can be rent into its constituent elements\nwith nothing less than a stream of lightning.  We did not make the next\nhighest force, vegetative life.  That masters gravitation, and lifts up\nthe tree in spite of it; masters cohesion--the tree's rootlets tear\nasunder the particles of stone; masters chemical affinity--it takes the\noxygen from air and water.  We did not create that force, measureless\nto our minds.  We say it must have come out of some omnipotence greater\nthan all of them.  The conclusion of all minds is, there is a power not\nourselves.\n\nIt is unthinkable that these forces before mentioned should have\noriginated themselves.  It is equally so that they could maintain and\ncontinue themselves.  There must be some continual upholding by a word\nof power.\n\nIt is equally plain that there is intelligence, thought, and plan\nbehind these forces.  They are not blind Samsons grinding in a\nprison-house, and liable at any moment to bring down in utter ruin\nevery pillar of the universe on which they can put their hands.\n\nIf intelligent and planful, there must be personality.  We may as well\ncall it by the name by which it is universally known, God.\n\nNow does this intelligent and powerful personality know our plans and\nlend his powers to the accomplishment of our purposes?  It is better to\nput it the other way.  Mr. Lincoln taught us the truer statement when\none said to him, in the awful anxiety of the war, \"I think God is on\nour side;\" he answered, \"My great concern is to know if we are on God's\nside.\"  So our question is better thus: Does this intelligent, powerful\npersonality accept and use our energy in the accomplishment of his\nplans?\n\nThat will depend on what he wants done.  If he only wants mountains\nlifted, he can put the shoulder of an earthquake under the strata of a\ncontinent and tilt them up edgewise, or toss up a hundred miles of\nstrata and let them come down the other side up.  If he wants mountains\ncarried hence and cast into the sea, he can bring rivers to carry for\nthousands of years numberless tons.  If he wants worlds held in\nrhythmic relations to their sun, he can take gravitation.  Man is of no\nuse; he cannot reach so far.\n\nBut if this being has anything to do that he cannot do, he will gladly\nwelcome man's aid.  Has he?  Yes.  Obviously he wants things done he\ncannot do alone.  Worlds are dead.  Trees do not think.  Morning stars\nmay sing together, but they cannot love.  None of them have character.\nNone of them have conscious responsiveness to the full tides of power\nand love that flush the universe.  None of them are permanent, or worth\nkeeping forever.  They are only scaffolding.  He wants something\ngreater than he can make; something as great as God and man and angels\ntogether can make.  He wants not mere matter acted upon from without,\nbut intelligences active in themselves; wants not mere miles of\ngranite, but hearts responsive to love, and character that is sturdier\nthan granite, more enduring than the hills that seem to be everlasting,\nand of so great a price that a whole world is of less value than a\nsingle soul, and of such permanence that it shall flourish in immortal\nyouth when worlds, short-lived in comparison, shall have passed away.\nGod can make worlds in plenty, but he wants something so much better\nthat they shall be mere parade-grounds for the training of his armies.\n\nAre there proofs that God's forces are cooperating with ours?  Many.\nGravitation holds us to the earth.  We do not drift, all sides up\nsuccessively, in space or chaos.  We never want a breath but there are\noceans of it rushing to answer our hunger for it.\n\nBut especially do we undertake all our more definite efforts with a\nfull expectation of the aid of the forces without us.  Man takes to\nagriculture with a relish that indicates that the soil and he are akin.\nHe expects all its energies to cooperate with him.  He plants the grain\nor seed expecting that all its vegetative forces will cowork with his\nplans.  Every energy of earth, air, water, and the far-off sun work\ninto his plans as if they had no other end in all their being.  If a\nman wants a house, he expects the solidity of the rock, all the\nadaptations of wood that has been growing for a century, expects the\nbeauty of the fir tree, the pine, and the box to come together to\nbeautify the place of his dwelling.\n\nThere are other forces into which man can put his scepter of power and\nhand of mastery.  They all work for and with him.  Does he want his\nburdens carried?  The river will convey the Indian on a log or the\narmaments of the greatest nations.  The wind fits itself into the\nshoulder of his sail on the sea, and steam does more work on the land\nthan all the human race together.  Does he want swiftness?  The\nlightning comes and goes between the ends of the earth saying, \"Here am\nI.\"  Obviously all these kinds of forces are always on hand to work\ninto man's plans.\n\nIs not our whole question settled?  If these fundamental forces, these\noceans of air and energy, forces so great that man cannot measure them,\nso delicate and fine that man does not discover them in thousands of\nyears, are all waiting and palpitating to rush into the service of man\nto advance his plans, and hint of plans larger than he ever dreamed,\nuntil he grows great by handling these ineffable factors, how can it be\notherwise than that the energies, thoughts, and loves back of these\nforces, and out of which they come, and of which they are the visible\nsigns and exponents, are working together with man?  Then, in all\nprobability, nay in all certainty, all other forces, whether they be\nthrones or dominions, principalities or powers, things present or\nthings to come, will also lend all their energies to the help of man.\nGod does not aid in the lowest and leave us to ourselves in the\nhighest.  He does not feed the body and let the soul famish, does not\nhelp us to the meat that perishes and let us starve for the bread of\neternal life.\n\nScripture passages, literally thousands in number, proclaim God's\ncontrol of the regular operations of nature, his sovereignty over\nbirth, life, death, disease, afflictions, and prosperity, over what we\ncall accident, his execution of righteous retributions, bringing of\ndeliverance, setting up thrones, and casting down princes.  He upholds\nall things by the direct exercise of his power.  \"The uniformities of\nnature are his ordinary method of working; its irregularities his\nmethod upon occasional condition; its interferences his method under\nthe pressure of a higher law.\"  There can be no general providence\nwhich is not special, no care for the whole which does not include care\nfor all the parts, no provided safety for the head which does not\nnumber all the hairs.  The Old Testament doctrine of a special and\nminute providence over the chosen nation is expanded by Christ's loving\nteaching and ministrations into an equal care for the personal\nindividual (Matt. vii, 11; xviii, 19; Heb. iv, 16).  The cold glacial\nperiod of human fear that poured its ice floe over the mind of man,\nmaking him feel like an orphaned race in a godless world, has retired\nbefore the gentle beams of the Sun of Righteousness, and the winter is\npast, the flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of birds\nand hearts has commenced.\n\nIt is everywhere recognized that the great outcome of a man's life is\nnot the title to a thousand acres.  He is soon dispossessed.  It is not\nall the bonds and money he can hold.  A dead man's hands are empty.  It\nis not reputation that the winds blow away.  But it is character that\nhe acquires and carries with him.  He has a fidelity to principle that\nis like Abdiel's.  He is faithful among the faithless.  He has\nallegiance to right that the lure of all the kingdoms of the earth\ncannot swerve for a moment.  He counts soul so much above the body that\nno fiery furnaces, heated seven times hotter than they are wont, sway\nhim for a moment from adherence to the interests of soul as against\neven the existence of the body.\n\nNow, how has such an eminence of character been attained?  Not\naltogether by individual evolution.  Ancestral tendencies, parental\nexample, the great force of strong, eternal principles, the moral\nmuscle acquired in the gymnasium of temptation, and confessedly and\nespecially a spiritual force vouchsafed from without, have wrought out\nthis greatest result of heaven and earth.  Of some men you expect\nnothing but goodness and greatness.  They would belie all the\ntendencies of their blood to be otherwise than good.  Some are\nconstantly trained under the mighty influences of great principles that\nsway men as much as gravitation sways the worlds.  What could be\nexpected of the men of '76 when the air was electric with patriotism?\nWhat could be expected of men whose childhood was filled with the\nsacrifices of men who made themselves pilgrims and strangers over the\nearth, from England to Holland and thence over the drear and\ninhospitable sea to America, for the sake of liberty?  What could be\nexpected of men whose whole ancestry was cut off by the slaughter\nfollowing the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and they themselves\nexiled for liberty to worship God?  What can be expected of men who\nhave been tried in the furnace of temptation till they are pure gold?\nNay, more, what can be expected of men who have in these temptations\nbeen strengthened out of God?  Besides the strength of development by\nthe resistance of evil, they have found that God made a way of escape,\nthat he strengthened, them and that they were thus by supernal power\nable to bear it.  Nay, rather, what may not be expected of such men?\n\nBut we will not forget that this great outcome is precisely the plan of\nGod for every man's life, and that when man works he finds that there\nare forces outside of him thoroughly cooperative with him.  He starts a\nrock down the mountain side, but gravitation reaches out ready fingers\nand hurls it a thousand times faster and faster.  He launches his ship\non the sea and the wind and steam carry it thousands of miles.  He\nspeaks his quiet breath into the ear of the phone and electricity\ncarries it in every tone and inflection of personal quality a thousand\nmiles.  He vows, and works for purity and greatness of personal\ncharacter, and a thousand gravitations of love, a thousand great winds\nof Pentecost, a thousand vital principles on which all greatness hangs,\na thousand influences of other men, and especially a thousand personal\naids of a present God, cooperate with his plans and works.\n\nOf course every man who believes in a new type so high that good birth,\nwealth, culture, education, and broad opportunity cannot attain it\nbelieves in the divine co-operation to that end.  It must be born of\nthe Spirit.  God sends forth his Spirit into our hearts crying, Abba,\nFather!  It pleases the Father himself to reveal his Son in us.\n\nNot only is this cooperation true in regard to the beginning of this\nhigher life, but especially so in regard to the development and\nperfection of that life into the stature of perfect manhood in Christ\nJesus.  By continuous effort to lead into all truth, by intensity of\nendeavor that can only be represented by groanings that cannot be\nworded in human speech, the perfection of saints is sought.\n\nAnd in the final glorification of those saints every man will say\nnothing of his own efforts, but all the praise will be unto him who\nhath redeemed us unto God, and washed us in his blood.\n\nTo what extent, then, may we expect God will lend his forces to work\nout our plans?  First, in so far as those forces have to do with the\nmaturing and perfecting of our character they become his plans.  No\nenergy will be withheld.  All our plans should be such.  The end in\ncharacter may often be attained as well by failure of our plans as by\nsuccess.  God has to choose the poor in this world's things, rich in\nfaith, to do his great work.  And he has to make \"the best laid schemes\no' mice and men gang aft a-gley\" to get the desired outcome of\ncharacter.  He is then working with, not against, us.  He would rather\nhave any star for his crown of glory than tons of perishable gold.\n\nBut outside of our plans and work for ourselves what cooperation may we\nexpect in our plans and work for others?\n\nEvery preacher knows that for spiritual work in saving others the word\nof the Lord is true, \"Without me ye can do nothing.\"  There must be an\noutpouring of the Spirit or there is no Pentecost.  Over against that\nsettled conviction is the thrice-blessed command and assurance of the\nMaster, \"Go preach my Gospel; and lo, I am with you alway\" (blessed\niteration), \"unto the end of the world.\"  That has not yet come.\n\nBut there are other enterprises men must push--mines to be dug,\nrailroads to be surveyed and built, slaves to be emancipated, farms to\nbe cultivated, mischiefs framed by a law to be averted, charities to be\nexercised, schools to be founded, and generally a living to be gotten.\nTo what extent may we expect divine aid?\n\nFirst, all these things are his purposes and plans.  But since it is\nnecessary for our development that we do our level best, he will not do\nwhat we can.  We can plant and water, but God only can give the\nincrease.  Even the fable maker says that a teamster, whose wagon was\nstuck in the mud, seeing Jupiter Omnipotens riding by on the chariot of\nthe clouds, dropped on his knees and implored his help.  \"Get up, O\nlazy one!\" said Jupiter; \"clear away the mud, put your shoulder to the\nwheel, and whip up your horses.\"  We may call on God to open the rock\nin the dry and thirsty land where no water is, but not to lift our\nteacups.  It is no use to ask God for a special shower when deep\nplowing is all that is needed.  It is no use to ask God to build\nchurches, send missionaries, endow schools, and convert the world, till\nwe have done our best.\n\nBut when we have done our best what may we expect?  All things.  They\nshall work together for good to those who love God enough to do their\nbest for him in any plane of work.  One could preach fifty sermons on\nthe great works done by men, obviously too great for man's\naccomplishment.  Time would fail me to tell of Moses, Gideon, Paul,\nLuther, Wesley, Wilberforce, William of Orange, Washington, John Brown,\nAbe Lincoln, and thousands more of whom this world was not worthy, who,\nundeniably by divine aid, wrought righteousness.  One of the great sins\nof our age is that men do not see God immanent in all things.  We have\nfound so many ways of his working that we call laws, so many segments\nof his power, that we have forgotten him who worketh all things after\nthe counsel of his own will.  A sustainer is as necessary as a creator.\nThere are diversities of operations, but it is the same God who worketh\nall in all.  The next great service to be done by human philosophy is\nto bring back God in human thought into his own world.  Since these\nthings are so, what are the conditions under which we may work the\nworks of God by his power?\n\nFirst, they must be his works, not ours as opposed to his, but ours as\nincluded in his.  All our works may be wrought in God, if we do his\nworks, follow his plans, and are aided by his strength.\n\nSecond, they must be attempted with the right motive of glorifying God.\nChrist is the pattern.  He came not to do his own will, but the will of\nhim who sent him.  And he did always the things that pleased him.  In\nour fervid desires for the accomplishment of some great thing we should\nbe as willing it should be accomplished by another as by ourselves.\nThe personal pride is often a fly in the sweet-smelling savor.  God\nwould rather have a given work not done, or done by another, than to\nhave one of his dear ones puffed up with sinful pride.  Great Saul must\noften be removed and the work be left undone, or be done by some humble\nDavid.\n\n  \"Inaudible voices call us, and we go;\n  Invisible hands restrain us, and we stay;\n  Forces, unfelt by our dull senses, sway\n  Our wavering wills, and hedge us in the way\n  We call our own, because we do not know.\n\n  \"Are we, then, slaves of ignorant circumstance?\n  Nay, God forbid!\n  God holds the world, not blind, unreasoning chance!\"\n\nHow shall we secure the cooperative power?  There is power of every\nkind everywhere in plenty.  All the Niagaras and Mississippis have run\nto waste since they began to thunder and flow.  Greater power is in the\nwind everywhere.  One can rake up enough electricity to turn all the\nwheels of a great city whenever he chooses to start his rake.  The sky\nis full of Pentecosts.  Power enough, but how shall we belt on?  By\nfasting, prayer, and by willing to do the will of God.  We have so much\nhaste that we do not tarry at Jerusalem for fullness of power.  Moses\nwas forty years in the wilderness: Daniel fasted and prayed for one and\ntwenty days.  We are told to pray without ceasing, and that there are\nkinds of devils that go not out except at the command of those who fast\nand pray.\n\n  \"More things are wrought by prayer than\n    This world dreams of.\"\n\nThe Bible is a record of achievements impossible to man.  They are\nachievements of leaderships, emancipations, governments, getting money\nfor building God's houses, making strong the weak, waxing valiant in\nfight, and turning the world upside down.  The trouble with many of our\nmodern saints is that they seek for purity only instead of power,\necstasy instead of excellence, self-satisfaction in a garden of spices\ninstead of a baptism that straightens them out in a garden of agony.\nThey are seekers of spiritual joys instead of good governments, cities\nwell policed and sewered, with every street safe for the feet of\ninnocence.  The next revelation of new possibilities of grace that will\nbreak out of the old Word will be that of power.\n\nHow will this divine aid manifest itself?  In the giving of wisdom for\nour plans and their execution.  God will not help in any foolish plans.\nHe wants no St. Peter's built in a village of six hundred people, no\ntemple, except on a Moriah to which a whole nation goes up.  Due\nproportion is a law of all his creations.  The disciples planned not\nonly to begin at Jerusalem, but to stay there.  Their plans were wrong,\nand they had to be driven out by persecutions and martyrdoms (Acts\nviii, 4).  But Africa, Europe, and Asia eagerly received the light\nwhich Jerusalem resisted.  Some ministers to-day stay by their fine\nJerusalems when the kitchens of the surrounding country wait to welcome\nthem.  The Spirit suffered not Paul to go into Bithynia, but sent him\nto Macedonia.  Had he then persisted in going to Asia his work would\nhave been in vain.\n\nWe may expect wisdom in the choice of the human agents we select.  Half\na general's success lies in his choice of lieutenants.  No class leader\nshould be appointed nor steward nominated till after prayer for divine\nguidance.  God has more efficient men for his Church than we know of.\nHe is thinking of Paul when we see only Matthias (Acts i, 26).  When\nPaul had to depart asunder from Barnabas God sent him Silas, the\nfellow-singer in the dungeon, and Timothy, who was dearer to him than\nany other man.\n\nWe may expect opposition to be diminished or thwarted.  Let Hezekiah\nspread every letter of Rab-shakeh before the Lord and pray (2 Kings\nxix, 14).  The answer will be, \"I have heard\" (v. 20).  Let the answer\nto every slander that Gashmu repeateth among the heathen be, \"O Lord,\nstrengthen my hands\" (Neh. vi, 9); \"My God, think thou upon Tobiah and\nSanballat according to these their works\" (v. 14).  Then all the\nheathen and enemies will \"perceive that this work was wrought of our\nGod\" (v. l6).  \"When a man's ways please the Lord, he maketh even his\nenemies to be at peace with him.\"  The purpose of the manifestation of\nthe Son of God was \"that he might destroy the works of the devil\" (1\nJohn iii, 8).\n\nLastly, we may expect actual help.  These plans are all dear to God.\nHe wishes them all accomplished.  They have been wisely made.\nOpposition has been diminished.  It only remains that our hearts be\nopen to guidance and strengthening.  Moses was sure I AM had sent him.\nElijah had the very words to be uttered to Ahab put into his mouth.\nNehemiah told the people that for building a city \"the joy of the Lord\nis your strength.\"  God strengthened the right hand of Cyrus.  The\nthree Hebrew children and Daniel knew that God was able to deliver them\nfrom fire and lions.  \"Delight thyself also in the Lord, and he shall\ngive thee the desires of thy heart.\"  And the great promise of the Lord\nto be with his disciples to the end is not so much a promise for\ncomfort as for the accomplishment of their mission.  Paul said, \"I can\ndo all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.\"  And all great\ndoers for God, in all ages, have gladly testified that they have been\ngirded for their work by the Almighty.\n\nThe designed outcome of this paper is that every reader should get a\nfresh revelation of the immanency of God in the kingdom of nature and\ngrace; that the reader is more intimately related to him and his plans\nthan is gravitation; that there are laws as imperative, exact, and sure\nto yield results in the mental and spiritual realms as in the material;\nthat he is a part of God's agencies, and that all of God's forces are a\npart of his; that he may sing with new meaning,\n\n  \"We for whose sakes all nature stands\n  And stars their courses move;\"\n\nthat in the burning vividness of this new conception each man may\nboldly undertake things for God--conversions, purifications, missionary\nenlargements, business enterprises--that he knows are too great for\nhimself; that he may find new helps for spiritual victories as great as\nthis age has found for material triumphs in steam and electricity; and\nthat in all things man may be uplifted and God thereby glorified.\n\nHow shall it be done?\n\nFirst, by a vivid conception that cooperation is designed, provided\nfor, and expected.  We are children of God; there can be but one great\nend through the ages in the universe.  There should be cooperation of\nevery force.  There have been thousands of evident cooperations--waters\ndivided and burned by celestial fire, Pharaohs rebuked, Ninevehs warned,\nexiles recalled, Jerusalems rebuilded, Luthers upheld, preachers\nof today changed from waning, not desired, half-over-the-dead-line\nministers into vigorous, flaming heralds of the Gospel, who possessed\ntenfold power to what they had before; we ourselves personally helped\nin manifest and undeniable instances, and so have come to believe that\nGod can do anything, anywhere, if he can get the right kind of a man.\nPromises of aid are abundant.  Heaven and earth shall pass away sooner\nthan one jot or tittle of these words fail.  We are invited to test them:\n\"Come now, and prove me herewith, and see if I will not open the windows\nof heaven once more, as at the deluge, and pour you out a blessing that\nthere shall not be room enough to receive it.\"\n\nSecond, select some definite work too great for us to do alone, as the\npreparation of a sermon that shall have unusual power of persuasion to\nchange action, the conduct of a prayer meeting of remarkable interest,\nthe casting out of some devil of evil speech or action, the conversion\nof one individual, the raising of more money for some of God's\npurposes, and then go about the work, not alone, but in such a way that\nGod can lead and we help.  Let the fasting and prayer not be lacking.\nWhen the right direction comes let Jonathan take his armor-bearer and\nclimb up on his hands and knees against the Philistines, let Paul go to\nMacedonia, Peter to Cornelius, Wesley send help to America.  Bishop\nFoss said, in regard to several crises in a most serious sickness, that\nChrist always arrived before it came.  So in regard to work to be done.\nThe Lord was in Nineveh before Jonah, in Caesarea before Peter, and\nwill be in the heart of every sinner we seek to get converted before we\narrive.  Any man who wants to do an immense business should seek a good\npartner.  We are workers together with God.  What is being done worthy\nof the copartnership?\n\n\n\n\nWHEN THIS WORLD IS NOT*\n\n*Reprinted from the _Methodist Review_.\n\n\n\"The day of the Lord will come . . .; in which the heavens shall pass\naway with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat,\nthe earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.\"\n\nWhat is there after that?\n\nTo this question there are three answers:\n\nI. There are left all of what may be called natural forces that there\nwere before the world was created.  They are not dependent on it.  The\nsea is not lost when one bubble or a thousand break on the rocky shore.\nThe world is not the main thing in the universe.  It is only a\ntemporary contrivance, a mere scaffolding for a special purpose.  When\nthat purpose is fulfilled it is natural that it should pass away.  The\ntime then comes when the voice that shook the earth should signify the\nremoval of \"those things that are shaken, as of things that are made,\nthat those things which cannot be shaken may remain.\"  We already have\na kingdom that cannot be moved.  \"The things which are seen are\ntemporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.\"\n\nIt should not be supposed that the space away from the world is an\nempty desert.  God is everywhere, and creative energy is omnipresent.\nNot merely is a millionth of space occupied where the worlds are, but\nall space is full of God and his manifestations of wisdom and power.\nDavid could think of no place of hiding from that presence.  The first\nword of revelation is, \"In the beginning God created the heaven.\"  And\nthe great angel, standing on sea and land when time is to be no longer,\nswears by Him who \"created heaven, and the things that therein are,\" in\ndistinction from the earth and its things that are to be removed.  What\nGod created with things that are therein is not empty.  Poets, the true\nseers, recognize this.  When Longfellow died one of them, remembering\nthe heartbreaking hunt of Gabriel for Evangeline, and their passing\neach other on opposite sides of an island in the Mississippi, makes him\nsay of his wife long since gone before:\n\n  And now I shall seek her once more,\n    On some Mississippi's vast tide\n  That flows the whole universe through,\n    Than earth's widest rivers more wide.\n\n  Evangeline I shall not miss\n    Though we wander the dim starry sheen,\n  On opposite sides of rivers so vast\n    That islands of worlds intervene.\n\nBut what is there in space?  There is the great ceaseless force of\ngravitation.  Though the weakest of natural forces, yet when displayed\nin world-masses its might is measureless by man's arithmetic.  Tie an\napple or a stone to one end of a string, and taking the other end whirl\nit around your finger, noting its pull.  That depends on the weight of\nthe whirling ball, the length of the string, and the swiftness of the\nwhirl.  The stone let loose from David's finger flies crashing into the\nhead of Goliath.  But suppose the stone is eight thousand miles in\ndiameter, the string ninety-two million five hundred thousand miles\nlong, and the swiftness one thousand miles a minute, what needs be the\ntensile strength of the string?  If we covered the whole side of the\nearth next the sun, from pole to pole and from side to side, with steel\nwires attaching the earth to the sun, thus representing the tension of\ngravitation, the wires would need to be so many that a mouse could not\nrun around among them.\n\nThere swings the moon above us.  Its best service is not its light,\nthough lovers prize that highly.  Its gravitative work is its best.  It\nlifts the sea and pours it into every river and fiord of the coast.\nOur universal tug-boat is in the sky.  It saves millions of dollars in\ntowage to London alone every year.  And this world would not be\nhabitable without the moon to wash out every festering swamp and\ndeposit of sewage along the shore.\n\nGravitation reaches every place, whether worlds be there or not.  This\nforce is universally present and effective.  In the possibilities of a\nno-world condition a spirit may be able to so relate itself to matter\nthat gravitation would impart its incredible swiftness of transference\nto a soul thus temporarily relating itself to matter.  What gravitation\ndoes in the absence of the kind of matter we know it is difficult to\nassert.  But as will be seen in our second division there is still\nample room for its exercise when worlds as such have ceased to be.\n\nIn space empty of worlds there is light.  It flies or runs one hundred\nand eighty-six thousand miles a second.  There must be somewhat on\nwhich its wing-beat shall fall, stepping stones for its hurrying feet.\nWe call it ether, not knowing what we mean.  But in this space is the\nplay of intensest force and quickest activity.  There are hundreds of\nmillions of millions of wing-beats or footfalls in a second.\nMathematical necessities surpass mental conceptions.  In a cubic mile\nof space there are demonstrably seventy millions of foot tons of power.\nSteam and lightning have nothing comparable to the activity and power\nof the celestial ether.  Sir William Thompson thinks he has proved that\na cubic mile of celestial ether may have as little as one billionth of\na pound of ponderable matter.  It is too fine for our experimentation,\ntoo strong for our measurement.  We must get rid of our thumby fingers\nfirst.\n\nWhat is light doing in space?  That has greatly puzzled all\nphilosophers.  Without question there is inexpressible power.  It is\nseen in velocity.  But what is it doing?  The law of conservation of\nforce forbids the thought that it can be wasted.  On the earth its\npower long ages ago was turned into coal.  The power was reservoired in\nmountains ready for man.  It is so great that a piece of coal that\nweighs the same as a silver dollar carries a ton's weight a mile at\nsea.  But what is the thousand million times more light than ever\nstruck the earth doing in space?  That is among the things we want to\nfind out when we get there.  There will be ample opportunity, space,\ntime, and light enough.\n\nIt is biblically asserted and scientifically demonstrable that space is\nfull of causes of sound.  To anyone capable of turning these causes to\neffects this sound is not dull and monotonous, but richly varied into\nsongful music.  Light makes its impression of color by its different\nnumber of vibrations.  So music sounds its keys.  We know the number of\nvibrations necessary for the note C of the soprano scale, and the\nnumber that runs the pitch up to inaudibility.  We know the number of\nvibrations of light necessary to give us a sensation of red or violet.\nThese, apprehended by a sufficiently sensitive ear, pour not only light\nto one organ, but tuneful harmonies to another.  The morning stars do\nsing together, and when worlds are gone, and heavy ears of clay laid\ndown, we may be able to hear them\n\n          Singing as they shine,\n  \"The hand that made us is divine.\"\n\nThere are places where this music is so fine that the soft and\nsoul-like sounds of a zephyr in the pines would be like a storm in\ncomparison, and places where the fierce intensity of light in a\ncongeries of suns would make it seem as if all the stops of being from\npiccolo to sub-bass had been drawn.  No angel flying interstellar\nspaces, no soul fallen overboard and left behind by a swift-sailing\nworld, need fear being left in awful silences.\n\nThere seems to be good evidence that electrical disturbances in the sun\nare almost instantly reported and effective on the earth.  It is\nevident that the destructive force in cyclones is not wind, but\nelectricity.  It is altogether likely that it is generated in the sun,\nand that all the space between it and us thrills with this unknown\npower.[1]  All astronomers except Faye admit the connection between sun\nspots and the condition of the earth's magnetic elements.  The\nparallelism between auroral and sun-spot frequency is almost perfect.\nThat between sun spots and cyclones is as confidently asserted, but not\nquite so demonstrable.  Enough proof exists to make this clear, that\nspace may be full of higher Andes and Alps, rivers broader than Gulf\nStreams, skies brighter than the Milky Way, more beautiful than the\nrainbow.  Occasionally some scoffer who thinks he is smart and does not\nknow that he is mistaken asks with an air of a Socrates putting his\nlast question: \"You say that 'heaven is above us.'  But if one dies at\nnoon and another at midnight, one goes toward Orion and the other\ntoward Hercules; or an Eskimo goes toward Polaris and a Patagonian\ntoward the coal-black hole in the sky near the south pole.  Where is\nyour heaven anyhow?\"  O sapient, sapient questioner!  Heaven is above\nus, you especially; but going in different directions from such a\nlittle world as this is no more than a bee's leaving different sides of\na bruised pear exuding honey.  Up or down he is in the same fragrant\ngarden, warm, light, redolent of roses, tremulous with bird song, amid\na thousand caves of honeysuckles, \"illuminate seclusions swung in air\"\nto which his open sesame gives entrance at will.\n\n\nII.  But there will be in space what the world has become.  It is\nnowhere intimated that matter had been annihilated.  Worlds shall\nperish as worlds.  They shall wax old as doth a garment.  They will be\nfolded up as a vesture, and they \"shall be changed.\"  The motto with\nwhich this article began says heavens pass away, elements melt, earth\nand its works are burned up.  But always after the heaven and earth\npass away we are to look for \"new heavens and a new earth.\"  On all\nthat God has made he has stamped the great principle of progress,\nrefinement, development--rock to soil, soil to vegetable life, to\ninsect, bird, and man.  Each dies as to what it is, that it may have\nresurrection or may feed something higher.  So, in the light of\nrevelation, earth is not lost.  Science comes, after ages of creeping,\nup to the same position.  It, too, asserts that matter is\nindestructible.  Burn a candle in a great jar hermetically sealed.  The\nweight of the jar and contents is just the same after the burning as\nbefore.  A burned-up candle as big as the world will not be\nannihilated.  It will be \"changed.\"\n\nIt is necessary for us to get familiar with some of the protean\nmetamorphoses of matter.  Up at New Almaden, above the writer, is a\nvast mass of porous lava rock into which has been infiltrated a great\ndeal of mercury.  How shall we get it out?  You can jar out numberless\nminute globules by hand.  This metal, be it remembered, is liquid, and\nso heavy that solid iron floats in it as cork does in water.  Now, to\nget it out of the rock we apply fire, and the mercury exhales away in\nthe smoke.  The real task of scientific painstaking is to get that\nheavy stuff out of the smoke again.  It is changed, volatilized, and it\nlikes that state so well that it is very difficult to persuade it to\ncome back to heaviness again.\n\nTake a great mass of marble.  It was not always a mountain.  It floated\ninvisibly in the sea.  Invisible animals took it up, particle by\nparticle, to build a testudo, a traveling house, for themselves.  The\nephemeral life departing, there was a rain of dead shells to make\nlimestone masses at the bottom of the sea.  It will not always remain\nrock.  Air and water disintegrate it once more.  Little rootlets seize\nupon it and it goes coursing in the veins of plants.  It becomes fiber\nto the tree, color to the rose, and fragrance to the violet.  But,\nwhether floating invisibly in the water, shell of infusoria in the\nseas, marble asleep in the Pentelican hills, constituting the sparkle\nand fizz of soda water, claiming the world's admiration as the Venus de\nMilo, or giving beauty and meaning to the most fitting symbol that goes\nbetween lovers, it is still the same matter.  It may be diffused as gas\nor concentrated as a world, but it is still the same matter.\n\nMatter is worthy of God's creation.  Astronomy is awe-full; microscopy\nis no less so.  Astronomy means immensity, bulk; atoms mean\nindividuality.  The essence of matter seems to be spirit, personality.\nIt seems to be able to count, or at least to be cognizant of certain\nexact quantities.  An atom of bromine will combine with one of\nhydrogen; one of oxygen with two of hydrogen; one of nitrogen with\nthree of hydrogen; one of silicon with four of hydrogen, etc.  They\nmarry without thought of divorce.  A group of atoms married by affinity\nis called a molecule.  Two atoms of hydrogen joined to one of oxygen\nmake water.  They are like three marbles laid near together on the\nground, not close together; for we well know that water does not fill\nall the space it occupies.  We can put eight or ten similar bulks of\nother substances into a glass of water without greatly increasing its\nbulk, some actually diminishing it.  Water molecules are like a mass of\nshot, with large interstices between.  Drive the atoms of water apart\nby heat till the water becomes steam, till they are as three marbles a\nlarger distance apart, yet the molecule is not destroyed, the union is\nstill indissoluble.  One physicist has declared that the atoms of\noxygen and hydrogen are probably not nearer to each other in water than\none hundred and fifty men would be if scattered over the surface of\nEngland--one man for each four hundred square miles.[2]  What must the\ndistance be in steam? what the greater distance in the more extreme\nrarefactions?  It is asserted that millions of cubic miles of some\ncomets tails would not make a cubic inch of matter solid as iron.  Now,\nwhen earth and oceans are \"changed\" to this sort of tenuity creations\nwill be more easy.  We shall not be obliged to hew out our material\nwith broadaxes, nor blast it out with dynamite.  Let us not fear that\nthese creations will not be permanent; they will be enough so for our\npurpose.  We can then afford to waste more worlds in a day than dull\nstupidity can count in a lifetime.\n\nWe are getting used to this sort of work already.  When we reduce\ncommon air in a bulb to one one-thousandth of its normal density at the\nsea we get the possibility of continuous incandescent electric light by\nthe vibration of platinum wire.  When we reduce it to a tenuity of one\nmillionth of the normal density we get the possibility of the X rays by\nvibrations of itself without any platinum wire.  The greater the\ntenuity the greater the creative results.  For example, water in\nfreezing exerts an expansive, thrusting force of thirty thousand pounds\nto the square inch, over two thousand tons to the square foot; an\nincomprehensible force, but applicable in nature to little besides\nsplitting rocks.  On the other hand, when water is rarefied into steam\nits power is vastly more versatile, tractable, and serviceable in a\nthousand ways.  Take a bit of metal called zinc.  It is heavy, subject\nto gravitation, solid, subject to cohesion.  But cause it to be burned,\nto pass away, and be changed.  To do this we use fire, not the ordinary\nkind, but liquid that we keep in a bottle and call acid.  The zinc is\nburned up.  What becomes of it?  It becomes electricity.  How changed!\nIt is no longer solid, but is a live fire that rings bells in our\nhouses, picks up our thought and pours it into the ear of a friend\nmiles away by the telephone, or thousands of miles away by the\ntelegraph.  Burning up is only the means of a new and higher life.  Ah,\ndelicate Ariel, tricksy sprite, the only way to get you is to burn up\nthe solid body.\n\nThe possibility of rare creation depends on rare material, on\nspirit-like tenuity.  And that is what the world goes into.  There is a\nsubstance called nitrite of amyl, known to many as a medicine for heart\ndisease.  It is applied by inhaling its odor--a style of very much\nrarefied application.  Fill a tube with its vapor.  It is invisible as\nordinary air in daylight.  But pour a beam of direct sunlight from end\nto end along its major axis.  A dense cloud forms along the path of the\nsunbeam; creation is going on.  What the sun may do in the thinner\nvapors the world goes into when burned up will be for us to find out\nwhen we get there.  Standing on Popocatepetl we have seen a sea of\nclouds below, white as the light of transfiguration, tossed into waves\na mile high by the touch of the sunbeam.  Creative ordering was\nobserved in actual process.  It is done under our eyes to show us how\neasy it is.  Would it be any less glorious if there were no\nPopocatepetl?  A thrush among vines outside is just now showing us how\neasy it is to create an ecstasy of music out of silence.  She has only\nto open her mouth and the innate aptitudes of air rush in to actualize\nher creative wish.  Not only is it easy for the bird, but she is even\nprovoked to this love and good works by the creation of a rainbow on\nthe retreating blackness of a storm yonder.  Thunder is the sub-bass\nnature furnishes her, and thus invites her to add the complementary\nnotes.\n\nSome one may think that all this tenuity is as vaporous as the stuff\nthat dreams are made of, and call for solid rocks for foundations.\nPerhaps we may so call while we have material bodies of two hundred\npounds' weight.  Yet even these bodies are delicate enough to be\nvaluable to us solely because they have the utmost chemical stability.\nWe are burning up their substance with every breath in order to have\ndelicacy of feeling and thought.  What were a wooden body worth?\nSubstances are valuable to us according to their fineness and facility\nof change.  Even iron is mobile in all its particles.  We call it\nsolid, but it is not.  We lift our eyes from this writing and behold\nthe tumbling surf of the great Pacific sea.  Line after line of its\nbillows are charging on the shore and tumbling in utmost confusion and\nroar of advancing and refluent waves.  So the iron of the telephone\nwire.  You often hold the receiver to your ear listening, not to the\nvoice of business or friendship of men, but to the gentle hum of the\nrolling surf in the wire's own substance.  And, in order that we may\nknow the essential stability of things that are fine, we are told that\nthe city which hath enduring foundations is in the spirit world, not\nthis kind of material.  The whole new Jerusalem to come down \"out of\nheaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband,\" is as movable as\na train of cars is movable here.  There may still be rainbows and\nrivers of life if there are no more rocks.  There is a real realm of\n\"scientific imagination.\"  But all our imaginings fall far short of\nrealities.  Some men do not desire this realm, and demand solid rocks\nto walk on.  But a bird does not.  He oars himself along the upper\nfields and rides on air.  So does a bicyclist and balloonist.  Some men\nhave a sort of contempt for aeronauts and workers at flying machines.\nThat feeling is a testimony to their depravity and groveling\ntendencies.  Aeronautics and nautics are an effort toward angelhood.\nMen can walk water who are willing to take a boat for an overshoe.  So\nwe may air when we get the right shoe.  Browning gives us a delicious\nsense of being amphibian as we swim.  And the butterfly, that winged\nrather than rooted flower, looking down upon us as we float, begets in\nus a great longing to be polyphibian.  We have innate tendencies toward\na life of finer surroundings, and we shall take to them with zest, if\nwe are not too much of the earth earthy.  We were designed for this\nfiner life.  We do take to it even now in the days of our\ndeterioration, not to say depravity.  The great marvels of the world\nare not so much in matter as in man.  We were meant to be more\nsensitive to finer influences than we are.  We are far more so than we\nthink.  Take your child into the street.  Another child coughs at a\nwindow on the other side, and your child has three months of terrific\nwhooping-cough.  All such diseases are taken by homeopathic doses of\nthe millionth dilution.  Many people feel \"in their bones\" the coming\nof storms days before their arrival.  We knew a man who ate honey with\ndelight till he was twenty-five years old, and then could do so no\nmore.  This peculiarity he inherited from his father.  One man has an\ninsatiable desire for drink because some ancestor of his, back in the\nthird or fourth generation, bequeathed him that curse.  In the South\nyou can go a mile in the face of the wind and find that peerless\nblossom of a magnolia by following the drift of its far-reaching odor.\nWho has not received a letter and knew before opening it that it had\nviolets within?  It had atmosphered itself with rich perfume, and\nsomething far richer, for three thousand miles.  The first influences\nwhich came over the Atlantic cable were so feeble that a sleeping\ninfant's breath were a whirlwind in comparison.  But they were read.\nIt is no wonder that the old astrologers thought that men's whole lives\nwere influenced by the stars.  Every vegetable life, from the meanest\nflower that blows to the largest tree, has its whole existence shaped\nby the sun.  Doubtless man's body was meant to be an Aeolian (how the\nvowels and liquids flow into the very name!) harp of a thousand strings\nover which a thousand delicate influences might breathe.  Soul was\nmeant to be sensitive to the influences of the Spirit.  This capability\nhas been somewhat lost in our deterioration.  To recover these finer\nfaculties men are required to die.  And for the field of exercising\nthem the world must be changed.  Paul understood this.  He associated\nsome sort of perfection with the resurrection, with the buying back of\nthe powers of the body.  And the whole creation waiteth for the\napocalypse of the full-sized sons of God.\n\nDoes one fear the change from gross to fine, from force of freezing to\nthe winged energy of steam, from solid zinc to lightning?  Our whole\ndesire for education is a desire for refining influences.  We know\nthere is a higher love for country than that begotten by the fanfare of\nthe Fourth of July.  There is a smile of joy at our country's education\nand purity finer than the guffaws provoked by hearing the howls of a\ndog and the explosions of firecrackers when the two are inextricably\nmixed.  There is a flame of religious love when the heart sacrifices\nitself in humble realization of the joy of its adorable love purer than\nthe fierce fire of the hating heart that applies the torch to the\nmartyr's pyre.  We give our lives to seeking these higher refinements\nbecause they are stronger and more like God.\n\nDoes one fear to leave bodily appetites and passions for spiritual\naptitudes fitted to finer surroundings?  He should not.  Man has had\ntwo modes of life already--one, slightly conscious, closely confined,\npeculiarly nourished, in the dark, without the possible exercise of any\none of the five senses.  That is prenatal.  He comes into the next\nlife.  At once he breathes, often vociferously, looks about with eyes\nof wonder, nourishes himself with avidity, is fitted to his new\nsurroundings, his immensely wider life, and finds his superior\ncompanions and surroundings fitted to him, even to his finest need for\nlove.  Why hesitate for a third mode of life?  He loses modes of\nnourishment; so he has before.  He loses relations to former life; so\nhe has before.  He comes into new companionships and surroundings; so\nhe has before.  But each time and in every respect his powers,\npossibilities, and field have been immensely enlarged.\n\n  O the hour when this material\n    Shall have vanished like a cloud,\n  When amid the wide ethereal\n    All the invisible shall crowd.\n  In that sudden, strange transition,\n    By what new and finer sense\n  Shall we grasp the mighty vision,\n    And receive the influence?\n\nKnowledge of the third state of man is not so difficult to attain in\nthe second as knowledge of the second was in the first.  If a fit\nintelligence should study a specimen of man about to emerge from its\nfirst stage of existence, it could judge much of the conditions of the\nsecond.  Feet suggest solid land; lungs suggest liquid air; eyes,\nlight; hands, acquisitiveness, and hence dominion; tongue, talk, and\nhence companions, etc.  What fore-gleams have we of the future life?\nThey are from two sources--revelation and present aptitudes not yet\nrealized.  What feet have we for undiscovered continents, what wings\nfor wider and finer airs, what eyes for diviner light?  Everything\ntells us that such aptitudes have fit field for development.  The water\nfowl flies through night and storm, lone wandering but not lost,\nstraight to the south with instinct for mild airs, food, and a nest\namong the rushes.  It is not disappointed.\n\nMan has an instinct for dominion which cannot be gratified here.  He\nweeps for more worlds to conquer.  He is only a boy yet, getting a grip\non the hilt of the sword of conquest, feeling for some Prospero's wand\nthat is able to command the tempest.  When he gets the proper pitch of\npower, take away his body, and he is, as Richter says, no more afraid,\nand he is also free from the binding effect of gravitation.  Then there\nare worlds enough, and every one a lighthouse to guide him to its\nharbor.  They all seek a Columbus with more allurements than America\ndid hers.  Dominion over ten cities is the reward for faithfulness in\nthe use of a single talent.\n\nMan has an instinct for travel and speed.  To travel a couple of months\nis a sufficient reward for a thousand toilful days.  He earnestly\ndesires speed, develops race horses and bicycles to surpass them,\nyachts, and engines.  Not satisfied with this, he harnesses lightning\nthat takes his mind, his thought, to the ends of the earth in a\ntwinkling.  But he is stopped there.  How he yearns to go to the moon,\nthe sun, and stars!  But he could not take his present body through the\ntemperatures of space three or four hundred degrees below zero.  So he\nmust find a way of disembodying and of attachment to some force swift\nas lightning, of which there are plenty in the spaces when the world\nhas ceased to be a world.  It is all provided for by death.\n\nMan has an instinct for knowledge not gratified nor gratifiable in the\npresent narrow bounds that hedge him in like walls of hewn stone.  A\nthousand questions he cannot solve about himself, his relations to\nothers and to the world about him, beset him here.  There he shall know\neven as he is known by perfect intelligence.\n\nHere he has an instinct for love that is unsunderable.  But the wails\nof separation have filled the air since Eve shrieked over Abel.\nHusbands and fathers are ever crying:\n\n  Immortal?  I feel it and know it.\n    Who doubts of such as she?\n  But that's the pang's very essence,\n    Immortal away from me.\n\nBut there, in finer realms, shall be a knitting of severed friendships\nup to be sundered no more forever.\n\nSpecially has man sought in this stage of being to know God.  Job, in\nhis pain and loss, assailed by the cruel rebukes of his friends and\ndesolate by the desertion of his wife, says, \"O that I knew where I\nmight find him.\"  David cries out while his tears are flowing day and\nnight, \"As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul\nafter thee, O God.  My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when\nshall I come and appear before God?\"  Moses, in the broadest of\nvisions, material, historic, prophetic, says to God, \"Show me thy\nglory.\"  And common men have always turned the high places of earth to\naltar piles, and blackened the heavens with the smoke of their\nsacrifices.  But the means of knowing God are to be increased.  The\nvery essence of life eternal is to know the true God, and Jesus Christ\nwhom he has sent.  Great pains have been taken to manifest forth God to\ndull senses and to oxlike thoughts here; greater pains, with better\nresults, shall be taken there.  Every reader of the Apocalypse notices\nwith joy, if not rapture, that when the book that was sealed with seven\nseals, which no man in heaven, nor earth, was able to reveal, nor open,\nnor even look upon, was finally opened by the Lamb, and its marvelous\npanoramas, charades, and symbolic significances had to be carefully\nexplained to John, the man best able of any to understand them--we\nobserve with rapture that the regular inhabitants of that hitherto\nunseen world understood all at once, and broke into shouts like the\nsound of these many waters in a storm.  Above all these superior\nmanifestations in finer realms the pure in heart shall _see_ God.\n\n\nIII. But there is in space what there was before the world began.\nPhilosophy asserts that the invisible universe is a perfect fluid in\nwhich not even atoms exist, and atoms are produced therefrom by the\nFirst Great Cause by creation, not by development.  This conception is\nfull of difficulties to thought.  We cannot even agree whether creation\nwas in time or eternity.  But all agree in this, that the invisible is\nrapidly absorbing all the force at least of the visible universe, and\nthat when force is gone the corpse will not remain unburied.  Indeed,\nwhen the range of seeing puts the size of an atom at less than one\ntwo-hundred-and-twenty-four-thousandth of an inch, and when the range\nof thinking puts it at less than one six-millionth of an inch, many\nprefer to consider an atom as a center of force and not as a material\nentity at all.  But, amid uncertainties, this is certain, that the\nforces of the visible worlds are extraneous.  They come out of the\ninvisible.  They are all also returning to the invisible; that is what\nlight is doing in space, previously referred to.  This incredibly\nhigh-class energy is not banking up coal in the celestial ether as it\ndid on the earth, but is returning to the quick, mobile forces of the\ninvisible worlds.  One thing more is certain, that the origin of all\nthe forces of the invisible is in personality; for the atom, it is\nagreed, bears all the marks of being a manufactured article.\nDifferent-sized shot could not have greater uniformity of structure and\nconstitution.  And their whole behavior shows that they are controlled\nby an admirable wisdom past finding out.\n\nThat these forces exist and are necessarily active there are three\nproofs.  Worlds have been made, not of things and forces that do\nappear.  They were abundantly displayed in the physical miracles of\nChrist and others; and these forces, independently of the physical\nmiracles at various times, have continuously helped men.\n\n(1) Concerning the first fact--that worlds have been made--nothing need\nbe said except that these forces, being personal, cannot be supposed to\nbe exhausted, and hence creations can go on continuously.  We are\nassured that they do.  And the personal element more and more relates\nitself to personalities.  \"I go to prepare a place for you,\" to fit up\na mansion according to tastes, needs, and enjoyments of the future\noccupant.\n\n(2) This is the place to assert, not to prove, that this visible world\nhas always been subject to the forces of the invisible world.  It does\nnot matter whether these forces are personal or personally directed.\nIts waters divide, gravitation at that point being overcome; they\nharden for a path, or bodies are levitated; they burn by a fire as\nfierce as that which plays between two electric poles.  These forces\nare not the ordinary endowments of matter; they step out of the realm\nof the greater invisible, execute their mission, and, like an angel's\nsudden appearance, disappear.  Who knows how frequently they come?  We,\nfor whose sake all nature stands \"and stars their courses move,\" may\nneed more frequent motherly attentions than the infant knows of.  They\nwill not be lacking, even if not sufficiently evident to the infant to\nbe cried for.  \"Your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all\nthese things.\"\n\n(3) It is here designed to be asserted that the forces of the invisible\nseek to be continually in full play on the intellectual and moral\nnatures of man.  Our unique Christian Scriptures have this thought for\ntheir whole significance.  It begins with God's walking with Adam in\nthe garden, and goes on till it is said, \"Come, ye blessed of my\nFather, inherit the kingdom prepared for you,\" in the invisible, and by\nthe invisible, from before the foundation of the visible world.  It\nincludes all time and opportunity between and after; we need specify\nonly to intensify the conception of the fact.  Paul says, \"Having\ntherefore obtained help of God, I continue unto this day,\" when\notherwise oppressive circumstances and hate of men seeking to kill him\nwould have prevented his continuing in life.  It is possible for all\nwho believe to be given power, out of the invisible, to become sons of\nGod.  It has been said that there is power and continuousness enough in\nthe tides, winds, rotating and revolving worlds for man to make a\nmachine for perpetual motion.  The only difficulty is to belt on.  The\ngreat object of life in the visible should be to belt on to the\ninvisible.  Our great Example who did this made his ordinary doing\nbetter than common men's best, his parentheses of thought richer than\nother men's paragraphs and volumes.  And he left on record for us\npromises of greater works than these, at which we stagger through\nunbelief.  We should not; for men who have lived by the evidence of\nthings not seen, and sought a city that received Jesus out of sight,\nhave found that \"God is not ashamed to be called their God.\"  They have\nwrought marvels that men tell over like a rosary of what is possible to\nmen.  It is beyond the belief of all who have not been touched by the\npower of an endless life.  But what they do is chiefly valuable as\nevidence of what they are.  It is little that men quench the violence\nof fire, and receive their dead raised to life again.  It is great that\nthey are able to do it.  That they hold the hand that holds the world\nis something.  But that they have eyes to see, a wisdom to choose, and\nwill to execute the best, is more.  Fire may kindle again and the\nresurrected die, but the great personality survives.\n\nThese forces are not discontinuous, connected with this temporary\nworld, and liable to cease when it fails.  They belong to the\npermanent, invisible order of things.  Suppose one loses his body.\nThen there is no force whereby earth can hold its child any longer to\nits breast.  It flies on at terrific speed, dwindling to a speck in\nunknown distances, and leaving the man amid infinitudes alone.  But\nthere are other attractions.  There was One uplifted on a cross to draw\nall men unto him.  Love has finer attraction for souls than gravitation\nhas for bodies.\n\n  Then all his being thrills with Joy.  And past\n  The comets' sweep, the choral stars above,\n  With multiplying raptures drawn more swift\n  He flies into the very heart of love.\n\nIt is hoped that the object of this writing is accomplished--to widen\nour view of the great principle of continuity in the universe.  It is\nnot sought to dwarf the earth, but to fit it rightly into its place as\na part of a great whole.  It is better for a state to be a part of a\nglorious union than to be independent; better for a man to belong to\nthe entirety of creation than to be Robinson Crusoe on his island.  We\nbelong to more than this earth.  It is not of the greatest importance\nwhether we lose it or it lose itself.  We look for a \"new heavens and a\nnew earth.\"  We are, or should be, used to their forces, and at home\namong their personalities.  This universe is a unity.  It is not made\nup of separate, catastrophic movements, but it all flows on like the\nsweetly blended notes of a psalm.  \"Therefore will not we fear, though\nthe earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the\nmidst of the sea;\" though the heavens be \"rolled together as a scroll,\"\nthe stars fall, \"even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs,\" when it\nis shaken with the wind, and though our bodies are whelmed in the\nremoval of things that can be shaken.  For even then we may find the\ncalm force that shakes the earth is the force that is from everlasting\nto everlasting; may find that it is personal and loving.  It says, \"Lo,\nit is I; be not afraid.\"\n\nWhatever comes, whether one sail the spaces in the great ship we call\nthe world, or fall overboard into Mississippis and Amazons of power in\nwhich worlds are mere drifting islands, he will be at peace and at home\nanywhere.  He will ever say:\n\n  \"The winds that o'er my ocean run\n  Blow from all worlds, beyond the sun;\n  Through life, through death, through faith, through time,\n  Great breaths of God, they sweep sublime,\n  Eternal trades that cannot veer,\n  And blowing, teach us how to steer;\n  And well for him whose joy, whose care,\n  Is but to keep before them fair.\n\n  \"O thou, God's mariner, heart of mine,\n  Spread canvas to these airs divine.\n  Spread sail and let thy past life be\n  Forgotten in thy destiny.\"\n\n\n\n[1]The action that drives off the material of a comet's tail proves\nthat other forces besides gravitation are operative in the\ninterplanetary space.--_The Sun_, C. A. Young, p. 156.\n\n[2]See _Recreations in Astronomy_, p. 357.","title":"Among the Forces","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":36053}