University of Virginia Library

NO MAN UNDERSTANDS IRON
HOW CAN WE HOPE TO UNDERSTAND GOD?

Is there laughter in heaven—or can nothing move the eternal heavenly calm?

If mirth exists among the perpetually blissful, how must the angels laugh when in idle moments they listen to our speculations concerning the Divinity? They peer down at us as we look at ants dragging home a fragment of dead caterpillar. They hear us say things like this:

If God exists, why does He not reveal himself to me?

How could God exist before He created the world? Force cannot exist or demonstrate its existence without matter. How could a creator exist except with creation around him?

Where did He live before He made heaven?

If He is all-powerful, could He in five seconds make a six months' old calf? If He made it in five seconds it would not be six months old.

Nonsense more subtle comes from the educated, from those who know enough to be preposterous in a pretentious way.

Hear the wise man:

God does not exist, because I cannot prove His existence: I can prove everything else. With my law of gravitation I point to a speck in space and say: "You'll find a new planet there," and you find it. If a God existed could I not also point to Him? If I can trace a comet in its flight, could I not trace the comet's maker?

Huxley says: "The cosmic process has no sort of relation to moral ends." That's a philosopher's way of saying something foolish. Lalande, the astronomer, remarked that he had swept the entire heavens with his telescope and found no God there. That's funnier than any ant who should say: "I've searched this whole dead caterpillar and found no God, so there is no God." The corner of space which our telescopes can "sweep" is smaller, compared to the universe, than a dead caterpillar compared with this earth.

Moleschott, an able physiologist, believed that phosphorus was essential to mental activity. Perhaps he did prove that. But he said: "No thought without phosphorus," and thought he had wiped the human soul out of existence. Philosophers do not laugh at Moleschott. But they would laugh at a savage who would say:

"I have discovered that there is a catgut in a fiddle. No fiddle without catgut—no music without cats. Don't talk to me about soul or musical genius—it's all catgut."

We peek out at this universe from our half-developed corner of it. We see faintly the millions of huge suns circling with their planet families billions of miles away. We see our own little sun rise and set; we ask ourselves a thousand foolish questions of cause and Ruler—and because we cannot answer, we decry faith.

Wise doubter, look at a small piece of iron. It looks solid. You suppose that its various parts touch. But submit it to cold. You make it smaller. Then the particles did not touch. Do they touch now? No; relatively they are farther apart than this planet from its nearest neighbor.

That piece of iron, apparently solid, consists of clusters of atoms wonderfully grouped, each cluster called a molecule. The molecular cluster is invisible, millions of clusters in the smallest visible fragment. The atom is accepted by science as the final particle of matter. Its name indicates that it is supposed to be indivisible. When science gets to the atom it calmly gives up and says: "That is so small that it can no longer be divided." A reasonable enough conclusion on the surface, considering that you might have millions of atoms of iron in one corner of your eye and not know it.

But why should the atom be incapable of further division? If it is any size at all it can be thought of as split.

Where does the divisibility of matter end, if anywhere? What is there solid about iron? Noth-

ing in reality, except that it seems to us solid. Already, with the X-ray, we can look through it. Forces such as heat and electricity pass through it more readily than through free air.

Science, which gradually finds things out, denying as it goes along everything one step beyond, tells you truly that the clusters of atoms in iron float in a sea of ether, just as do our planets going round the sun. Heat the iron intensely. What happens? You get what you call white heat. The white heat and the white light come from the increase of wave motion in this ether, and this ether, absolutely imponderable, of a tenuity inconceivable, possesses elasticity greater and more powerful than that of coiled steel.

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So much for one small piece of iron, such as you would kick to one side in a junk heap. If it interests you, read pages 159 to 162 of John Fiske's admirable little book, "Through Nature to God." You will finish the book the day you get it.

If you are surprised to learn how much you did not know about iron—after living near bits of iron all your life—is it not just possible that your mind may be too feeble to conceive of God?

For the fly buzzing about the edge of Niagara Falls, the falls do not exist. The fly's brain cannot grasp their grandeur. It can understand only the speck of spray that falls on its wing.

You live with God around you, hopelessly incapable of perceiving His existence save through that faint spark of unconscious faith that was mercifully planted in you. Snuff that out with dull efforts at reason, and you have nothing.