Read Ebook: The Chautauquan Vol. 05 May 1885 No. 8 by Chautauqua Institution Chautauqua Literary And Scientific Circle Flood Theodore L Editor

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REQUIRED READING FOR MAY.

ENGLISH AS A UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE.

BY PRESIDENT D. H. WHEELER, D.D., LL.D.

There is another sense in which scholars speak of a universal language. There has always been in our Aryan tribe a leading literary language. Once it was Sanskrit; perhaps at a later time it was Persian; later it was Greek; later it was Latin. This Aryan tribe of ours has made the greater part of the history of the last 3,000 years; to-day it is the history-making and literature-making tribe. Great tracts of older history--Babylonian, Arabian, Egyptian--lie outside of the Aryan movements; but Persian, Greek, Roman, German, French, Spanish, English and American history lie in the Aryan line. Now, then, within this line some one Aryan language has always enjoyed a literary predominance. For other than literary purposes, some one of our family of languages has at one time or another had an extended currency. For something like two centuries French, for example, has been the language of diplomacy. We are probably passing out of a period which has lasted for half a century, of the predominance of German as a language of research, especially of metaphysical and grammatical study. These examples will suffice to show what is meant by our problem. In trade and practical invention English is, in this modified sense, a universal language. What I undertake to measure is this: the probability that, at a not distant time, English will be universal in more senses than any other Aryan language was ever before used. Some careful observers believe that this is the present position of the language--that it is now universal to an extent quite beyond all precedent. I think that as a literary, political and commercial language, English has a fair prospect of universal use within the Aryan tribe, and a better prospect than any other tongue of coming into use for these purposes all over the globe.

SUNDAY READINGS.

SELECTED BY CHANCELLOR J. H. VINCENT, D.D.

The heart here, the Father yonder, and the universe of man and matter as the meeting place between them, is the whole scope and the whole poetry of the Sermon on the Mount. The preacher shears off all the superfluities and externals of worship and of action, that he may show, in its naked simplicity, the communion which takes place between the heart as worshiper and God as hearer. The righteousness he inculcates must exceed that "of the Scribes and the Pharisees." The man who hates his brother, or calls him "Raca," is a murderer in deed.... Oaths are but big sounds; the inner feelings are better represented by "yea, yea, nay, nay." That love which resides within will walk through the world as men walk through a gallery of pictures, loving and admiring, and expecting no return. The giving of alms must be secret. The sweetest prayer will be solitary and short. One must fast, too, as if he fasted not. The enduring treasures must be laid up within. Righteousness must be sought before, and as inclusive of all things; life is more precious than all the means of it. The examination and correction of faults must begin at home. Prayer, if issuing from the heart, is all powerful. The essence of the law and the prophets lies in doing to others as we would have others do to us. Having neglected the inner life, the majority have gone to ruin, even while following fully and devotedly external forms of faith and worship. The heart must, at the same time, be known by its fruits. It is only the good worker that shall enter the heavenly kingdom. These truths, in fine, acted upon, these precepts from the Mount, heard and kept--become a rock of absolute safety, while all beside is sand now, and sea hereafter.

They say it is an ill mason that refuseth any stone; and there is no knowledge but in a skillful hand serves, either positively as it is, or else to illustrate some other knowledge, ... because people by what they understand, are best led to what they understand not.

But the chief and top of his knowledge consists in the Book of books, the storehouse and magazine of life and comfort, THE HOLY SCRIPTURES.... In the Scriptures he finds four things: precepts for life, doctrines for knowledge, examples for illustration, and promises for comfort. These he hath digested severally.

It is exceedingly important, therefore, that all the Christian gifts and graces should be possessed in purity of spirit, uncontaminated by any unholy mixtures of an earthly nature. The mere suggestion that they have merit of themselves and separate from the God who gives them, if it be received with the least complacency, necessarily inflicts a deep wound. They are accordingly held in purity of spirit, and with the divine approbation, only when their tendency is to separate the soul from everything inward and outward, considered as objects of complacency and of spiritual rest, and to unite it more closely to God.... We do not find the parent, who has that degree of affection for his child which may be called entire or perfect love, making his love a distinct object of his thoughts, and rejoicing in it as such a distinct object; that would not be the genuine operation of perfect love. If his love is perfect, he has no time and no disposition to think of anything but the beloved object toward which his affections are directed. His love is so deep, so pure, so fixed and centered upon one point, that the sight of self, and of his own personal exercises, is lost. It ought to be thus in the feelings which we exercise toward God; and undoubtedly such will be the result, when the religious feeling has reached a certain degree of intensity; that is to say, when the feeling is perfect, the mind is not occupied with the feeling itself, but with the object of the feeling. The heart, if we may so express it, seems to recede from us; it certainly does so as an object of distinct contemplation; and the object of its affections comes in and takes its place. O, the blessedness of the heart, that, free from self and its secret and pernicious influences, sees nothing but God; that recognizes, even in its highest gifts and graces, nothing but God; that would rather be infinitely miserable with God, if it were possible, than infinitely happy without him!

All science is simply a perception of the laws of God--a discovery of what he designed when he spread out the heavens and gemmed the infinity of space with its myriad of worlds. The laws of light are simply the power with which the Creator invested it. All we can do is to find what he has written on its wings. The law of magnetism is the subtle power and the mode of action with which God has touched the loadstone. The laws of astronomy, what are they but the thoughts of God, as he projected worlds into space, and gave to them their orbits and their periods?... Of nature in all its expanse, of all created powers, visible and invisible, hath not God said, "All are yours?" Are we not "heirs of God and joint heirs of Jesus Christ?"

HOME STUDIES IN CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS.

BY PROF. J. T. EDWARDS, D.D.

Director of the Chautauqua School of Experimental Science.

PHYSICS OF EARTH.

Our earth, as a whole, may be compared to a ship sailing on a smooth sea. Like the ship, it has its own motions with reference to other objects, and is affected by forces exterior to itself. The ship feels the influence of winds, currents and tides.

The earth also yields to forces outside of itself; to such an extent, indeed, that philosophers have more than once been led to look for an invisible power, which strangely affected it. For example, Adams and Leverrier were led to prophesy the existence of the planet Neptune, because the earth seemed to yield to the touch of some unknown body, which was afterward discovered at the enormous distance of 2,746,271,000 miles.

The ship, in addition to its motion in regard to distant points and susceptibility of being moved by outside forces, has its own peculiar construction, a complex adjustment of planks, timbers, bolts, spars, sails and ropes. It also has its inhabitants, living beings which move to and fro, quite independent, for the time being, of all other parts of the universe, save that on which they reside.

Sir Isaac Newton, as all the world knows, discovered the relation and mutual dependence of all matter in the universe. The law of gravitation has been called "Newton's Darling Child." It states, in brief, that every body attracts every other directly as the mass, and inversely as the square of the distance.

As an illustration of the second part of the law: one body three times as far away as another from the attracting power, will be held by a force but one ninth as great. A body near the surface of the earth, or 4,000 miles from its center, will fall sixteen feet in a second. The moon is sixty times further from the center of the earth than such a body. Newton found that the moon fell toward the earth, or varied from a straight line, 1.36 of sixteen feet in a second. Now, the square of sixty is 3,600, therefore the moon proves that the force of gravity decreases as the square of the distance increases.

Nothing in nature is more beautiful than the adjustment of forces by which our earth is kept forever revolving in its appropriate orbit. In perihelion, or its nearest approach to the sun, it is 3,000,000 miles nearer than in aphelion, when farthest away from it. Of course it will follow from the law that the attraction of the sun would then be greater. If there were no counteracting influence, there could be but one result--the earth would fly into the sun and be consumed. The very proximity of the earth to the sun, however, increases its speed, and therefore its tendency to fly off on a tangent. Kepler has expressed this truth in one of his laws: "The radius vector passes over equal areas in equal times." The average speed of the earth in its orbit is 1,100 miles a minute--3,300 times that of the fastest steamship--but it varies throughout its course, and how wonderful that system of breaks by which its motion is regulated! Divine wisdom alone could invent such a plan.

TERRESTRIAL GRAVITY.

To the ordinary observer, our earth seems, in general, a flat surface, here and there varied by hills and valleys. In reality it is a sphere, with a curvature of eight inches to the mile. The equatorial diameter is twenty-six and five-elevenths miles greater than the polar. The irregularities of the earth's surface are relatively far less than they seem. Very thin letter paper, spread over a globe sixteen inches in diameter, would by its thickness adequately represent the highest mountain ranges. The greatest ocean depth is about equal to the height of the highest mountain; we see by this that the earth is essentially a smooth, round body.

Its shape is proven in four ways: First, two different navigators may start from the same point, one sailing east and the other west, and reach the same destination. Second, navigators have sailed around the world, Magellan having first performed the task. Third, in moving toward elevated objects, their upper portion first strikes the eye. Fourth, the shadow of the earth, when it falls upon the moon, is round.

The enlargement of the equatorial diameter is supposed to be due to the fact that the earth was once in a plastic state, and the centrifugal force, which is directly proportioned to the rotating speed of a body, caused the matter in the equatorial region to bulge. This action can easily be shown by revolving rapidly a flexible steel hoop, or other mobile substance. All bodies tend to revolve around their shortest axis. A great variety of interesting experiments showing this can easily be performed, some of which are indicated in an accompanying picture.

This has been shown by an experiment performed by Dr. Maskelyne, near Mt. Schehallien, in Wales. Upon suspending a light body on opposite sides of this mountain, he observed that it swerved from the perpendicular toward the mountain. The amount of this variation measured the attraction of the mountain, as compared with the attraction of the earth. As the geological structure of this eminence was known, it was not difficult to compute its mass, and a comparison was made between it and the earth. From this calculation the entire weight of the earth was obtained, proving its specific gravity to be five times that of an equal bulk of water. Dr. Cavendish afterward arrived at precisely the same result by experimenting with a pendulum.

The center of gravity is that point around which the opposite particles of a body balance each other. This point does not necessarily coincide with center of figure or center of motion, the former of which is a point equally distant from opposite parts of a regular body, while the latter is a point in a substance around which it revolves.

If the sun and all the planets could be strung on a rod passing through their centers, with the planets to the east, the center of gravity of the solar system would be somewhere in the sun, east of its center. As the planets assume various positions with reference to the sun, it must follow that the center of gravity in our system must vary accordingly.

The same is true of objects on the earth. The center of gravity may be elevated or depressed, moved to the right or left. We instinctively adjust our bodies so that a perpendicular let fall from the center of gravity will constantly fall within the base. The most surprising exhibition of this power of automatic adjustment was seen in Blondin, in his performances on the tight rope.

Stability in structures is usually secured by lowering the center of gravity in one of two ways: either by broadening the base or by making it of heavy materials.

As many physical properties have been mentioned in the articles on Air, Water, and Fire, they will not now be considered. Our discussion here applies more especially to those substances which, at ordinary temperatures, are solid.

The most characteristic properties of solid bodies are the following: Hardness, tenacity, malleability, ductility, and crystalline form. Hardness is the resistance which a body offers to being scratched. Tenacity is the resistance offered by a body to a separation of its parts. Malleability is that property of a body which makes it capable of being rolled into sheets. Ductility is capacity for being drawn into wire, and crystalline form is the property which causes it to assume regular shapes.

This movement of molecules is also dependent upon pressure. The most interesting illustration of this is seen in the action of glaciers. It has been ascertained that the melting temperature of ice lowers one two hundred and fiftieth of a degree for every fifteen pounds of pressure to the square inch.

The immense superincumbent mass of ice must, in many places, set free so much latent heat that a portion of the ice melts, so that here and there cells and liquid veins would be opened in the interior of the glacier. But the particles which separate these thin layers of water would almost immediately close up. This is the brilliant demonstration of Prof. Tyndall, who has given the operation the name of "regelation." It has been thus described: "This phenomenon takes place at every point in the thickness of the glacier. Particles of ice approach one another, and unite across little veins of water, which permeate it in every direction; fresh liquid films are formed under the pressure from above; fresh unions take place between the divided morsels of ice; and, by this continual process of change, the air contained in the mass of that which once was snow, is gradually expelled. Thus it happens that the whole mass ultimately assumes an almost perfect transparency and a beautiful azure color."

CRYSTALLIZATION.

While there are millions of crystals, they have all been classified under six systems, as follows: 1. Monometric, where the three axes are equal. 2. Dimetric, having one axis unequal to the other two, which are equal to each other. 3. Trimetric, having no two axes equal. 4. Monoclinic, having one axis inclined. 5. Triclinic, in which all the three intersections are oblique and the axes unequal. 6. Hexagonal, which has the form of a regular hexagonal prism.

While contemplating the thousand beautiful forms in which molecules are arranged into crystals, whereby many economic purposes are served, as well as taste manifested, one can not resist the conviction that such displays of wisdom, benevolence and love of beauty can alone emanate from the eternal Mind.

Another wide-spread effect of cohesion is seen in

PETRIFACTIONS.

Everywhere in fossiliferous rock may be found organic remains in which the material of which they were originally composed has been replaced by some mineral substance. Some have supposed that these plants and animals have actually been converted into stone by a change of their elements. This is of course absurd. Carbon can never be anything but carbon, nor indeed, can any element ever become anything other than itself. This dream of the alchemist was long since dissipated. No, strange as it may seem, the molecules of these fossilized organisms must actually pass out, and silica, lime, clay, or some such matter pass in and take their places. Beautiful specimens of petrified wood, found especially on the Pacific coast, are often hard as glass. One very handsome variety, called "opalized" wood, clearly indicates that petrifaction was either accompanied or followed by crystallization.

Myriads of shells, bones and plants scattered through the earth's strata have been transformed in the manner indicated. Although petrifaction is usually a long process, there is reason to believe that it sometimes takes place rapidly. This operation must not be confounded with incrustation, which is often mistaken for it, and takes place where substances, like bending twigs, have deposited upon them layer after layer of lime, salt, sulphur or ice.

Nature's motto, both for matter and energy is, "Ever changing, but never destroyed." Let us next notice some instances of the

CONSERVATION OF ENERGY.

Energy is the power to do work or overcome resistance. It is of two kinds--potential and kinetic. The former is the energy or force due to position, but it is latent or inactive. The latter is the energy of a body which is in motion. A stone resting on a mountain top, the water in a quiet mill pond, a coiled spring, are all examples of potential energy.

The stone, crushing through the cottage of a peasant, the water turning a factory wheel, the spring turning the wheels of a clock, are examples of actual or kinetic energy.

Energy often disappears to reappear under a different name. If we lift our hand to strike the palm of another, our vital energy becomes motion, and that in turn is changed into heat.

In the Bell telephone the sound-waves in the mouthpiece are converted into electric vibrations in the wire, and these, in turn, induce sound-waves in the receiving instrument at the other end of the line.

In dynamo-electric machines we have a chain of transmutations of force--chemical affinity in the fire-box, expansion in the boiler, becoming in turn, motion, magnetism, electric currents, until it appears as resplendent light and intense heat between the carbon points.

Potential energy slumbers in the raindrop, and, anon, as kinetic energy, flashes in the lightning.

In short, the sum of all the energies of nature is a constant quantity, although it manifests itself in a thousand different ways. The foregoing reflections indicate that the researches of modern science all point to a grand unity in God's universe. Let us conclude by briefly referring to some instances of plan or design in the

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