Among the Forces | Page 4

the great granite blocks to the
bridge site on floats, and when the tide lifted the floats and stones they
blocked up the stones on the piers and let the floats sink with the
outgoing tide. Then they blocked up the stones on the floats again, and
as the moon lifted the tides once more they lifted the stones farther

toward their place, until at length the work was done for each set of
stones.
Dear, good moon, what a pull you have! You are not merely for the
delight of lovers, pleasant as you are for that, but you are ready to do
gigantic work.
No wonder that the Chinese, as they look at the solid and enduring
character of that bridge, name it, after the poetic and flowery habit of
the country, "The Bridge of Ten Thousand Ages."

MORE MOON HELP
Years ago, before there were any railroads, New York city had
thousands of tons of merchandise it wished to send out West. Teams
were few and slow, so they asked the moon to help. It was ready; had
been waiting thousands of years.
We shall soon see that it is easy to slide millions of tons of coal down
hill, but how could we slide freight up from New York to Albany?
It is very simple. Lift up the lower end of the river till it shall be down
hill all the way to Albany. But who can lift up the end of the river? The
moon. It reaches abroad over the ocean and gathers up water from afar,
brings it up by Cape Hatteras and in from toward England, pours it in
through the Narrows, fills up the great harbor, and sets the great
Hudson flowing up toward Albany. Then men put their big boats on the
current and slide up the river. Six hours later the moon takes the water
out of the harbor and lets other boats slide the other way.
New York itself has made use of the moon to get rid of its immense
amount of garbage and sewage. It would soon breed a pestilence, and
the city be like the buried cities of old; but the moon comes to its aid,
and carries away and buries all this foul breeder of a pestilence, and
washes all the harbor and bay with clean floods of water twice a day.
Good moon! It not only lights, but works.

The tide in New York Harbor rises only about five feet; up in the Bay
of Fundy it ramps, rushes, raves, and rises more than fifty feet high.
In former times men used to put mill wheels into the currents of the
tides; when they rushed into little bays and salt ponds they turned the
wheels one way; when out, the other.

STAR HELP
"We for whose sake all Nature stands, And stars their courses move."
Do the stars, that are so far away and seem so small, send us any help?
Assuredly. Nothing exists for itself. All is for man.
Magnetism tells the sailor which way he is going. Stars not only do this,
when visible, but they also tell just where on the round globe he is. A
glance into their bright eyes, from a rolling deck, by an uneducated
sailor, aided by the tables of accomplished scholars, tells him exactly
where he is--in mid Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Arctic, or Antarctic Ocean,
or at the mouth of the harbor he has sought for months. We lift up our
eyes higher than the hills. Help comes from the skies.
This help was started long since, with providential foresight and care.
Is he steering by the North Star? A ray of guidance was sent from that
lighthouse in the sky half a century before his need, that it might arrive
just at the critical time. It has been ever since on its way.
The stars give us, on land and sea, all our reliable standards of time.
There is no other source. They are reliable to the hundredth part of a
second.
The Italian physicians, in their ignorance of the origin of a disease,
named it the influenza, because they imagined that it came from the
influence of the stars. No! There is nothing malign in the sweet
influences of the Pleiades.
The stars are of special use as a mental gymnasium. On their lofty bars

and trapezes the mind can swing itself higher and farther than on any
other material thing. Infinity and omnipotence are factors in their
problems. They also fill the soul of the rapt beholder with adoring
wonder. They are the greatest symbols of the unweariableness of the
power and of the minuteness of the knowledge of God. He calleth all
their millions by name, and for the greatness of his power