Q. E. D. | Page 9

of the world" (Heb.
4:3)? True, the energy we are constantly employing seems to come to
us from the sun; but we must remember that the sun and its family of
the solar system, including the earth, were all made at the same time,
that they are bound together as parts of an indissoluble whole.
Accordingly, no one can say that the total amount of energy called into
existence at the creation of our solar system is being added to at the
present time. At any rate, so far as modern science can judge of the
matter, the total amount of energy available for our world _is a fixed
quantity_; and its amount and the terms on which it was to be available
for our use were fixed or finished "from the foundation of the world."
While it is a very significant fact in this connection that with all the
multiform speculations which have been made as to the physical source
of the sun's heat, no explanation wholly satisfactory has yet been made
as to how this energy coming to us from the sun is constantly
replenished or maintained.
II
The desire to find a material cause for all phenomena is instinctive in
the human mind, and has proved the chief impetus in a thousand
discoveries. And yet, unless we are on our guard, it is liable to be a
source of real error whenever we are dealing with the deeper problems
of thought. For when we have pushed our way into the inner sanctuary
of any department of nature, we almost invariably come upon a deep
chasm that we can pass over only by building a bridge of words. Some
of these verbal bridges have been decorated with very dignified names,

such as "the luminiferous ether," "gravity," "chemical affinity"; and
when we have shifted from the one side of the chasm to the other we
impose upon the credulity of the public (and even ourselves) by giving
out the impression that these words represent the real objective bridge
on which we crossed.
In how many ways do we by our theories dodge the crucial problem of
how energy is really transmitted, that is, how matter can act on distant
matter across seemingly vacant space. Gravity, and indeed all the forms
of the attractive forces, come under this head. True, we observe certain
regularities in the way in which these phenomena occur, and the
phenomenon at one place seems to be somehow dependent on some
exercise of force at another place. And so we invent an ingenious
theory, and fortify it all around with ponderous algebraic artillery for
defense against all attack. And by persistent use of such theories we
hypnotize ourselves into the belief that we are truly scientific in method,
and are dealing with objective realities, and that these learned theories
are something more than pretentious masks to hide our ignorance of
real nature; when in reality these theories seem to be only a material
screen to shield us from an embarrassing near view of the immediate
action of God in all the various phenomena of the world; for not many
find it a comfortable thought thus to live continuously beneath the great
Taskmaster's eye.
The theory of the luminiferous ether as the medium of the transmission
of light is one of these pretentious bridges of words. Our advancing
knowledge of electro-magnetic phenomena may some day drive us
back to a modified form of the corpuscular theory of light, and then we
can throw this of the ether to the winds. In that case we would at least
have a real material cause for the phenomena with which we deal.
While the current theory of the ether has so many inconsistencies, and
attempts to bridge over so many real chasms in our thinking that it
seems truly astonishing to see it taught so long. By the theory of the
ether the problems are not solved, they are merely postponed or evaded;
for while solving one difficulty it creates a multitude of its own. How
then are we better off than before without any such theory?
Being at liberty to invent any sort of qualities for their ether, scientists
have tried to imagine such a substance as they think they need. The
ether must be a kind of matter; but unlike any matter that we know of it

cannot have weight, or else it would gravitate together here and there,
thus becoming more abundant in some places than in others; whereas
the need is for a material absolutely uniform throughout space, even
throughout the interiors of solid bodies, such as the earth and the bodies
upon the earth.
Another reason for supposing the ether to be a _plenum_, filling
absolutely all space, is that it must be perfectly frictionless; and for