HEARING CHRIST’S SERMON

Evening Star, Issue 19724, 26 November 1927, Page 17

HEARING CHRIST’S SERMON

A STARTLING CONJECTURE VIBRATIONS OF THE PAST The day may come when wo shall hear Christ’s Sermon on the Mount as it was first spoken 2,000 years ago. It is a daring thought, suggested by what science is now learning about the vibrations of the universe. Marconi is convinced thAi the transmission of power by the beam system is not beyond the reach of possibility, at least over moderate distances, and this, if true, opens up a new vista of energy which may bo used for mechanical purposes. It may be possible to, broadcast power from great central stations which will be used by factories no longer dependent upon coal or oil 91' water. It would bo a revolution in the ecenomic life of the yorld (writes Sir Philip Gibbs,- in the ‘ Sunday Chronicle’). At one stroke it would make _ a mockery of international competition for the sources of our-present forms of dynamic energy, such as coal. It would shake to its foundations the whole elaborate structure of our civilisation based upon human labor, exchange of raw material, and manufactured goods, industrial plants built up by the genius of engineering for the storage of our present means of power, and the distribution of wealth among those who own the present sources of energy. _ . .For a time, at least, millions of laborers would be thrown_ out of work. There would be a financial convulsion in every industrial country. Human society would have to readjust itself to utterly new conditions, of economic life. EINSTEIN PUZZLE. Those are some of the possbiiities of our new acquaintance with atomic energy and Uie vibrations of the universe. There are others not lying in the material sphere of life as wo have been accustomed to think of it, but reaching out to the border lino between time and eternity. What is matter? What is time? Sir Oliver Lodge and others cannot answer those questions. Einstein, whom few of us can understand, though some make wild shots to interpret his ideas, asserts that time must be taken into account in the relations of space between one moving object and another. At least that is the best shot I can make at his theory. Some simple souls have been helped, they say, by a nursery jingle which seems to contain the whole theory of relativity in the following lines:— There was. a young lady named Bright, Who could travel much faster than light, She started one day, In a relative way, And came back on the previous night.

That, however, is a frivolous intru* sion upon a serious matter, and I must apologise to my readers for, such flippancy. Those vibrations we are considering now, with new understanding and also great ignorance, are they not part of the eternal energy of the universe, and may not thought itself be a vibration reaching out to other minds (or even to the Great Mind), transmitted over far distances or wave lengths to which other intelligences may bo tuned if properly sensitive? Thought vibrations also may be stored up, perhaps recorded, set in motion again. They, too, like all atomic energy, may have almost imperishable force, existing somewhere after thousands of years. Does , not that suggest a scientific explanation for the old ghost stories, haunted houses, apparitions, and the like? To mo it seems possible that some passionate action, some intense emotional experience in the past, some appearance of personality, may continue, by means of vibrations in old 'houses or which may be seen as thov were visible hundreds of years ago when_ they were first set in motion by minds abnormally sensitive and receptive, like human microphones. It may happen some day that wo may listen-in to the past, and even sec the vibrations of bodies long since “ dead.” HEARING THE PAST. It is all very difficult. No man yet can dogmatise about these things, but even the man in the street is dimly conscious that great mysteries are about him in these toys of broadcasting and television. Quite recently I was startled by some words I received in a letter from a friend of mins who is not quite the ordinary man in the street, but a distinguished literary man in the United States:— “I remember a few mouths ago,” ho wrote, “ hearing someone say that the time will come -when we will tunc in and hear Lincoln’s speech at Gottysburgh. Shaving a couple of mornings ago, the thrilling thought came to me that, maybe, some day wo could hear Christ’s Sermon on the Mount.” Certainly a startling and daring thought, showing the length to which the imagination of men has reached under the stimulus of these new discoveries. But supposing we did hear the Sermon oh the Mount spoken as it was first spoken with its message to humanity? Should we. after our first emotion, pay any more attention to its precepts? Should we be any meeker and kinder in our human relationships? Should we be Jess greedy and passionate and selfish and cruel? THE WEAK LINK. We may still read the Sei’mon on the Mount, but it doesn’t seem to make much difference to our way of life, taking this present state of Christendom. Would hearing it again change the moral standards of mankind? It raises the whole question of what men and women are going to do with these new powers which have come and are coming to them through the daring search of science. It is the weak link in all this chain of material development. It is curious and distressing that man so masterful over the powers of Nature, has not exhibited any evolutionary force within himself since his early history was known. Neither physically nor morally has he shown much development. In industrial communities lie has actually degenerated. SHOCKING REVELATION.

The Cro-Magnon _ man, I am told, living his cave Hfo in the Early Stone Age, averaged 6ft Sin, with one-sixth moro brain than the modern European. His senses of sight, hearing, and smell were more acutely developed. Without going so far back as that wo muss acknowledge humbly that the men of primitive civilisations, like the Greeks, at their best period, had intellectual qualities which compare favorably with our own

Our old instincts, appetites, passions remain unaltered, and pounce out upon us if there is any letting up of the social code. The Great War was a rather shocking revelation that men of our time and type—city clerks, intellectuals, highlyeducated young gentlemen—may bo as cruel and ferocious, with a joyous concurring iii human slaughter, ruthless in killing, as the tribes of savage men who advanced against each other with stone axes and bone-headed ijsrows.