THE COMET HAS COME.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 11644, 4 May 1901, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE COMET HAS COME.

[by to hung a.] The comet has come. You may see it of an evening if you put off six o'clock tea for a few minutes and look low on the western horizon, measuring a foot up with outstretched hand. The general opinion of the laity seems to be that it isn't much of a comet, but is as over-estimated as the Southern Cross. Enthusiastic scientific gentlemen have a habit of exaggerating such things, you know. They actually get interested in watching a poky little bit of a star that only shows up in a big telescope, and will dilate through volumes upon the sun-spots that, we shouldn't know were there if we were not told. But what can you expect of men who never go "nap," and did not even know enough to put their money on Advance?

Taking comets as they go, this individual specimen is probably a fair one. But we ■ should be more interested in it if the scientific gentlemen had let us alone and not amused themselves by pointing cut that the celestial bodies have no direct connection with politics. The famous comet of our youth appeared under the old management, and meant the downfall of Napoleon the Little to our trustful Evangelical minds. Was he not Apoliyon and was not Paris Babylon, and was not the sharp German sword edged by the Divine wrath to avenge the slaughter of the Republican saints? Was it not fitting that the fiery comet should flame in high heaven and seal to the world the doom pronounced by Inexorable Justice? Every time we looked at that Napoleon-dooming comet it grew bigger and bigger until it seemed to stretch from zenith to nadir, until you could hear it shearing its way through the vastnesses with the sibilance of a ship ploughing the sea. But this present comet, has no telescopic interpretation. It is a very commonplace thing, with two or three tails, and no dignity worth mentioning. It is a moral that the comet will rook larger to any Boer who imagines that it seals the doom of Kruger, and gigantic to any who are convinced that it foretells the triumph of Afrieanderism and the miraculous driving of the English into the sea. If we ourselves could be persuaded that it had something to do with the next Australian Cup, or that it foretold a huge goldrush north of Auckland, or even that it was prophetic of a twopenny rise in the pound of butter, how we would stare at it, how it would grow upon us! But since it is only a marvellous sign of Almighty Power* of the Eternal and Unfailing Ordering of the Universe and of the Ages—bah, it isn't much of a comet, let us get in to tea. Yon see the Artist can study the human form divine in a reverential spirit and retain to the end appreciation of its harmonious lines. Bui when the ordinary or everyday variety of mankind goes picking a person to pieces there is very little appreciation left. How can plain John admire Mary if he begins to think" that her nose is snobby, her hair mousey, her eyes too close together, and her skin muddy! It is by instinct that we invariably avoid remarks on the personality of each other's friends and relations unless we can say something pleasant. Every goose thinks its own gosling a swan, and to every loving mother her baby is the most beautiful in the world. Shakespere. our king of Artists, can sympathise with Shylock and make his murdering Othello, his treacherous Brutus, his lecherous Falstaff as altogether human as his most lovable heroes and heroines. But our duller perceptions crave to conceive of absolute perfection in those we admire and esteem. We shrink from the artistic analysis of our ideals as from the dissecting of the bodies of those we have loved. So with scientific investigation! Doubtless the true scientist is of all men the most capable of falling on his knees before Omniscience and Omnipotence, as the true artist most eagerly kisses the feet of the Beautiful. The greatest of Teutonic logicians, the archenemy of scepticism and materialism, Scotch-blooded Kant, cried out like a child: " Two things strike me dumb—the wonder of the universe and the sense of right and wrong in men.'' And from the lips of almost every recognised master, of those who gaze into the star depths or seek to read the writings of the rocks, come humble acknowledgment of the Supreme and .Infinite to Whom the Universe is but a garment and without Whom we are helpless and undone. But while the work of the true scientist is thus elevating and ennobling to those who understand and appreciate it, to most of us it is very much like a criticism on Mary's snubby nose. One scientist has told us that you could squeeze a comet into a hat. that it is as thin as the promises of a parliamentary candidate, and could go through a powder-flask without burning a hole in your pocket. Now, what ordinary or everyday variety of man can respect a comet that you can put in your~hat, or can spontaneously fall on his knees before the Author of it? We are still barbarian enough to think of size as an element of .strength, of majesty, and of sublimity. Kenan lias a delicious satire in the form of a monologue delivered by a Gothic tourist, over the ruins of the famous temple of Diana at Ephesus. The noble Goth points out that, really, the Greek temples were very paltry— few hundred people filled them to overflowing, wjhile in North Europe there were plenty of churches which would hold as many thousands without a crush. We can racially understand the superiority of the nation that drinks more beer, eats more beef, smokes more tobacco, and owns more sovereigns than any other nation. We desire to have the biggest ships, the biggest buildings, the biggest towns, the biggest apples, the biggest children, and the biggest factories—the Yankee even boasts of having the biggest multi-millionaires. A comet that was solid, that oozed a long tail of fire and flame like a waving torch, that would hit the earth as one of Jones' balls hit the wickets, we could respect. A comet that would go into your hat may amaze a scientist as a marvel of gaseousness, but does not appeal to the man whom Truth must hit with a brick. Of course, the hat theory has dispt r sid, but still more confusing theories have taken fyhe popular dignity out of the comet. Is it hard, or is it soTf? Would it hurt us if 't hit us, or would we merely think that thenwere an exceptional number of shooting stars? Would it stir the sun up if it felt* therein, or would it be only like a flick of the whip on a 'bus-horse tugging up College Hill? Does it belong to anywhere, or is it a pure vagrant waiting to be arrested by'the police force of gravitation? They were wise in '(heir generation who hung a veil before the Holy of Holies and surrounded kings and priests and law-courts with all manner of fancy ball costumes and fol-de-rol. Familiarity commonly breeds contempt in the foolish mind. We are mostly very foolish, and we have got familiar with the'cornet. And yet it is one of the things which should make us t/hink, even though' we may not accept I<he theory that the Satan of the Book of Job, "wandering to and fro," is a destructive comet, permitted by God to strike the earth, and ruin poor Humanity until the effect of it is modified by the help of those who escaped and lost in the reward given to courageous industry by the vivifying forces. That we exist in the Universe by Divine Stlffrance is one of the few verities known to men ; that the seemingly solid, earth we tread is a frail and shifting thing whirling amid dangers that at any time may make it untenable by human life is certain ; that by blow of alien sphere, by blazing up of sun. by chill of descending'lee Age. by staying of our diurnal revolution, or by some other fate, our doom is foretold, we know to-day as assuredly as when the wisdom of the ancient was embalmed in prophecy, and all men believed that the earth would shrivel like a scroll, and the heavens pass away at the appointed sounding of the bugles of Judgment. Lookingvat the. comet we may know and believe that though the letters of our faith change with our varying knowledge, the spirit of our faith remains fixed and unalterably, the same.

For this seemingly wandering comet, coming we know not whence, going we know not whither, perchance approaching what we may call its death, perchance destined to he a resident of our skies, is bound by laws as arbitrary as those that will bring to us i/he springtime in due season and renew again the leaves that now are falling to the ground. It is only because we do not know that it seems to be wandering. It we only knew enough we could fix its position one thousand, one hundred thousand, one million years hence, as nearly as we can the rising of the moon, as confidently as our sailors take the wide sea-road, to the Lizard Lig»ht. That which we call Cod has appointed its path and steers its course, not with the clumsy working of mechanician fingers, but with the illimitable governance of unescapable and all-pervading Law. Before that Law the comet that Are watcjh and we who watch it are equally subjective. Whatever may happen to the comet, or to the earth, is it no* already written in the divine orders which man is slowly beginning to read, and which all Creation unvaryingly obeys? Whether you could put t,he comet in your hat. or whether it is the germ of another earth, or whether it will work us weal or woe. there is one thing unquestionable—it is doing and going to do what is was ordained to do from the very beginning of all Time, from the nrrfat/homab'e conception of the world. In one or two ways, it is even more note worth v then Advance.