THE MARVELS OF SPACE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 14684, 18 November 1909, Page 8

THE MARVELS OF SPACE

MR CLEMKXT h. WRAGGE'S

LECTURE.

All .' measure not with words tho im- ! ' ' " r ' lc Cosmos is 'initio ml' 0 is 110 '"Sinning and M l / ('wV't'' ,rcssions as these that L - , Ura ese, the well-known . • u„i n ,.? b t," , . its t r onomc>r, punctuates clear" Im,, nmsclf . J.o makes it very mysteries of space, to find on the fa« s o. a myriad suns some explanation of , v h v tiling are. And it would «em that as often as his mind is baffled by the ■uvfui ness of the infinite, lie is visited by now sensations cf awe, and has a finer ui,l grander conception of the glory of (icd One feels that he finds his hurrying stream of eloquence badly impotent; that he lias an uncontrollablo longing'to make his audi, once feel as he feels, and to actually realiso 'with him the majesty and grandeur of a Supreme Being. And hence his ejaculations short, sharp and very effective. "Oh, dear, dear!" ho exclaimed last night, as picture after picturo eamo up ou the screen, and he felt how little ho could make his hearers understand in tho short timo at his command, if I only hm] some of those parsons here!"

The subject, "The Cathedrals jf God," was one peculiarly suited to the lecturer— one In which he appears as the eager scientist, the reasoning mathematician, tho humble adorer of tho Creator. His screen, at (irst, showed what aro generally regarded as God's cathedrals—churches in various parts of the world. But Mr Wragge quickly indicated that ho was going far beyond those. Ho showed a Mohammedan mosque in Egypt, peasants at tho Mount of Olives, worshipping Hindus thronging tho ghats at Benares. lie broke away hero to point out liow poor and cowardly was tho popular conception <iC death. Death was not the end. It was' a disappearance of tho individual, certainly. But the instruments of the body and brain were merely changed into move subtlo forms—were taken away by Nature and cleansed and rebuilt—to appear again in other ramifications of life. '

And then ho proceeded to find other cathedrals of God—a French convict station at New Caledonia, magnificent breaker., on a tumbled coast, a great ship sailing over the sea, an iceberg oft' Cape Horn, a garden of flowers. There was a divma spark son-cuhero in tho most abandoned criminal; God was lo be heard in tho voice of the gale; a little whita flower was tjirohbing with a messag-s of purity awl truth. And again tho lecturer went aside to tell how it is that; electrons are .tho eoloui of the flowers, and how there is the closest affinity between delicate colours and sweet ramie. Ho told how a prism separated colour:, how lights were split lip, but how white light always gave, back white light. And ill a few short, learned sentences ho found a subtle parallel between this liglit analysis and all the churches of the earth worshipping God, and showed how tho absence of' one would destroy the balance of the whole and the spectrum would bo lost. And then lie found cathedral in rocks, in streams, in tho exquisitelycoloured clouds, in the everlasting 6nows, and in the seductive tropics. "And now," ho cried, "away we go to tho great and beautiful universe beyond. There's a cathedral for you! Grand! Mighty! Infinite! Suns in every • condition of existence—in every condition- of evolution." No mere astral system this, with its group of suns dotted over dark spaces', and a suggestion of nothingness beyond. The picture showed myriads upon myriads of stars packed so thickly that there were no dark spots anywhere, and (he photograph seemed like a blaze of wliito light. These stars were at an. enormous distanco from the earth, and photographed only through a delicate instrument. The lecturer said that if something that could travel a certain number of times round the earth in one second had started for certain of those stars when Adam wandered in Eden, that something would not yet liave reached its destination. " And yet," said the lecturer, "some silly people think that they are tho hub of tho universe, and put on what they onll side!"

In the course of his lecture Mr Wraggc sketched the history of tho earth. Tho planet, he said, was 000,CC0,000 y«us oUt (approximately), and lis remarked that investigations in tliis direction, liad bean greatly aided by radium, lie told how tho sun was the parent of the earth, and how disturbances in that great body are, by reason of tho fact that the whole universe is electrical, and that there is distinct synt pat-hy between the earth and tho sun, readily communicatc-d over the ether to the earth. . The earth responds, and wo have earthquakes, volcanic disturbances, droughts, etc. There was, therefore, the closest relationship, between sunsftats ■>«! sheenfarming.

During tho latter part of his lecture Mr Wragge showed a number of' magnificent photographs of tho . moon, proving that science has practically eliminated 240,000 miles of space by allowing a more accurate survey of the wholo visible surface of tho moon to he made than is the caeo with any equal urea of tho earth's surface.