High Mass

“ For where there is no clear distinction, the eyes and the heart are easily misled by such shamming into a false impression and delusion; so that what men have invented is reckoned the mass, and what the mass is, is never experienced, to say nothing of deriving benefit from it. Thus, alas! it happens in our times; for, I fear, every day more than a thousand masses are said, of which perhaps not one is a real mass. O dear Christian, to have many masses is not to have the mass. ”

“ When we find that here, and in the starry heavens, there are innumerable multitudes of little bodies of exactly the same mass, so many, and no more, to the grain, and vibrating in exactly the same time, so many times, and no more, in a second, and when we reflect that no power in nature can now alter in the least either the mass or the period of any one of them, we seem to have advanced along the path of natural knowledge to one of those points at which we must accept the guidance of that faith by which we understand that "that which is seen was not made of things which do appear." ”

“ If we desire to say mass rightly and understand it, then we must give up everything that the eyes and all the senses behold and suggest in this act, such as vestments, in bells, songs, ornaments, prayers, processions, elevations, prostrations, or whatever happens in the mass, until we first lay hold of and consider well the words of Christ, by which He completed and instituted the mass and commanded us to observe it. ”

“ Those blind Omniscients, those Almighty Slaves,
Untenanting creation of its God.
But Properties are God: the naked mass
(If mass there be, fantastic guess or ghost)
Acts only by its inactivity.
Here we pause humbly. Others boldlier think
That as one body seems the aggregate
Of atoms numberless, each organized ”

“ Mass would mean inter attraction holding together final particles, if there were final particles. Then, until final particles be discovered, only one term of this expression survives, or mass is attraction. ”

“ Mass meant monotony. But the differentiating energy and impetus encroached further and further, passing from the great to the small, pushing into the mass whose members no longer wanted to be mass, herd, but men. ”

“ Now, the globe of the earth is a prodigious mass of matter, to which nothing near it can bear any comparison. It draws, therefore, with mighty force, everything within its reach, which is the cause of their falling: and this is called the gravitation of bodies, or what gives them weight. When I lift anything, I act contrary to this force, for which reason it seems heavy to me, and the heavier the more matter it contains, since that increases the attraction of the earth for it. ”

“ Another science now calls our attention, opening to us still grander views of the Divine workings,—geology—that science, which penetrating beneath the surface, examines the very structure and constitution of this globe. But a little way, indeed, has it penetrated or can it penetrate into the great mass. Here is a body of matter no less than eight thousand miles in thickness. What may be doing there in the centre, four thousand miles beneath our feet, He only knows, whose eye penetrates all substances, and to whom the "darkness is as the light." ”

“ On the table before me lies a solid lump of steel, but in the light of up-to-date science I know that the atoms of that seemingly inert mass are vibrating with the most intense energy, continually dashing hither and thither, impinging upon and rebounding from one another, or circling round like miniature solar systems, with a ceaseless rapidity whose complex activity is enough to bewilder the imagination. The mass, as a mass, may lie inert upon the table ”

“ The attraction of gravitation, which is a property belonging to all known bodies, is measured by the mass, or amount of matter, in a body. It also varies with the distance between the attracting and attracted bodies. We know, by means which I shall not attempt to describe here, the mass both of the earth and of the moon. ”

“ Already this simple observation - as such made by means of the sense of movement and therefore outside the frontiers of the onlooker-consciousness - tells us that mass is nothing but a particular manifestation of force. ”

“ We feel their influence on every step we take and on every breath we draw; and the powers we possess, and the comforts we enjoy would be unprofitable to us, if they had not been prepared with a reference to those as well as to the near and visible portions of the earth’s mass. ”

“ If we take, for example, the laws of motion and the law of universal gravitation, we can express in a few lines, that which, when developed, represents and explains an innumerable mass of natural phenomena. ”

“ For the purpose of general illustration the reader is asked to conceive a mass of heterogeneous matter, concentrated round a given point in space, forming a single body. This mass is assumed to be assembled and to obtain its coherent form in virtue of that universal and inherent property of matter, namely, gravitative or central attraction. ”

“ Experience teaches that all the changes to which matter is subject are but variations of form, and that amid these variations there is an unvarying constant—the mass or quantity of matter. The constancy of the mass is attested by the balance, which shows that neither fusion nor sublimation, neither generation nor corruption, can add to, or detract from, the weight of a body subjected to experiment. ”

“ So that if the volume of any body, whether atom, planet, satellite or sun, be doubled, its attractive power remains the same, simply because the mass of the whole body remains the same. Mass, we are told by mathematicians, is equal to the volume multiplied by the density, and whenever we increase the volume of a body we decrease the density, the total mass of the body remaining the same. ”

“ First, the measure of gravity at its surface; this attractive force we know, by the increase of our own muscular force, must of course be considerably less than that at the surface of the earth. Secondly, its mass, that is, the quantity of its matter. ”

“ And I myself am floating with wild caprice in the midst of this nebulous mass of fourteen hundred thousand times the volume of the earth into which it will one day be condensed, and carried forward amongst the planetary bodies. My body is no longer firm and terrestrial ”

“ Now we choose mass as a unit of measure of the quantity of material; and we are justified in doing so, because experiments have shown that material, confined in a closed space, does not appreciably alter its mass. The mass is proportional to the weight, generally measured as [Pg 234] the force exerted at some definite latitude on the earth’s surface, tending to pull the body towards the centre of the earth. ”

“ Could there not exist in the universe some gigantic mass, much greater than that of all the known stars and whose action could make itself felt at great distances? That mass might be animated by a colossal velocity, and after having circulated from all time at such distances that its influence had remained hitherto insensible to us, it might come all at once to pass near us. ”

“ In astronomy, the difficulties are restricted very much when the mass of one body is many times greater than that of the others, as in the case of the mass of the sun in relation to that of the other planets. ”

“ The latter was the opinion of La Place the astronomer, who says that a mass, if thrown by a volcano from the moon, with a velocity of about a mile and half per second, it will thence be projected beyond the sphere of the moon’s attraction, and into the confines of that of the earth; the consequence of which will be, that the mass must presently fall to the earth, and become a part of it. ”

“ The law of masses may be extended to as great masses as those for which observation proves it (for example the mass of Jupiter) , by making the diameters of the bars of the supposed cage atoms constituting heavy bodies, small enough. ”

“ Newton himself proposed this question; he also found the answer. The attractive power of a celestial body depends upon its larger or smaller mass. In our solar system the sun's mass is so much larger than that of any of the planets, that the balance of attractive power is largely in his favor ”

“ It became, then, highly probable, for a number of reasons, that what we called the mass of a body at rest was itself due to the contained energy of the body. In a general way, therefore, a body, when heated or electrified or compressed, would increase in mass. ”

“ Here then is a mass of matter that annihilates the impulse given by a spiritual cause, which spiritual cause having no analogy with matter, ought not to find more difficulty in moving the whole world, than in moving a single atom, nor an atom, than the universe. ”

“ It is moreover worthy of remark how all this series of powers, which constitute in their totality the life of the planet, is found also in its single parts constantly and in the most various forms; for we find in every object a proportionate gravitation of the mass toward its centre. This fact explains the mutual attraction of two bodies floating in a fluid, the formation of a drop of water, and the nature of the globular form in general as one in which all the radii, or the relations of the periphery to its centre, are equal. ”

“ In descriptive astronomy the mass of the sun or that of the earth is sometimes taken as a unit, but in the dynamical theory of astronomy the unit of mass is deduced from the units of time and length, combined with the fact of universal gravitation. ”

“ Immediately upon the impress of the laws of nature, by the direct effort of the Divine Being, the whole mass would commence revolving on its own axis, and moving around its centre in its orbit. At the same time a quickening impulse would be felt, from the operation of the laws of nature, which would impart life and animation to the mass. The first effect of this impulse would be to call the caloric, light, and electricity into action throughout the body. ”

“ All this is exceedingly probable, because it is the way in which, as Laplace first pointed out, under well-established scientific laws of matter, particularly the law of gravitation and the law of the radiation of heat, a great fluid mass would necessarily change. ”

“ The great central mass, which we may regard as thousands of times greater than that of the subordinate body, cools much more slowly. The cooling of this great mass is so enormously protracted in comparison with that of the smaller body that it is quite conceivable the central mass may continue to glow with intense fervour for immense ages after the smaller body has become covered with hard rock. ”

“ The mass is invented by the brain of man without the command of God; therefore it is idolatry.’ He explained that the mass was abomination, and concluded by distinguishing the Lord's Supper of the protestants at the communion-table from the sacrifice of the mass, which the priest offered at the altar. Neither Tunstall nor any one else answered him. Probably most of the council were lukewarm or favourable. ”

“ It has been seen above that the natural condition of matter is cold, frozen, inactive, and solid: and that the elements of this globe were created in a simple, uncombined state. If this mass of elements received a quickening impulse, the chemical laws of affinity and attraction, and also the natural law of gravitation, would commence exerting their influence. This we know would create a rise in the temperature of the whole mass, in proportion to the amount of matter acted on, and the force of the 68 different principles and agents which were in operation. ”

“ For a mass is not a thing, but the condition of things; into which, should the subject require it, a legion, a host, may be compressed, an army with banners,--yet so that they break not the unity of their Part, that technic form to which they are subordinate.
The difference between a Part and a Mass is, that a Mass may include, per se, many Parts, yet, in relation to a Whole, is no more than a single component. ”

“ Thus, by each Mass more satisfaction is made to God than by any other expiatory work. But although the Mass is of infinite value, God accepts it only in a finite manner, according to the dispositions of those who attend the holy sacrifice, and, therefore, it is useful to hear several Masses.
3. In the Mass we render to God an adequate thanksgiving for all the benefits that he has bestowed upon us.
4. During the Mass we can obtain all the graces that we desire for ourselves and for others. ”

“ In addition, we have seen that in nature there exists an agency which is capable of changing the constitution of the ultimate atoms, and of thus giving variety to each resulting mass. What this power may be, our science [Pg 49] cannot tell; but our reason leads us, with firm conviction, to the belief that it is a principle which is, beyond all others in its subtile influences which equally universal with, appears to rise superior to gravitation; and which, like a spirituality, shadows forth to our dwarf conceptions the immensity of the divine power of the omniscient Creator. ”

“ We have thus two kinds of mass, neither of which quite fulfils the old ideal. The mass as measured by an observer who is in motion relative to the body in question is a relative quantity, and has no physical significance as a property of the body. The “proper mass” is a genuine property of the body, not dependent upon the observer; but it, also, is not strictly constant. As we shall see shortly, the notion of mass becomes absorbed into the notion of energy; it represents, so to speak, the energy which the body expends internally, as opposed to that which it displays to the outer world. ”

“ In astronomical practice the masses of the planets are commonly expressed as fractions of the mass of the sun, the latter being taken as unity. When we know the mass of the earth in gravitational measure, its product by the denominator of the fraction just mentioned gives the mass of the sun in gravitational measure. ”