Cosmic force

“ And since we know nothing of force apart from matter it is reasonable to presume that whatever forces are at play in the cosmos have their appropriate material vehicles. Spectrum analysis does not lead us to suppose that there is any material difference in the chemical constituents of the various bodies of the system, and what you find in the planets you find also in the Sun. ”

“ The answer is, that it is not less universal than the law of gravitation and no more so. There is a prevalent popular fallacy that the force of gravity is such that the movements, not only of solar systems, but of whole galaxies, and of all the illimitable systems of galaxies, are under its effective control, and that the whole universe of boundless space acknowledges its overwhelming sway. ”

“ It unfolds for us in vague hints the past of the universe as a diffuse mass of homogeneous matter, rolling in upon its local centers by gravitative force, and yielding up its primitive energy of separation as light and heat to the ethereal medium. ”

“ But our sun is not merely one of countless suns, some of them of greater magnitude, but it is only a temporary depository of a limited quantity of energy, ever dissipating itself into space, calculable as to its amount and duration, and known to depend for its existence on gravitative force. We may imagine the beginning of such a luminary in the collision of great masses of matter rushing together under the influence of gravitation, and causing by their impact a conflagration capable of enduring for millions of years. ”

“ On the contrary, a condition of dissolution would require the prevalence of a force the reverse of gravitation—a repulsive and expansive force. Our acquaintance with the visible universe reveals no region of space where we can assume the prevalence of such a force. On the contrary, many fixed stars, and even nebulae, afford the strongest evidence of being under the dominion of an attractive force. Not, however, but that there exists in the universe abundant evidence of the possibility and reality of a repulsive or dissolving force. ”

“ The very forces which alone could have brought this vast mass together must have been the identical forces which afterwards broke it up into the sun and planets, and the operation of the same force must have prevented its original formation at all. ”

“ No force can be disconnected from its cause. Detached force is unthinkable. All force in the universe can be traced to God. Much of the physical power of the earth can be traced to the sun,—storms, cataracts, steam, electricity,—and the sun gets its power from God. Gravitation, extensive as the universe, is but the power of God in each case.
The total force in the universe is beyond calculation. ”

“ It does not appear that they ascribed to Light any of the qualities of matter. But modern Science defines it to be a flood of particles of matter, flowing or shot out from the Sun and Stars, and moving through space to come to us. On the theories of mechanism and force, what force of attraction here or repulsion at the Sun or at the most distant Star could draw or drive these impalpable, weightless, infinitely minute particles, appreciably by the Sense of Sight alone, so far through space? What has become of the immense aggregate of particles that have reached the earth since the creation? ”

“ From the early Nineteenth Century to this day, one riddle which has amazed and confounded scientists is the apparent movement of our universe. According to all evidence, our universe is composed of a multitude of galaxies—each of which is running away from all others at unbelievable speed.
"This we know because of the 'red shift'—which one might call the 'Doppler effect' applied to light, rather than to sound. When one star, comet or galaxy approaches another, pressing its light waves upon its neighbor, the cosmic body's light waves are shortened. ”

“ The very fact that we can see the star shine is itself the fullest evidence that this is so, and evidence also that the law of gravitation there, too, is still in force, operating over these same distances, and with the same proportionate energy. ”

“ Applying, then, this axiom of identity to the efficient of natural phenomena, the unity of the great Cause becomes at once apparent. Everywhere we behold the same laws of mathematical harmony. The identical principle of gravitation, which we have proved to be the effect of a sublime rationality, carries us away to the utmost limits of the solar system, and shows us one sovereign efficient, one pervading force, that we may henceforth call God, all over those immeasurable fields of infinite azure. ”

“ Things do not fall down unless they are pulled down by that mysterious force which we call gravitation. The earth, it is true, is pulled by the sun, and would fall into it; but the earth escapes this fiery fate by circulating at great speed round the sun. The stars pull each other; but it has already been explained that they meet this by travelling rapidly in gigantic orbits. Yet we do, in a new sense of the word, need foundations of the universe. Our mind craves for some explanation of the matter out of which the universe is made. For this explanation we turn to modern Physics and Chemistry. ”

“ Most philosophical thinkers will, I believe, agree with me in concluding that a sound reply to it will solve the great mystery of the everlasting radiations of our sun and all the other suns of the universe. So long as we regard these suns as the sources of continually expended forces of light and heat, their everlasting and unabated renewal becomes a mystery utterly inscrutable to the human intellect, since the creation of new force, or any addition to the total forces of the universe, is as inconceivable to us as any addition to the total matter of the universe. ”

“ What it means is that our sun with his most distant planet and comet, with every particle of matter that owns his sway, is travelling onward through space, round a centre of force apparently, and constrained by Newton's law of gravitation. ”

“ Pure energy (primordial force) and pure spirit are wholly preresponsive to gravity. These primal forces, inhering in the Absolutes, are personally controlled by the Universal Father; hence does all gravity center in the personal presence of the Paradise Father of pure energy and pure spirit and in his supermaterial abode. ”

“ This is just what made the planets, one after another, separate from the Sun, but they could not get very far away, for another force which [Pg 59] is not only in the Sun but in every particle of matter in the universe, pulled them back toward the Sun, just as it pulls a ball when thrown to the Earth, and this force is called gravitation. ”

“ The great luminous cloud or ball of dull-red fire—fiery-red in the mornings and evenings, and during the day giving off a beautiful white light, "The Smoky God,"—is seemingly suspended in the center of the great vacuum "within" the earth, and held to its place by the immutable law of gravitation, or a repellant atmospheric force, as the case may be. I refer to the known power that draws or repels with equal force in all directions. ”

“ It is probable that some day we may be able to understand how the force of gravity appears to act instantaneously at a distance, and how all the transformable forces, gravity, light, heat, electricity, and molecular or atomic forces, are but different manifestations of one common energy. But in the meantime we know this for certain, that the law of gravity is not a local or special phenomenon, but prevails universally from the fixed stars to the atoms, from the infinitely great to the infinitely small. ”

“ The spreading recognition of the truth that force is persistent, and that consequently whatever force is manifested under one shape must previously have existed under another shape, is carrying with it a recognition of the truth that the force known to us in solar radiations, is the changed form of some other force of which the Sun is the seat; and that by the gradual dissipation of these radiations into space, this other force is being slowly exhausted. ”

“ Experience shows that a very different law of attraction prevails when the particles of matter are placed within inappreciable distances from each other, as in chemical and capillary attractions, and the attraction of cohesion; whether it be a modification of gravity, or that some new and unknown power comes into action, does not appear; but as a change in the law of the force takes place at one end of the scale, it is possible that gravitation may not remain the same at the immense distance of the fixed stars. ”

“ So that, by the study of the solar system, as its arrangements and movements are disclosed by astronomy, our inquirer would be naturally led to the conception of a lawgiver and artificer of infinite power and wisdom, ordaining the law of gravitation to operate against the centrifugal force, which would otherwise conduct out of its orbit a body revolving around a center, and then adjusting the relative distances, weights, and revolutions of the different bodies, so as to subject them to the operation of the great law that is to preserve them in fixed relations to each other. ”

“ But about one-half million light-years beyond the periphery of the present grand universe we observe the beginnings of a zone of an unbelievable energy action which increases in volume and intensity for over twenty-five million light-years. These tremendous wheels of energizing forces are situated in the first outer space level, a continuous belt of cosmic activity encircling the whole of the known, organized, and inhabited creation. ”

“ If we continue to pile galaxies, in the same perpetual recession, behind each other to all infinity, we still could not engender sufficient attractive force to control the observed movements of the multitudinous stars of space. The very statement of the law of gravitation itself disproves it ”

“ They study all forms and phases of space material and energy manifestations, and they are just as much interested in force function as in stellar phenomena; nothing in all space escapes their scrutiny. ”

“ As we pass beyond the borders of the personal administration of the Paradise Rulers, we are confronted with increasing inability to reckon in accordance with the standards established and the experience acquired in connection with observations having exclusively to do with the physical phenomena of the near-by astronomic systems. Even in the realms of the seven superuniverses we are living in the midst of force actions and energy reactions which pervade all our domains and extend in unified equilibrium on through all regions of outer space. ”

“ If we divest our minds of all visions of hypothetical atoms, molecules, ethers, etc., and simply look at the facts of radiation with the same humility of intellect as we usually regard gravitation, this primary difficulty of the radiometer at once vanishes. The force of gravitation is a radiant force acting somehow between, or upon, or by distant bodies ”

“ That the force we are considering pervades the solar system is demonstrable, for it is on the supposition of it and the laws it is known to obey that all the calculations of astronomy—and they never miscarry—are grounded ”

“ When we once succeed in legitimizing the conception that suns and stars are evolved, not out of débris, and weak statical force, but from the primordial plenum itself, equipped with latent power in equilibrium, we can view them as they apparently are—perennial fountains of energy—incandescent lamps of eternity—drawing their supplies from the mysterious stoppage of primordial motions, with the accompanying evolution of chemical elements, and the radiation of liberated energy in torrents. ”

“ The Paradise force organizers transmute space potency into primordial force and evolve this prematerial potential into the primary and secondary energy manifestations of physical reality. When this energy attains gravity-responding levels, the power directors and their associates of the superuniverse regime appear upon the scene and begin their never-ending manipulations designed to establish the manifold power circuits and energy channels of the universes of time and space. Thus does physical matter appear in space, and so is the stage set for the inauguration of universe organization. ”

“ Universe power. Space-force has been changed into space-energy and thence into the energy of gravity control. Thus has physical energy been ripened to that point where it can be directed into channels of power and made to serve the manifold purposes of the universe Creators. ”

“ Again, anything like a retarding effect of the medium through which the planets move would constitute a tangential force, entirely un-directed towards the sun. Hence no such frictional or retarding force can appreciably exist. ”

“ The analytical expression for the gravitating force is a straight line; the curves in which the celestial bodies move by the force of gravitation are only lines of the second order; the attraction of spheroids according to any other law would be much more complicated; and as it is easy to prove that matter might have been moved according to an infinite variety of laws, it may be concluded, that gravitation must have been selected by Divine wisdom out of an infinity of other laws, its being the most simple, and that which gives the greatest stability to the celestial motions. ”

“ The one simple law of gravitation regulates the motions of the heavenly bodies not only of our own planetary system, but also of the far more distant double stars; from which, even the ray of light, the quickest of all messengers, needs years to reach our eye ”

“ The ever-recurring pulses of the primary cosmical force, emanating from all the atoms of the one primary form of matter, are directly consumed in communicating opposite movements, or virtual movements, to every atom in the universe. It is, as I conceive, because in the existing condition of things the distribution of matter is unequal in different directions round a point, and therefore the partial interception of the impulses of the cosmical force along the different lines of direction is unequal, that an effective gravitating force exists. ”