THE K I N G ’ S BUS I NESS It is 25,000 miles around our world. With proper appliances one could send a signal around the world seven times in a single second. You could dispatch tid ings to the sun in seven minutes with couriers of the lightnings travelling a little over 185,000 miles per second. Then Professor Ball showed the photograph of a star and said: “This is one of our near neighbors among the celestial bodies. But, gentlemen, if the Shepherds of Bethlehem, the night the angels sang Messiah’s birth, had sent the message to this star on the wings of the lightning, speeding 185,000 miles per second, it would have been 250 years before they could have heard of the birth of Jesus.” Shifting the slide he said: “Gentle men, this is the photograph of a more remote star journeying on the more dis tant paths of the heavens. If the shep herds, the night the angels sang the Messiah chorus above the plains of Beth lehem, had sent tidings to this star on the wings of the lightning at 185,000 miles per second, after these one thou sand nine hundred years it would require two hundred and fifty years yet before they of this star could hear of the birth of the Son of Mary.” Centuries ago the astrologists, dreamy old watchers of the sky, had counted 1022 stars. Later Ptolemy told us there were 1026. It is claimed that the keenest unaided eye can count 1160 stars in the night sky, or could we see the whole celestial sphere, about 3000. But when Galileo adjusted the rude lenses of a tele scope he said: “The stars are, as count less as the sands of the seashore—stars that are whirling burning suns.” Then Rosse and Herschel brought larger tele scopes and searched the blazing sky and came saying: “We have found undreamed of depths and those depths are lighted with unthought of suns—millons of them.” Then photography visited the dwelling place of light and came saying the tele scope was too hurried and too near sighted. There are at least 450,000,000
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Dr. Lincoln A . Ferris
the universe. To help us properly adjust ourselves he said it is well nigh impos sible to conceive of even so familiar and commonplace a thing as our sun. But suppose it were a hollow ball and you with giant arm had a hammer 8000 miles across its face and could strike on the rim of .the sun and break through this outer surface. Then you might go through the universe and gather up 1,300,000 worlds the size of ours, wheel them up and put them in the sun, replace the cov ering, and the great ball would go on its revolutions as though nothing had hap pened. Or if it seems too much labor to gather so many worlds one could take the earth and set it in the centre of the sun, then borrow Orion’s truck long enough to bring up the moon, wheel it into its proper distance from the earth, start it going and the moon inside of the sun would revolve around the earth in orbit exactly the size. of the one in the sky, and never at any moment come within 200,000 miles of the outer circle of the
sun.
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