CLEMENT L. WRAGGE.

King Country Chronicle, Volume III, Issue 147, 15 April 1909, Page 2

CLEMENT L. WRAGGE.

A Voyage Through the < Universe. ' ] Omnia ad Dei gloriam (all things to ] the glory of God), was the text on . which Mr Clement Wragge discoursed to a large "audience in the Te Kuiti Hall on Saturday night. With such an inexhaustible subject so able an exponent, and magnificent photographs, the audience was amply repaid for its attention. Pervading everything in the illimitable universe, creating all things, controlling all things, from the mightiest majestic body in the spacious firmament to the tiniest of earth's wayside flowers or one of the myriad animalculae in a drop of water, Mr Wragge sees evidence of the Supreme mind. To traverse the ordered maze of celestial region was an experience weird and novel to most of those present, After dwelling upon the immensity of the Universe the lecturer showed the audience magnificent views of the heavens, as seen from the polar regions, and reminded those present that they were gazing at suns, every one of which was greater than our own sun, which was only of the second rate order; he also displayed views of many of the more important constellations in the sky. The lecturerr showed how suns were born, he described the wonders of the "Milky Way," and then the wonders of our own "second rate" sun, with its great spots, gigantic tongues of flame which shot up for hundreds of thousands of miles, and the wonders of the eclipse. He illustrated, too, how the ! sun spots, or storms of terriffic intenj sity, had their influence on the earth. I Those great sun"siorms, he said and he said it with" all due reverence — I affected the earth 'as surely as God ; made apples." Then he gave a magnifii cent series of views of the moon, with i its wonderful mountains and enormous | dry beds, formerly occupied by the i ocean, and concluded with an imagin- ; ary voyage of a man who wished to be ! associated with the works of the Almihgty, and who, after getting as far as Saturn, was over awed and desired to get back. On Monday night Professor Wragge delivered his famous lecture on "The Majesty of Creation" at Te Kuiti. There was a good attendance and those who were present are not likely to forget the impression conveyed by the splendid illustrations and the manner in which the subject was treated by the lecturer. In introducing the subject Mr Wragge declared Astronomy to be the grandest of all sciences, the great corner stone, and said that a man who reasoned without astronomical knowledge would never reach the truth. Astronomers could not be atheists, for the more a scientific man was brought face to face with the grand organisation of the Eternal Scheme of the appalling Cosmos, the more he was compelled to recognise the existence of that "Infinite Dynamo" whom men call God. Showing a splendid set of pictures of the stars surrounding the North Pole of the heavens, Professor Wragge said that the well known constellations familiar from childhood were composed of myriads of suns, some of them ever so much bigger j than our sun, and yet seen from the j earth they appear, owing to the treI mendous distance at which we are sit- ! uated from them, counted in trillions of miles, as mere specks of light. The ' lecturer next gave an idea of the manj ner in which suns were born by nebuj lar disintegration. The Earth, as it I would have appeared when first cast ' adrift from the Sun, was shown on the screen and the event according to the lecturer must have take" place at least 900,000,000 of years ago. The discovery of radium had recon- '• j ciled the discrepancy that used to exist between astronomers and geclo- ! gists as to the age or the earth, and geologists could not now have all the years they wished to account for the formation of the rocks. The romance of lif 2 by means of evolution, from the pr otoplasmic germ through the animal kingdom up to man, was sketched. A fine set of pictures showed the sun storms, which, according to Professor ! Wragge, are accountable, in a great measure, for the weather conditions of the earth. In dealing with the moon, the lecturer declared the planet to be now in the same state as the earth would eventually become. The other panets of our solar system were briefly referred to, as were the principal comets. In conclusion the lecturer exhorted the audience to ponder the great question: "What is Truth," and to remember that the science to come was the study of universal and eternal life. At the close of the lecture some particles of radium were exhibited, a considerable number of the audience taking advantage of the opportunity to see the latest scientific wonder.

Striking Utterances. During the course of his lectures at Te Kuiti ProfessorWragge gave utterances to the following:— Ether is a great ocean of electricity which links everything together. Nothing is lost in the universe ; nothing can be destroyed; it is merely transferred. When the body dies the soul is merged in the infinite. Science and true religion are one. Every star, with the exception of the planets, is a sun. Storms breaking 'out from the sun spots set up vibrations j)f ether to which our earth sympathetically responds, if the earth fell into a sun storm it would be like a pebble dropping into a lake, and there would be no further interest in the Addington Workshops' enquiry. How small, how minutely small we are! Yet som-; people put on as much side as if they were the only rooster in the farmyard. The moon was hurled off thii earth 800,000,000, years ago. The dark parts of the moon are old sea beds. Every visible portion of the moor, is mapped out and surveyed more accurately than the far north of Scotsomewhere else." There is practically an entire absence of life on the moon, but very Email j

pluttering eruptions are still going en leep down in the crater of Plato. It s only a question of time when our >arth will be reduced to the same barren state, with no seas and no atmor.snere. Radium is worth £3,200,000 per oound avoirdupois. The Alpha light from one atom of radium lasts 5000 years. There is some reason to believe that pitch-blende, from which radium emanates, exists somewhere in North Auckland.