MAJESTY OF THINGS.

Shannon News, 17 July 1925, Page 4

MAJESTY OF THINGS.

IDEALITIES OF THE UNSEEN.

"Things seen are temporal, things unseen are eternal; things seen are trivial, aye, evanescent; but things unseen are majestic and real." So said Sir Oliver Lodge in the course of an address on "Reality" at the lunchhour service at Christ Church, Greyfriars, Newgate Street, reported in the "Morning Post.*' Did they, he asked, believe' that the things seen were temporal," the unseen things eternal, and that they were helped and guided, and affectionately regarded by Beings infinitely higher than themselves, and that they were beings with an infinite destiny? Those statements were either true or false. There were no -half-truths in the universe, and it would be well to realise that, if they were true, they, were exceedingly important. There might be errors in detail and mode Of statement, but he was convinced that those statements were in the main true, and, being true, were profoundly important. He would speak of the reality of the super-senuous — that which did not appeal to the senses. The sense of hearing really told them of nothing but the vibrations of the air, and, as to the sense of sight, nothing affected the eye but the quiver of the ether vibrations, vastly more rapid than those of Bound.

The things seen were trivial; the unseen things were majestic. Realities lay in the unseen. In London nowadays it was not easy to see the stars; but on Salisbury Plain the whole of the heavens were opened on a elear night—a majestic revelation of other worlds. His view of Salisbury Piain was that it was a plain when England was covered with forests. People mostly lived amongst the trees, and saw little of the skies. They got to Salisbury Plain, and thought they had a revelation of the universe, and erected the temple Stonehenge. They felt that was the place of worship. The ancients saw the same sky that we did not have the same revelation. » Was it supposed that wie had had all the revelation, that we had any real conception of the majesty of things? He doubted it very much. We had learned many things, but there was infinitely more to' learn. Indeed, we might go deeper into the nature of matter itself, which some people, . in order to stem what they call materialism, decried. But matter was itself a revelation. The atom of matter was like the solar system. There wa3 a central nucleus, a positive unit, and round it the negative electrons were revolving, likle the moon revolved round the earth and like the planets revolved round the sun. The atom was never seen; it did not appeal to their senses. It was all Inferred, but inferred with perfect security and certainty. No scientific man doubted it. It was an amazing revelation that the very atoms of matter were as full of law and order anil complexity as were the solar systems on a gigantic scale. The one was the revelation of the infinitely big; the other of the infinitely small. Was hot that a reality worth considering? How little they knew of this earth. How much there was to know ,and how much they were already beginning to learn. The doctrines that had been taught by religion were being confirmed, not in every detail, but in their fullness, greatness, and majesty by scientific exploration.