Professor Ramsey thinks he has discovered the primordial substance that composes the elementary atoms. It is a new gas called helium and thought by some to constitute the body of the Sun. In an article on this subject the Scientific American says, "It is very probable that the atoms of our so-called elements are but different combinations and aggregations of the atoms of one primordial element; and it is possible indeed that this primordial element is helium or one of the strange elements associated with it."
Just how one primordial element can, by reason of its presence in different quantities produce all the thousands of different consistencies, forms and effects in matter is not apparent to reason on any material line of conception. If all the material things about us are only different aggregations of one primordial substance then everything ought to be reducible to that one primordial element, and the alchemist's dream of transmutation of metals would only depend upon a system of quantity instead of quality. One might claim that the difference in matter, commonly apparent, is only a difference of density or of diluency. But the very admission of a diluent knocks the one primary substance theory in the head, and no change in density has ever made gold out of wood. The fact is that the final conclusions in material science are ultimately lost at a vanishing point beyond which we can only proceed in theory, which theory itself soon becomes entangled and lost.
There is but one opening or unexplored field that holds out any promise of a road leading to the definite, and that is along the neglected line of metaphysics which Jesus Christ pointed out, resolving life and intelligence into omnipotence and all things as expressions of thought; matter as only a temporal consciousness and that consciousness only a figure of expression, substantially in itself nothing, just where material science chases it to and then marvels at its disappearance. Jesus understanding the truth was able to intelligently direct the material expressions of thought according to laws supremely natural, but ignorance and superstition laid the revelations upon the shelf of ecclesiasticism as something too sacred for scientific investigation. The truth, however, will again be taken up, and in that scientific work, opening up such glorious and grand possibilities, the world will see the second coming of the Christ principle. The day is not far distant. Get out of the ruts.—Cedar Rapids Commercial.
