Salt Lake Telegram | 1928-09-17 | Page 6 | Life Everlasting

1 I Life Everlasting I Ie e S fR DR ROBERT A. A MILLIKAN who is just justS about Americas America's best known scientist does not nat bei believe eve that the is ever g going ing t to come t tc an end Far ou the cold darkness of interstellar night the universeS Dr Millikan believes is const constantly rebuilding itself One long age miracle is replaCing worn out stars and rejuvenating rejuvenating fading planets when our sun burns buin to a cinder a new sun will r place it and when the flung far torches of the milky way burn down downin in their sockets the heavens heavens' will blaze with new li lights Dr Millikan being a scientist and dealing with such things thing as cosmic rays is not conc con con- c greatly geatty with the human aspects o of this vision But although our days are rather strictly limited and numbered we cannot help being thrilled Our souls never will be satisfied satis satis- fied with anything less than infinity and eternity eternity eter- eter if we hear earths earth's life is to end fifty million years from now we are depressed The word everlasting is the greatest word wordin in our vocabulary This is odd when you stop to think about it it We measure our daily affairs by single years years by decades or at most by centuries We We speak of the antiquity of Egyptian years old and to sp speculate on the civilization of the year 2928 seems like peering peer peer- inK ing into the most remote future Yet we can switch glibly to the incredibly vast stretches of time in which the scientist deals and we can when we hear that our sun hence vill go o out Yet this may not be so strange after all We are as the psalmist said as the flower that but there is something strange strange- Sly Iy imperishable and unquenchable in our hearts Limited to to a a span of score three score and ten teny y ars we have nevertheless infinity with with- i iii us us S 'S t This may be irrational but it is cent en It i is what has sustained men in all ages from the day of dank caves caves' to the day of rs ls It has heartened uncounted of nameless heroes to die for causes th they y only half understood on on dusty battlefields battle battle- fields all the way from Arbela to to Chateau TI Thierry It has led other millions to endure lifetimes of slow toil on tossing ships in damp m nines nes on sunbaked aked farms in gloomy city slums It has raised at inter inter- vals lonely figures to solitary heights from Which they could glimpse c confused visions of splendor and trace some sort of pattern in humanity's hu- hu manity's chaos The world will never end universe does not death is I Did we after PaIl need Dr Millikan to tell us Did we not k know v o it all the time