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Show Who Knows? Professor Simon Newcomb, in the Literna-tiofial Literna-tiofial Monthly, has a theory that the Universe, Uni-verse, as it occupies only finite space can have only finite duration; that the radiation of light into an unfathomable abyss from which it can never return, must at last exhaust ex-haust itself, and the Universe must die. Still he has doubts and does not know but there may be a radient property in matter which is saved in a residium, a stored energy that may have fed the sun's fires through all the years of the past. Whether that is profitable study or not cannot be determined at present. We suspect that some thousands of years ago, it was a favorite theme with the then scientists to establish that as the springs and rivers all ran into the sea, the time would come when the supply would be exhausted; ex-hausted; that all the moisture would be gone and the earth would float a dead planet in space. Later the fact was made clear that the air, the heat, the cold, the sunbeams, the clouds, the winds were all the servants to which the 1 duty was entrusted of keeping the springs replenished and the rivers in flow; that the waters were pumped up by the sunbeams from mid ocean, loaded on clouds, which are wafted by the winds shorewards, seized by the cold, the contents precipitated in rain and snow." The most beautiful phenomenon phe-nomenon in nature, and one which has continued con-tinued since before "the evening and the morning made the first day." If the Universe is finite, it must have had an Infinite design. It may be wearing out, but who knows? No particle of matter is ever still; it is all changing every moment, but who shall say that there is waste and loss? The acorn rots in the ground. That is, so far as we can see, it is disintegrated and .disappears; but in its stead the oak ap- IH pears and we realize that the acorn had ml within it a germ containing energy enough MM to eventually culminate in a tree, with resis- 91 tence enough to make a shelter for the wM eagles and to meet and turn back the fury mm of the hurricane. jfl The sunbeams, the clouds, the winds, the fH heat and the cold are all delegated to feed 9 the springs in the hills. jfl "To cause it to rain on the earth, where 91 no man is; or the wilderness wherein there fl is no man: jfl "To satisfy the desolate and waste ground, fl and to cause the bud and the tender herb to fl spring forth." fl "Who is this that darkeneth counsel by H words without knowledge?" fl How does Professor Newcomb know how 1H the springs of the sun's awful fires are fed, fl or when those fires will be banked and the fl Universe be given up to the silence, the H darkness and the cold? Jfl |