Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 84:333 (Jan 1927)
Article: The Romance Of The Invisible
Author: C. Norman Bartlett

BSac 84:333 (Jan 1927) p. 33

The Romance Of The Invisible

C. Norman Bartlett

From earliest times man has speculated upon the nature of the universe. We smile at many of the crude superstitions of the ancients regarding the origin of things and the general framework of creation. And how wild seem the conclusions reached by even the greatest thinkers of the past.

The average person has but the faintest conception of what matter really is. The jargon of science means little or nothing to him. What he sees and hears and tastes and smells and feels constitute for him the sum and substance of physical reality. And it is not to be denied that through our five senses we do learn enough about our material environment for the ordinary pursuits of life.

And yet our physical senses are not to be trusted too far. They often deceive us. They fool us with all sorts of illusions. We need continually to guard against being tricked by them. But not only do our senses give us distorted and erroneous views of things if they are relied upon too implicitly; they are also too weak to do much more than skim the surface of physical reality. The senses of many of the lower animals are much sharper than ours. Compare our keenness of vision, for example, with that of an eagle; or our smelling powers with those of a bloodhound. And surely we do not need to be reminded that there are gradations in tangible, audible, and visible reality too exquisitely refined for our senses to detect.

But the genius of man has invented the most wonderful kinds of instruments to reenforce his weak physical senses. The telescope that sweeps the heavens and brings into view millions of stars invisible to the naked eye, the microscope that enables us to look at the infinitesimal, the audiphone that makes it possible to hear the roaring rustle of the fuzz on the wings of a butterfly, the bolometer that records heat to the millionth of a degree, the spectroscope that detects a quantity of matter a million times smaller

BSac 84:333 (Jan 1927) p. 34

than the amount of lead used in writing the word “cat,” the electroscope that is a million times more sensitive than the spectroscope—these are but a few of the amazingly delicate instruments used in scientific research. The trained scientist works with physical senses made a billionfold more sensitive by all kinds of remarkable mechanical devices.

But the infinitesimals brought to light by all these wonderful instruments are immensities in comparison with the molecules, atoms and electrons that the modern man of science deals with as familiarly as you and I finger the loose change in our pockets, when we are not in financially straitened circumstances. For years it was thought that the atom was the smal...