p. 41 | Marvels of the Atom

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jan 19, 1915

Marvels of the Atom

MEANS have been devised for ascertaining with some accuracy the actual weight of the atom. 647,987,350,000,000,000,000 are contained in a grain of hydrogen. A grain, by the way, does not differ much in weight from a grain of wheat. But this is not all. Each of these atoms of hydrogen is a system of electrons. A mass of 1,832 positive electrons forms a nucleus in the center, and around it four negative electrons revolve with inconceivable velocity. With the probe supplied by light rays of far shorter wave length than the violet, the shortest visible, it has been possible, as it were, to feel out the structure of crystals, and the exact arrangement of the atoms in many sorts has been found. Of course these things are not actually seen, as with a microscope, but their indications are very certain.

There have not yet been devised means for studying living matter on any such scale. But the microscope, with the aid of photography, has brought to view objects no larger than the 150,000th part of an inch; and among these, according to the article by Edgar Lucien Larkin from which these facts are taken, there are found living organisms. It is known also that smaller ones exist, and that all so far studied are not mere globules of a kind of substance, but differ within themselves through having parts.

In studying the electrons, the scientist may or may not be dealing with these very particles of substance which the Word spoke into existence in the beginning, and is still maintaining; but whether so or not, he must still confess that by such searching he can never hope to find out God, though He be not far from any one of us. “How small a portion do we hear of Him?” Every new discovery in the field of science but widens the borders of the unknown. Yet who can contemplate the marvelous permanency of order that is manifested in all things, from the least to the greatest, and doubt that the same One from which the least of them originated, has also shown His hand in their arrangement, whether it be in systems of worlds, or in tiny atoms, or still more clearly, in the maintenance of life!