Science and the Alchemist’s Dream
The alchemist's dream was that base metals could be transmuted into gold, and Prof. Garrett P. Serviss tells us that some of the foremost English investigators of the wonderful new phenomenon of radioactivity are almost on the point of staking their scientific reputation upon the assertion that gold and silver are products of the gradual atomic disintegration of the baser metals such as lead and copper. “This,” says Prof. Serviss, “as far as it goes, is an amazing confirmation of the dreams of the ancient alchemists, at which the learned world has been laughing for some centuries.” And he thinks that the experiments, so far as they have gone, all point to the probability that these wonderful transformations really do occur in nature. Thus much for the wisdom of the modern scientist who has ridiculed for so long the old alchemists’ dreams. May not some of our scientific religious men also learn that God’s old way of righteousness, the Ten Commandments, and the means of transmuting those commandments into character through the atonement of Jesus Christ, is, after all, the true science of humanity?