ons for patents based on this idea of perpetual motion that
they have long since refused to issue any such patent where this
principle is the manifest object; and I suppose the governments of other
countries have taken a similar stand. And why? Because they know that
energy cannot now be created by any device, no matter how ingenious; and
they refuse to become a party to any scheme that seems to imply that
this modern creation of energy is within the bounds of possibility.

Yet what is all this but a confirmation of the declaration long ago made
that "the works were finished from the foundation of the world" (Heb.
4:3)? True, the energy we are constantly employing seems to come to us
from the sun; but we must remember that the sun and its family of the
solar system, including the earth, were all made at the same time, that
they are bound together as parts of an indissoluble whole. Accordingly,
no one can say that the total amount of energy called into existence at
the creation of our solar system is being added to at the present time.
At any rate, so far as modern science can judge of the matter, the total
amount of energy available for our world _is a fixed quantity_; and its
amount and the terms on which it was to be available for our use were
fixed or finished "from the foundation of the world." While it is a very
significant fact in this connection that with all the multiform
speculations which have been made as to the physical source of the sun's
heat, no explanation wholly satisfactory has yet been made as to how
this energy coming to us from the sun is constantly replenished or
maintained.

II

The desire to find a material cause for all phenomena is instinctive in
the human mind, and has proved the chief impetus in a thousand
discoveries. And yet, unless we are on our guard, it is liable to be a
source of real error whenever we are dealing with the deeper problems of
thought. For when we have pushed our way into the inner sanctuary of any
department of nature, we almost invariably come upon a deep chasm that
we can pass over only by building a bridge of words. Some of these
verbal bridges have been decorated with very dignified names, such as
"the luminiferous ether," "gravity," "chemical affinity"; and when we
have shifted from the one side of the chasm to the other we impose upon
the credulity of the public (and even ourselves) by giving out the
impression that these words represent the real objective brid