Beacon Lights of History, Volume 3 part 2: Renaissance and ReformationLord, John
History
Beacon Lights of History, Volume 3 part 2: Renaissance and Reformation
Lord, John
History
but of "eternal Providence," and "Eden with surpassing glory
crowned," and "our first parents," and of "salvation," "goodness
infinite," of "wisdom," which when known we need no higher though
all the stars we know by name,--
"All secrets of the deep, all Nature's works,
Or works of God in heaven, or air, or sea."
And yet, thou stricken observer of the heavenly bodies! hadst thou
but known what marvels would be revealed by the power of thy
wondrous instrument after thou should'st be laid lifeless and cold
beneath the marble floor of Sante Croce, at the age of seventy-
eight, without a monument (although blessed on his death-bed by
Pope Urban), having died a prisoner of the Inquisition, yet not
without having rendered to astronomical science services of utmost
value,--even thou might have died rejoicing, as one of the great
benefactors of the world. And thy discoveries shall be forever
held in gratitude; they shall herald others of even greater
importance. Newton shall prove that the different planets are
attracted to the sun in the inverse ratio of the squares of their
distances; that the earth has a force on the moon identical with
the force of gravity, and that all celestial bodies, to the utmost
boundaries of space, mutually attract each other; that all
particles of matter are governed by the same law,--the great law of
gravitation, by which "astronomy," in the language of Whewell,
"passed from boyhood to manhood, and by which law the great
discoverer added more to the realm of science than any man before
or since his day." And after Newton shall pass away, honored and
lamented, and be buried with almost royal pomp in the vaults of
Westminster, Halley and other mathematicians shall construct lunar
tables, by which longitude shall be accurately measured on the
pathless ocean. Lagrange and Laplace shall apply the Newtonian
theory to determine the secular inequalities of celestial motion;
they shall weigh absolutely the amount of matter in the planets;
they shall show how far their orbits deviate from circles; and they
shall enumerate the cycles of changes detected in the circuit of
the moon. Clairaut shall remove the perplexity occasioned by the
seeming discrepancy between the observed and computed motions of
the moon's perigee. Halley shall demonstrate the importance of
observations of the transit of Venus as the only certain way of
obtaining the sun's parallax, and hence the distance of the sun
from the earth; he shall predict the return of that mysterious body
which we call a comet. Herschel shall construct a telescope which
magnifies two thousand times, and add another planet to our system
beyond the mighty orb of Saturn. Romer shall estimate the velocity
of light from the eclipses of Jupiter's satellites. Bessell shall
pass the impassable gulf of space and measure the distance of some
of the fixed stars, although such is the immeasurable space between
the earth and those distant suns that the parallax of only about
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