With the Children on Sundays: Through Eye-Gate and Ear-Gate into the City of Child-SoulStall, Sylvanus
Religion
With the Children on Sundays: Through Eye-Gate and Ear-Gate into the City of Child-Soul
Stall, Sylvanus
Children -- Religious life; Children's sermons; Moral education
Now, if you take this spy-glass and look at the stars, it will not make
them appear any larger than they appear to the eye without the
spy-glass. It will assist the eye when I look at the moon or the
planets, but not at the stars which are so much further removed from the
earth than the moon and the planets. Astronomers have desired something
larger and more satisfactory, and so have made the great telescopes,
which are simply large spy-glasses. The telescope and the spy-glass, and
the field-glasses, are all imitations of the human eye; the same as many
of our greatest inventions are only copies of that which God has already
created, and which we have but feebly imitated. The eye is a more
wonderful instrument than even the largest telescopes which have ever
been made.
If you desired to look through a telescope at one of the stars or a
planet, or the moon, you would have considerable difficulty in directing
it so as to be able to see the desired object. Even with this small
spy-glass it is very difficult so to direct it as to find a particular
star in the heavens at night. It is not easy, even to find a distant
object upon the earth. But with these wonderful eyes, with which God has
endowed us, you and I can look almost instantly from one star to any
other star, and find instantly upon the earth any object which is
distinctly pointed out to us. It takes a very experienced person
successfully to operate a telescope, but the smallest child can direct
and control and use his own eyes successfully.
The large telescopes have to be turned and adjusted by machinery, and
when it is desired to direct them from one star to another star on the
opposite side of the heavens, they even have to turn around the entire
roof or dome of the observatory. But you and I do not need any ponderous
machinery to adjust our eyes, or to turn them about in order to look in
a different direction. We can easily turn our heads by bending our
necks, or, if necessary, we can turn our entire body around and look in
an opposite direction. In looking from one object to another, our eyes
change their direction so quickly that we are not conscious of any
effort upon our own part.
[Illustration: Small Telescope.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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