IF a man had declared eighty years ago that the day would come when conversation would be maintained between England and America, he would have been laughed at. And yet for forty years it has been an accomplished fact by means of the electric cable. But now a still more wonderful means of communication has been established across the Atlantic Ocean, in which no cable is used.
In a short time we shall probably be able to converse with any part of the world without any wires or cables; all that will be necessary will be an electrical instrument here, and a similar instrument at the place with which it is desired to communicate.
But if there is no wire connecting the two instruments, how is it done? To put it in one word, it is done by sympathy.
It is well known that if a violin and a piano be in the same room, and if they be tuned to each other, as if about to be used in a duet, a note sounded on the piano will find a response in the violin that is to say, if you strike a note on the piano and put your ear to the violin, you will find that it is producing the same note, although no one is touching the instrument.
But this will not occur unless both instruments are in exact tune with each other. I remember preaching in a certain church, and all the time that I was speaking I could hear a kind of echo of my voice close to me, and which I at last discovered proceeded from the pulpit gas lamp.
The note of the glass globe of the lamp happened to be the same pitch as that of my voice, and accordingly, the globe and my voice being in sympathy, the sound of my voice was taken up and repeated by the glass globe.
And now we find that if an electrical instrument is put in tune or harmony with another instrument, you may separate them by thousands of miles, and yet the vibration of the one will be repeated by the other, because of the sympathy there is between them, and thus you get wireless telegraphy.
Suppose you have three instruments one in London, one in Bombay, and one in New York and all three in perfect tune with each other, then whatever vibration is made by one will be repeated by the others. But if one instrument is not in complete harmony with the others, it will not answer for want of being in sympathy.
Is not this a very apt illustration of prayer? God is in heaven, and we are on earth. Do we wish to hold communication with God? Do we wish our words to reach heaven? Then, first of all, our hearts must be in tune with God’s heart.
The man who prayed, “God, I thank Thee I am not as other men are,” had a heart filled with pride, a heart utterly out of tune with God, who hates pride, and so his prayer never reached heaven.
But the other man, who cried, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner,” had his heart in harmony with God. Not only did that man’s prayer reach heaven, but his own heart was also in the condition to receive God’s answer of pardon.
OCTAVIUS WALTON.