But
further and more accurate experiments have set this matter at rest, as
indeed might have been expected; for the law of gravitation itself is
not more immovably established in the make-up of the universe than this
magnificent law that energy cannot be created by any means which we call
natural.
In all ages there have been men who have spent their lives in the vain
effort to invent a machine out of which work could constantly be
obtained without the expenditure upon it of an equal amount of work. But
the United States patent office has got so tired of receiving
applications 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.
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