Radio-activity is uninfluenced by external conditions; hence we are thus far unable to control it.  Nothing that is known will effect the transmutation of one element into another.  It is spontaneous and uncontrollable.  May not life be spontaneous in the same sense?

The release of the energy associated with the structure of the atoms is not available by any of our mechanical appliances.  The process of radio-activity involves the expulsion of atoms of helium with a velocity three hundred times greater than that ever previously known for any material mass or particle, and this power we are incompetent to use.  The atoms remain unchanged amid the heat and pressure of the laboratory of nature.  Iron and oxygen and so forth remain the same in the sun as here on the earth.

Science strips gross matter of its grossness.  When it is done with it, it is no longer the obstructive something we know and handle; it is reduced to pure energy—­the line between it and spirit does not exist.  We have found that bodies are opaque only to certain rays; the X-ray sees through this too too solid flesh.  Bodies are ponderable only to our dull senses; to a finer hand than this the door or the wall might offer no obstruction; a finer eye than this might see the emanations from the living body; a finer ear might hear the clash of electrons in the air.  Who can doubt, in view of what we already know, that forces and influences from out the heavens above, and from the earth beneath, that are beyond our ken, play upon us constantly?

The final mystery of life is no doubt involved in conditions and forces that are quite outside of or beyond our conscious life activities, in forces that play about us and upon and through us, that we know not of, because a knowledge of them is not necessary to our well-being.  “Our eye takes in only an octave of the vibrations we call light,” because no more is necessary for our action or our dealing with things.  The invisible rays of the spectrum are potent, but they are beyond the ken of our senses.  There are sounds or sound vibrations that we do not hear; our sense of touch cannot recognize a gossamer, or the gentler air movements.

I began with the contemplation of the beauty and terror of the thunderbolt—­“God’s autograph,” as one of our poets (Joel Benton) said, “written upon the sky.”  Let me end with an allusion to another aspect of the storm that has no terror in it—­the bow in the clouds:  a sudden apparition, a cosmic phenomenon no less wonderful and startling than the lightning’s flash.  The storm with terror and threatened destruction on one side of it, and peace and promise on the other!  The bow appears like a miracle, but it is a commonplace of nature; unstable as life, and beautiful as youth.  The raindrops are not changed, the light is not changed, the laws of the storms are not changed; and yet, behold this wonder!

But all these strange and beautiful phenomena springing up in a world of inert matter are but faint symbols of the mystery and the miracle of the change of matter from the non-living to the living, from the elements in the clod to the same elements in the brain and heart of man.