|
notion that they can therein acquire a more efficient classic, scientific or business education than can be attained in Catholic colleges. Even if such education be attained only in such institutions should not the great danger of the loss of the immortal souls of their children deter them from such a course?
But such is not the fact. From the dawn of Christianity down to the present time - and now probably more than ever - the greatest minds, the greatest and most learned educators, scientists, professional men, inventors, navigators, physicians, and men and women in every other sphere of human activity, to say nothing of the ministry of Heaven, have been of the Catholic faith. Within the past fifty years Abbe Secchi, a noted French scientist has invented a wonderful and delicately constructed instrument to determine the duration, violence and the direction of distubance of earthquakes.
Recently Pere Ricard (Father Richard), astronomer of the Catholic college of Santa Clara, California, made the important announcement that he had discovered what he called great maelstroms on the Sun, that is great bodies of dark matter ejected from the sphere of that lunminary and revolving around with cyclonic force. He has made charts of the Sun, dividing it into two hemispheres by an equatorial line. The sun-spots - for such they are - on the northern hemisphere of the Sun revolve in a direction opposite to that of the movement of the hands of a clock; and those on the southern hemisphere gyrate with the direction with the hands of the clock. He has indicated a line passing through the center of the Earth, and also a line passing through the center of each of the planets and the Sun. He has also found that cyclones and storms on the Earth and the other planets, are caused by the gyrations of these great maelstroms; and also that earthquakes are caused by them and these as well as storms he is able to forecast, but not, as yet, the location in which the earthquakes are likely to occur. He has taken almost 3,000 observations of these phenomena and has accurately prognosticated every storm that has occurred on the Pacific coast for the past ten years. So greatly are his invaluable services esteemed by the people of California that they affectionately call him Pere Rain.
|
