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The Open Court of Inquiry. The Editor
Editor Flaming Sword:—When at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo last October, I visited the Koreshan Exhibit. I obtained some papers, also a copy of The Flaming Sword, and discussed the matter of the hollow earth arch delusion with your representative. I also sent an eight-page letter to be forwarded if gone from Buffalo. To me the whole theory is as absurd as anything ever taught in China or India. (1) The boasted Tamarack mine experiment is all a delusion. It is explained by the lateral attraction of the sides of the shaft, as in a chimney. Outside the chimney the lines converge. (2) A perpendicular from a vertical or radial line does not point below the horizon—it only seems to do so, just as the railroad rails seem to meet in the distance. Use a 5,000-power telescope with spider-lines, 100 feet elevation, and the line will strike the curve of the earth in 15 miles. (3) If this theory were true we could, at midnight, see the coolies mid-heaven, with the Lick telescope. (4) But the clincher is this: How could the sun ever cast the earth’s shadow on the full moon if the sun and moon are both inside the earth? Please solve the moon’s eclipse in accordance with the Koreshan theory.—Rev. S. E., Pastor M. E. Church, Marion, N. Y.
(1) The fact stands out boldly enough, that the plumb-lines suspended in the Tamarack mine diverge downwards; there is certainly no delusion about the fact itself—and it is obviously in harmony with all the experiments which have been conducted in demonstration of the earth’s concavity. We have been in the field of demonstration to a considerable extent, and have viewed many things that are not to be explained away by a few lines on a postal card. The men who conducted the Tamarack mine experiments, though well informed in modern science, have hesitated to formulate a theory of explanation; they are puzzled, and, just as they should do, they have decided to repeat the experiments on a much larger scale. Let our opponents now decide to what extent the plumb-bobs were influenced by lateral attraction, and deduct the angle of deviation from the downward divergence of the two plumb-lines proposed to be suspended 3,200 feet apart, where the difference will amount to over 8 inches,—and then explain the results if they can!
Newton held that “at any point within a hollow, homogeneous spherical shell, gravity is zero;” the attraction would balance in all directions. Hence, Prof. Young concludes that if we go down into a mine, the effect on gravity is the same in all directions. But a clergyman finds a loop-hole out of harmony with the system to which he holds, because the facts of experiment are found to be contrary to it. In reference to lines suspended in and near chimneys, we should be glad to be placed in possession of the facts of such experiments. Where were the experiments performed? What was the size and height of the chimney? How long were the plumb-lines? And what means were employed to ascertain to what extent the plumb-lines deviated from the true perpendicular?
(2) The sea horizon observed through a leveled transit instrument, from an elevation of 100 feet, appears to be about 9.5' below the cross-hair. A horizontal at right angles to a perpendicular gravic ray does not even appear, when visually extended, to point below the horizon, and we have never claimed that it would. We do claim most emphatically, however, that a horizontal at any given point, at any elevation, extended in two directions as an absolutely straight or air-line,—not a visual line,—will be a chord of arc related to the concave surface. In the Koreshan Geodetic Survey, optical factors were not employed—that is, the Koreshan Air-Line was not surveyed by optical instruments—until near the end of the survey, where the surveyed line, in its approach to the concave arc, sustained an angle of about 3' to the horizontal. From that point, the cross-hair in a telescope with its axis placed coincidental with the line mechanically surveyed, fell below the horizon. The sea horizon from an elevation of 100 feet, to the naked eye, is about 12 miles distant; the telescopic horizon from same elevation, ranges from 15 to 30 miles, according to the condition of the atmosphere.
(3) As well say that, if the Koreshan theory be true, the bottom of the Pacific ocean 1,000 miles distant should be seen by means of the Lick telescope. Refraction is convenient to our opponents when the facts of our observations are presented to them; but they forget all principles of refraction when they think of seeing across the hollow globe. Water has a specific index of refraction; so has air, and so has hydrogen, or any other atmospheric substance. The greater the difference of density, the greater the refraction. The refraction of a visual ray is so great at the junction of the atmosphere and the sea of hydrogen above us, that all view of objects on the other side of the hollow sphere is rendered impossible.
(4) If it were known to be a positive fact, that an eclipse of the moon is caused by the earth coming in line between the sun and moon, then, of course, the conclusion would be inevitable that the earth’s shadow is the cause of lunar eclipses. It so happens, however, that such a relation of the sun, earth, and moon is only a theory, an hypothesis, devised to explain how the moon is eclipsed. We do not endeavor to show that the hollow globe could ever come between the sun and the moon. We have made it our business to not only become familiar with the facts of eclipse phenomena, but also the cause of them. Eclipses occur on the line of the ecliptic. The moon is a reflex of the earth itself, by virtue of the ascent of levic energies, which are as effective in the formation of an image of the earth in the sky, as are the energies and substances utilized in the production of pictures on the camera-plate. The full moon is visible because the circuit of electromagnetic energies is normally closed; when this circuit is opened by a dark mercurial disc crossing the ecliptic in the earth, the substances which make the moon visible are cut off or eclipsed, and the moon swoons in accordance with the meaning of the word eclipse.
We have explained the subject of the eclipses so many times in the past in this and other Departments of The Flaming Sword, that we cannot enter into details at this time. However, if the reverend gentleman desires a fuller explanation, and will so advise us, we will take pleasure in sending him copies of our publication containing the Koreshan solution of the moon’s eclipses.
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Transcribed from the original periodical for private study. This is a source-faithful reproduction and is not a publication decision. The claims remain those of The Flaming Sword.
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