SELF-CONFIDENCE 249I have read the Bible very carefully, some parts of it many times,
and I am convinced that it contains no account of any alleged miracle
that has not been more than matched in our times, in the open light
of science. Moreover, these modern day miracles are subject to analysis
and proof Any child of average intelligence, above the age of twelve
years, may understand the miracles of today.
The Greatest oj All Miracles Is Faith
This is a wonderful age. It is an age of provable miracles. These are the
modern miracles that have impressed me most:
The miracle which Edison performed when, after thousands of
temporary failures, he wrested from Nature the secret by which the
sound of the human voice may be recorded on a wax record and re-
produced perfectly. That miracle was wrought through Edison's faith. He
had no precedent to guide him. No other person had ever performed
such a miracle.
One of the strange things about this miracle is that Edison began
at the very outset to experiment with the rudimentary principle and
the mechanical apparatus through which the talking machine {audio
recorder and playback} was later revealed. The principle was vibration and
the apparatus was a tube made of wax which revolved on a cylinder that
contacted the point of a needle. Nothing but faith could have enabled
Edison to have begun so near the source of the secret that he sought,
and nothing but faith could have given him the persistence to stick to
his experiments through more than ten thousand failures.
It was faith that enabled Edison to concentrate his mind on the
task which led him through many thousand failures before he created
the incandescent lamp with which he harnessed the energy known as
electricity and made it serve to light the world.
It was faith that prompted Edison to continue his experiments
with the moving-picture machine {camera and projector} until he made it