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Space Travel for Beginners
by John Gill
When he moved to the mountains of Andalucia in 1999, the first housewarming present John Gill received was a telescope. While small - a three-inch aperture reflector, nicknamed Cleo, after its donor - it rekindled a childhood fascination with astronomy and set him on a journey into both space and time. From a rooftop terrace half a mile above sea level in the Serrania de Ronda mountains, he began locally, with the Moon, but soon found himself at the limits of the solar system. With Cleo's reach failing, he hitched aboard a variety of other craft - from the Royal Observatory at Greenwich to the Hubble Space Telescope, via Mount Palomar and the SETI project - on a journey to the edge of space, where 'lookback time', the time light takes to reach Earth from astronomical objects, stretches back some 13.666 billion light years (and counting...), the assumed age of the known universe. Away from his telescope, he also immersed himself in his new community, not least by becoming a music columnist - in Spanish - on a small underground arts magazine, discovering an entirely different Spain to the culture, often driven by expatriates, to be found forty miles away on the Costa del Sol. He interlaces his stop-offs at the way stations to the stars with sideways observations on a modern society coming to terms with a feudal past in a young democracy barely thirty years old. Space Travel for Beginners follows on from his earlier The Stars Over Paxos, about a year on a Greek island armed only with binoculars and a clifftop launchpad barely one hundred feet above the Ionian Sea. Like his hero, Italo Calvino's Mr. Palomar, it is concerned with the near and the far, the big and the small, the present, the future and the deep past.
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Published May 5th 2010 by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
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John Gill (1697 - 1771)
Was an English Baptist pastor, biblical scholar, and theologian who held to a firm Calvinistic soteriology. Born in Kettering, Northamptonshire, he attended Kettering Grammar School where he mastered the Latin classics and learned Greek by age 11. He continued self-study in everything from logic to Hebrew, his love for the latter remaining throughout his life.His first pastoral work was as an intern assisting John Davis at Higham Ferrers in 1718 at age 21. He became pastor at the Strict Baptist church at Goat Yard Chapel, Horsleydown, Southwark in 1719. His pastorate lasted 51 years. In 1757 his congregation needed larger premises and moved to a Carter Lane, St. Olave's Street, Southwark. This Baptist church was once pastored by Benjamin Keach and would later become the New Park Street Chapel and then the Metropolitan Tabernacle pastored by Charles Spurgeon. During Gill's ministry, the church strongly supported the preaching of George Whitefield at nearby Kennington Common.
John Gill was an English Baptist, biblical scholar, "Jehovist", and held to a staunch Calvinistic Soteriology. Born in Kettering, Northamptonshire, he attended Kettering Grammar School where he mastered the Latin classics and learned Greek by age 11. He continued self-study in everything from logic to Hebrew, his love for the latter remaining throughout his life.
At the age of about 12, Gill heard a sermon from his pastor, William Wallis, on the text, "And the Lord called unto Adam, and said unto him, where art thou?" (Genesis 3:9). The message stayed with Gill and eventually led to his conversion. It was not until seven years later that he made a public profession when he was 18.
His first pastoral work was as an intern assisting John Davis at Higham Ferrers in 1718 at age 21. He became pastor at the Strict Baptist church at Goat Yard Chapel, Horsleydown, Southwark in 1719. His pastorate lasted 51 years. In 1757 his congregation needed larger premises and moved to a Carter Lane, St. Olave’s Street, Southwark. This Baptist church was once pastored by Benjamin Keach and would later become the New Park Street Chapel and then the Metropolitan Tabernacle pastored by Charles Spurgeon.
In 1748, Gill was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity by the University of Aberdeen. He was a profound scholar and a prolific author, publishing many works.
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