SOUNDINGS 



nated; the current has cleared and purified as it 

 advanced; the dragons and monsters have nearly- 

 disappeared; the reptiles have receded and left the 

 fowl and birds; the saurians are gone, and in their 

 stead we have the more comely and useful forms of 

 mammalian life. From our human point of view — 

 and we can have no other — creation has refined. 

 The tide of life is still like a river that has its noi- 

 some and unlovely margins, but how has it cleared 

 and sweetened since Permian and Jurassic times! 

 The scale of animal life has changed, less bone and 

 muscle and more nerve and brains, less emphasis 

 laid upon size and more upon wit. Only in the in- 

 sect world are the dragons and monsters, and the 

 carnival of blood and slaughter, repeated. In the 

 shade of a summer tree, or in a clover-field, one may 

 see minute creatures pursuing or devouring one 

 another which, if enough times magnified, would 

 rival any of the dragons of the prime. 



XV. FAITH FOUNDED UPON A ROCK 

 I 



Probably that overwhelming calamity, the World 

 War, set more good people adrift upon the sea of 

 religious doubt and skepticism than all the ac- 

 cumulated evils of the past ten centuries. Men were 

 everywhere outspoken in their want of faith in the 

 Providence in which they had so long trusted. I 

 heard of an English clergyman who declared that 



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