THE GOSPEL OF NATURE 



has so often taken possession of whole communities, 

 as if a world that has been an eternity in forming 

 could end in a day, or on the striking of the clock! 

 It is not many years since a college professor pub 

 lished a book figuring out, from some old historical 

 documents and predictions, just the year in which 

 the great mundane show would break up. When I 

 was a small boy at school in the early forties, during 

 the Millerite excitement about the approaching end 

 of all mundane things, I remember, on the day 

 when the momentous event was expected to take 

 place, how the larger school-girls were thrown into 

 a great state of alarm and agitation by a thunder 

 cloud that let down a curtain of rain, blotting out 

 the mountain on the opposite side of the valley. 

 &quot;There it comes!&quot; they said, and their tears flowed 

 copiously. I remember that I did not share their 

 fears, but watched the cloud, curious as to what the 

 end of the world would be like. I cannot brag, as 

 Thoreau did, when he said he would not go around 

 the corner to see the world blow up. I am quite sure 

 my curiosity would get the better of me and that I 

 should go, even at this late day. Or think of the 

 more harmless obsession of many good people about 

 the second coming of Christ, or about the resurrec 

 tion of the physical body when the last trumpet 

 shall sound. A little natural knowledge ought to be 

 fatal to all such notions. Natural knowledge shows 

 us how transient and insignificant we are, and how 

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