THE GENESIS OF WORLDS; 



Or, World Creations.* 



The New-World pioneers of the sixteenth century, when as 

 first comers they looked on the sea-worn shores and giant forests 

 of New England, had in reality no compelling reason for be- 

 lieving in the veritable old age of this new-found land. They 

 had no " first order of proof " that the shores were not recentl} 7 

 upheaved there for them to land upon, and with the growth of 

 the centuries on them for the purpose of testing the manhood 

 that was soon to reclaim them. But I think those sturdy adven- 

 turers, if they stopped at all to consider of scientific doubts, 

 were not long in deciding that the scene before them was con- 

 formable to the laws and processes of nature, and therefore 

 must have been the slow growth of time. 



In like manner, the geologist, looking into the bowels of the 

 earth and finding here and there the remains of a tree or a saur- 

 ian, presumes that they once lived and grew in the same locali- 

 ties, and were buried and petrified under the rock-grindings of 

 after-ages. But he really has no absolute proof of any such thing. 

 They may have been created in the fossil state and laid away in 

 the strata on the same day the earth was made. But I think 

 the scientist, knowing laws of nature by which, with suffi- 

 ciently long periods of time, all these geological results might 

 have been gradually brought about, is justified in believing that 

 they too were the slow product of nature and of time. 



So we, finding that the world has certainly at some time been 

 subjected to a heat at least sufficient to volatilize nearly every 



* Published in Popular Science Monthly, April, 1877. 



