OF THE SEA AND LAND. 53 



rivers in transporting the fragments of rocks from 

 higher to lower levels, the great result is, that the 

 mountains tend continually to the plains, and, ulti- 

 mately, to the sea, thence never to return. If these 

 actions constitute an intricate series, of which we see 

 but a small portion, yet, from their accumulated ef- 

 fects, they who have imagined the beginning, may also 

 indulge themselves in predicting the end. As the ge- 

 neral declivity diminishes, so does the ratio of destruc- 

 tion ; and thus has it continued to diminish from the 

 moment when the rivers first began to flow. But as 

 the inequalities of the earth waste away, so will ages 

 be hereafter required to do that for which years once 

 sufficed. Yet we may still imagine the ultimate ratio ; 

 that point at which the forces of destruction and those 

 of resistance shall be balanced. This is the specu- 

 lative period at which the earth will become a plain, 

 when the altitude of the land will scarcely exceed that 

 of the sea, and the channels of rivers shall refuse to 

 conduct their waters. Offensive marshes and arid 

 sands will then take the place of this fair variety of hill 

 ' and dale, and the last chaos will be worse than the 

 first. 



This is the natural death of that earth which we 

 inhabit; a lingering decay that must strike with a 

 death equally lingering, the races of vegetables and 

 animals which now possess it. But it is an event to 

 be contemplated only by the imagination. We have 

 no reason to look forward to what rests on a partial 

 view of this-beautiful system; a system displaying the 

 goodness, not less than the wisdom of its Author; 

 teaching us how He educes good from evil, how He 

 brings order out of destruction. We ought not to believe 

 that such evil was within His plan; and if we thus 

 reason on the old a^e and decay of the earth, so do we 



