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. 

 "There it comes!" 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 



267 



