202 COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 



are affected, though with inconceivable slowness, 

 by a force which must end by deranging them 

 altogether. It would therefore be rash to en- 

 deavour to establish any analogy between the 

 periods thus disclosed ; but we may observe that 

 they agree in this, that they reduce all things to 

 the general rule of finite duration. As all the 

 geological states of which we find evidence in 

 he present state of the earth, have had their 

 termination, so also the astronomical conditions 

 under which the revolutions of the earth itself 

 proceed, involve the necessity of a future cessa- 

 tion of these revolutions. 



The contemplative person may well be struck 

 by this universal law of the creation. We are in 

 the habit sometimes of contrasting the transient 

 destiny of man with the permanence of the 

 forests, the mountains, the ocean, with the 

 unwearied circuit of the sun. But this contrast 

 is a delusion of our own imagination : the differ- 

 ence is after all but one of degree. The forest 

 tree endures for its centuries and then decays ; 

 the mountains crumble and change, and perhaps 

 subside in some convulsion of nature ; the sea 

 retires, and the shore ceases to resound with the 

 ' everlasting' voice of the ocean : such reflections 

 have already crowded upon the mind of the 

 geologist ; and it now appears that the courses of 

 the heavens themselves are not exempt from the 

 universal law of decay ; that not only the rocks 

 and the mountains, but the sun and the moon 



