REMOTENESS OF THE FINAL CATASTROPHE. 401 



ture, and put enough coal in the basement to last half a century, and then delib- 

 erately destroy his house the next day, would he be considered a wise man? 

 Will He who made the house in which we live show less wisdom ? 



There are certain movements in the solar system which by a species of ana- 

 logical reasoning have left a deep impression on thoughtful minds. The force of 

 this logic is derived from the analogical relation of one part to another or to the 

 whole. In the light of this method of reasoning there is a deep significance in 

 the slow movements of the solar system. The pole of the equinoctial, for exam- 

 ple has a slow movement around the pole of the ecliptic completing its orbit in 

 25,868 years. If we should find a clijonometer constructed of an unknown sub- 

 stance with a wheel that made one revolution in a thousand years we would nat-' 

 urally infer that that instrument was intended to run a long time. The Moon in its 

 orbit beats through different forms of the ellipse, requiring according to Professor 

 Mitchell, five or six million years to complete its circuit. If we found another 

 wheel in the chronometer just spoken of which made a revolution in a million 

 years our conception of the time the instrument was intended to run would be 

 proportionately enlarged, and the whole instrument would be judged by the slower 

 movement of the wheel. It is conceded that the whole solar system has a movement 

 in spaces, a movement of great velocity, but carried forward over such immense 

 space that thousands of years elapsed before the best astronomers detected it. 

 Now whatever relates to the solar system as a whole relates to the individual parts, 

 relates of course to the Earth. The argument tends to prove the permanency of 

 the solar system and of the Earth. And this permanency of the Earth resolves it- 

 self naturally into immense periods such as we find in geological history. And 

 as the Earth is carried forward with the solar system in its onward movement, 

 made sensible by the apparent opening and closing of stars in opposite portions 

 of the heavens, as these infinitudes of space break over us through which the 

 Earth circles in its onward flight who dare limit the corresponding times during 

 which it makes its passage ? Who can set bounds to the present period which gives 

 significance to all these immense cycles of revolution, and for which all forego- 

 ing periods have been merely preparatory ? 



The argument derived from the physical system might be elaborated, but 

 the whole tendency is in the direction of giving a great duration to the present 

 period. The drift of the moral argument is in the same direction. If we take 

 the human period and give it as great an antiquity as we please, and look at the 

 development of the human race we find it only in its infancy. When we speak 

 of the noontide glory of the nineteenth century, our language, stripped of hyper- 

 bole, means simply that some portions of the earth are lighter than others. The 

 great masses of populations of the globe still lie in the grossest degradation and 

 darkness. When will the moral regenefation of the populations of the world be 

 accomplished ? The difficlilties in the way are almost insuperable when we con- 

 sider the false philosophies, false religions, the spirit of caste, different languages, 

 hostile governments, polygamy and a multitude of social evils, things whose roots 

 have gone way down into the hearts of the nations so deep that it seems almost 



