402 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



impossible to eradicate them. The actual work of regenerating the world as a 

 matter of fact has been wonderfully slow, and missionaries are beginning the 

 work over again in the same places where the gospel was first preached. A rail- 

 road can be pushed through a mountain range, but it is difficult to push it over 

 a continent covered with mountain ranges. The mechanical powers seem to be 

 in the infancy of their development. We are just beginning to see the fore-gleams 

 of those things which are to illuminate the world. And yet we have the promise 

 in our sacred books of the Golden Age. 



If this argument is met by conflicting interpretations of prophecy we simply 

 answer that prophecy is not read forward but backward. "And now I have 

 told you before it come to pass," says the Great Teacher, "that when it is come 

 to pass ye might believe." It is true that coming events cast their shadows be- 

 fore, for " When the branch of the fig-tree is tender and putteth forth leaves, we 

 know that summer is nigh." To deny that we have fore-gleams of great events 

 would be to deny the very validity of the argument of the present article. But 

 the interpretation of prophecy is the most uncertain portion of hermeneutics. 

 If a day is a year, as many suppose, a thousand years would be three hundred 

 and sixty-five thousand years for the millennium, which probably is nearer the 

 truth. We cannot see how it is possible to reconcile with infinite benevolence 

 the advent of the Son of Man, unless the Logos was incarnated as near the be- 

 ginning of human history as possible, as soon as all things were ready. We may 

 not be able to measure the distance of a fixed star from the Earth, as the diameter 

 of the Earth's orbit gives no sensible parallax. So the final catastrophe is so re- 

 mote that the parallax seems to be formed pf lines that run out almost parallel 

 through the coming ages. Modern astronomy has revealed to us the immensity 

 of space. Two thousand nebulse, like our Milky-Way, which contains a hundred 

 million suns with all their mighty trains, probably a thousand million worlds, 

 have been catalogued, and as our telescopes are increased in power new nebulae 

 keep trooping up out of the misty depths of space. In a similar way geology is 

 revealing to us the immensity of time. As the infinitudes of time break over 

 the student of science, of the present period, he seems to be launched on an al- 

 most bourdless ocean into which flow the confluent streams of all the past ages. 

 He sees deep currents all around him which bear him onward beneath brighter 

 skies and into fairer climes. In his onward course new constellations arise from 

 the mighty ocean, and a deeper glow tinges the cerulean heavens. He hears in- 

 spiring voices jDy day and voices by night from the sounding sea. All things 

 around him and above him are full of marvels, but that which awes him most is 

 the awful grandeur of the limitless ocean on which he is voyaging, for he hears 

 no waves breaking on the distant shores. 



If the argument of this article is w^ll founded this subject has important ap- 

 plications in every-day life : 



I. It enlarges our view of the creation, of the importance of man in the 

 divine economy, and exalts our conceptions of the Creator. 



