192 LIFE HISTORY OF COAL. 



only the period of its prime, life ? Has not the earth lived from 

 its birth, and will it not live till it ceases to be an earth ? 



Every planet in our solar system has had a beginning and will 

 have an end, and somewhere between these two events every 

 planet has passed or will pass through a life-phase similar to 

 that which we know here, or logic finds no place in the heavens 

 and analogy is there a snare. 



The inevitable deduction from all this is, that if we limit life 

 to the animal and vegetable worlds we are assuming the work 

 of Nature to be purposeless through long seons of time, both 

 before and after this recognized life period, and over vast fields 

 of space. Is it not more reasonable that life other than vege- 

 table and animal does exist, and makes its home on the earth 

 and elsewhere in due course, — some, perhaps, from a human 

 , point of view lower in grade, some higher, rising as thr jugh that 

 of angel or archangel to culminate in God himself ? 



