IV 
THROUGH THE EYES OF THE 
GEOLOGIST 
I 
OW habitually we go about over the surface 
of the earth, delving it or cultivating it or 
leveling it, without thinking that it has not always 
been as we now find it, that the mountains were not 
always mountains, nor the valleys always valleys, 
nor the plains always plains, nor the sand always 
sand, nor the clay always clay. Our experience goes 
but a little way in such matters. Such a thought 
takes us from human time to God’s time, from the 
horizon of place and years to the horizon of geologic 
ages. We go about our little affairs in the world, 
sowing and reaping and building and journeying, 
like children playing through the halls of their an- 
cestors, without pausing to ask how these things all 
came about. We do not reflect upon the age of our 
fields any more than we do upon the size of the globe 
under our feet: when we become curious about such 
matters and look upon the mountains as either old 
or young, or as the subjects of birth, growth, and 
decay, then we are unconscious geologists. It is to 
our interest in such things that geology appeals and 
it is this interest that it stimulates and guides. 
85 
