THE GOSPEL OF NATURE 
has so often taken possession of whole communities, 
as if a world that has been an eternity in forming 
could end in a day, or on the striking of the clock! 
It is not many years since a college professor pub- 
lished a book figuring out, from some old historical 
documents and predictions, just the year in which 
the great mundane show would break up. When I 
was a small boy at school in the early forties, during 
the Millerite excitement about the approaching end 
of all mundane things, I remember, on the day 
when the momentous event was expected to take 
place, how the larger school-girls were thrown into 
a great state of alarm and agitation by a thunder- 
cloud that let down a curtain of rain, blotting out 
the mountain on the opposite side of the valley. 
“There it comes!”’ they said, and their tears flowed 
copiously. I remember that I did not share their 
fears, but watched the cloud, curious as to what the 
end of the world would be like. I cannot brag, as 
Thoreau did, when he said he would not go around 
the corner to see the world blow up. I am quite sure 
my curiosity would get the better of me and that I 
should go, even at this late day. Or think of the 
more harmless obsession of many good people about 
the second coming of Christ, or about the resurrec- 
tion of the physical body when the last trumpet 
shall sound. A little natural knowledge ought to be 
fatal to all such notions. Natural knowledge shows 
us how transient and insignificant we are, and how 
267 
