36 SKETCHES OF CREATION. 



CHAPTER IV. 



THE SOLAR SYSTEM IN A BLAZE. 



HAYING made a reconnoissance of the vast field which 

 lies before the geological observer, let us ascertain 

 what degree of interest maybe derived from a more atten- 

 tive survey. The ordeal by fire stands first in the order 

 of time. We go back, then, to the molten period of the 

 earth. We plunge into the depths of the past eternity, 

 and behold the terrestrial globe glowing with a fervent 

 heat. What a history to trace from that point of time 

 to this ! Continents clothed with verdure, and diversified 

 with mountain, hill, and dale — continents spread out upon 

 a thousand courses of solid masonry — are to be derived 

 from this germinal, incandescent mass. It requires an un- 

 usual effort of the imagination to leap from the scenes of a 

 modern landscape to an adequate conception of a naked, 

 tenantless, and molten orb, enveloped in an atmosphere of 

 deadly elements, and totally unlike the present earth save 

 in its spherical form and its yearly journey round the sun. 

 To the eye of imagination, the forests must vanish in 

 smoke; the "cloud-capped towers and gorgeous palaces" 

 of man must crumble to clay, and sand, and loam; man 

 and all living things must desert the earth, and leave it in 

 the motionless and stagnant silence of death ; the rivers 

 must dry up in their channels ; the ocean must change to 

 vapor, and flee to the upper limits of the air ; the rock- 

 ribbed mountains must yield to the melting touch of fire; 

 and the rigid crust of the earth must dissolve into a yield- 

 ins; and obedient fluid. 



