406 SKETCHES OF CEEATIOX. 



of our race, as Mayer suggests, occupies consequently the 

 comparatively brief space during which the retarding and 

 accelerating tendencies neutralize each other. 



These are the determinations of exact science. Mathe- 

 matics have demonstrated that the cooling process which 

 geology affirms of the past is certainly in progress in the 

 present. It is immaterial how slow the process may be; 

 the ultimate total refrigeration of the earth is a result 

 which time will accomplish. Time, I say, since after the 

 work is completed eternity will stretch onward as fresh, 

 and inexhaustible, and limitless as when the career of plan- 

 etary matter began. 



This earth, to which our life-long round of labor and care 

 is limited by an inexorable decree, was once a self-luminous 

 orb. Far away in space, where Sirius was gleaming with 

 his silver, or, perchance, his ruddy light, dwelt intelligent 

 beings upon a planet which had already attained a habita- 

 ble condition. From that abode the astronomer found 

 means to contemplate the fiery globe that was destined to 

 become the dwelling-place of man. Centuries of centuries 

 later, the astronomer upon that distant orb noted the dis- 

 appearance of a star upon which his predecessors had taken 

 observations. Our planet had become opaque. Mists had 

 gathered about it, and the ocean had descended from the 

 clouds. Never more has this once resplendent orb greeted 

 the eye of the astronomer of other systems ; and while 

 now the annals of his science perpetuate the memory of a 

 lost star, that star first becomes a reality to conscious man. 

 But our occupancy of the terrestrial globe is only a phase 

 as evanescent as the self-luminous stage. While we build 

 our cities and recount the achievements of a few genera- 

 tions past, this globe of matter hurries onward in its des- 

 tined career as rapidly as a million years ago, when mere- 

 ly preparing for the occupancy of Adam's race. Every 



