180 
THE GEOLOGIST. 
the sun shone for ever in the backward Past ? Certainly not ! Will 
it liglit up for ever in the endless future the vast and glorious space 
its beams illimiine now ? Perhaps not. The sun may go out — it 
may be millions of years to come ere it does, but its light may some 
day be darkened. It is a long time to look forward to when tJiat will 
happen, we admit, and the race of man may pass away like the many 
life-races of the Past, long before the bright rays of that " glorious 
orb" begin to fade. But change is everywhere ; we see it in every- 
thing around us: we read the record of change everywhere and on 
everything in the Past. The first land, so far as we can make out, 
differed from our dry laud now ; the first plants diff'ered from those 
tliat clothe the dry laud row ; the first living creatures diff'ered from 
the animated beings around us. Pish, flesh, nor fowl put on the 
same bodies ; perhaps even air and ocean difier. How, then, were the 
planets weighed to a grain and forbidden to increase ? Were their 
distances measured ofi" to a millimetre, and the irrevocable order 
passed, " iS earer shalt tliou not approach, further shalt thou not recede 
from the burning sun"? For the sun was the edict passed, " Witliout 
increase or waste, burning shalt thou go on for ever and ever"? 
Such an edict would make the sun an eternal creator of force. And 
no one believes in creation except from God. Who but Pie, in the 
incomprehensible beginning of all things, created the first atom of 
force, and has gone on unceasingly multiplying force upon force ever 
since ? 
It is well even in this world now and then to go out of tlie beaten 
patlis and to explore new lands — if even the result be only to con- 
vince us of the value of the old ones. It is well, too, in science now 
and then to diverge on to the realms of speculation — if even only to 
attain a conviction of the accuracy of that which has been accepted. 
At one time we had too much of speculation and too little of facts, 
but in the advancing sciences of late, perhaps we have had too many 
facts and too few speculations. Bricklayers would make of bricks 
but a poor edifice if tlie architect had not imagined the building 
beforehand. AYe all know how Physical Geology, as a science, is 
looked at in the ordinary way ; and no one who looks closely at 
tlie picture presented for our acceptance as the portraiture of what 
was, what has been, and what has happened, but must think that 
the picture offered has many flaws. The artists Ciaim pre-Ea- 
phaelite minuteness and correctness in its execution ; they profess to 
have studied facts, and to have built their picture u]) scene by scene, 
leaf by leaf, texture for texture. We do not condemn their pre- 
Raphaelite painting; but we claim the artist's right to let our fancy 
loose, and to sketch out imaginary pictures of our own. 
Let those who have gone before us claim veracity for their depic- 
tions, we ask only that ours may be looked upon as fanciful scenes ; 
but if in our visionnry sketchings the tracery of truthful expression 
be detected, do us then the justice to let that be treasured and pre- 
served. Our task is iiot to upset an old school and found a new, but 
to seek out Trutli. 
