THE NATURAL SCIENCE JOURNAL. 
i 
ENDUEINa EEOOEDS. 
Ellen B. Wells. 
M am uses the mightiest means at 
hand for the sake of preserving 
history. God often takes even weakest 
matter on the verge of destruction. 
Man builds monuments, and hopes there¬ 
by to gain for himself a lasting name 
— forgetting that the very act symbolizes 
decay. God often makes of their de¬ 
struction a record more enduring, and 
adds a meaning man never sought. 
He who gazes on the vast pyramids 
sees not in them the fame of a king or 
great warrior — rather, the might of a 
despot, and the groans and sweat of 
slaves. Even the name of him who 
reared the structure has passed into for¬ 
getfulness. Thus it may 'often be the 
very achievement by which man has 
hoped to rescue his name from the dev¬ 
astating tramp of the iron-clad centuries, 
oblivion first seized with her relentless 
fingers; while what he scarce bestowed a 
thought in doing, lives on and on. Man 
has ever these two things to learn : that 
those records alone which God writes are 
enduring, and that “Truth is eternal.” 
Would you read a chapter in the great 
book of man? Let us traverse the 
waters of the Atlantic and visit Switzer¬ 
land. We will not seek, today, her libra¬ 
ries of learning, nor read the genealogies 
of her kings; rather, let us visit some of 
her quiet inland lakes. If we reach 
beneath their waters, we shall find the 
history of a people recorded there — all 
that is left of a race that was in its glory 
when Rome “ sat on her seven hills and 
ruled the world.” We call them the 
Swiss Lake Dwellers. They were a sim¬ 
ple people, uncultivated and rude; their 
chief occupation seems to have been 
small agriculture and the chase. They 
wmre somewhat skilled in war; yet could 
not withstand the assaults of more civil¬ 
ized nations. The Swiss Lake Dwellers 
have not left us their names engraven on 
pillars of brass; but God wrote for them 
an enduring record as their dwellings 
were being consumed by the flames, and 
all their possessions swallowed up by the 
waters of the lakes. 
Pompeii prayed that her name might 
be eternal among the cities of the earth. 
So God, amid her falling palaces, en¬ 
closed securely the records of her history, 
and poured around and over them the 
molten lava of Vesuvius. 
The history of the formation of the 
earth was long desired, and long 
searched for in vain. Man had no tra¬ 
dition of this event. His puny mind was 
not consulted when the foundations of 
the earth were laid. But, at length, he 
beheld strange markings in the rocks, 
and Anally discovered that the finger of 
God had been writing records there. 
The track of a tiny animal, the ripple of 
a wavelet, the pattering of rain, had 
been upon the sands. The sand had 
consolidated; and now, what a gentle 
touch might have erased, is enduring as 
the sandstone itself. Yet had man been 
there while these records were being 
written, he would never have granted 
that they would remain. 
Truly, as we believe there is a voice 
which pervades all history, so rocks and 
stones have a language. From them, 
and them alone, can we obtain the his¬ 
tory of the world’s formation. We may 
call them silent; but the}^ surely speak. 
A voice almighty and all-pervading is in 
their silence, and surely it is God’s voice 
