resent state of our knowledge, our conclusions respecting the
beginning of the earth's history, the way in which it took form and
shape as a distinct, separate planet, must, of course, be very vague and
hypothetical. Yet the progress of science is so rapidly reconstructing
the past that we may hope to solve even this problem; and to one who
looks upon man's appearance upon the earth as the crowning work in a
succession of creative acts, all of which have had relation to his
coming in the end, it will not seem strange that he should at last be
allowed to understand a history which was but the introduction to his
own existence. It is my belief that not only the future, but the past
also, is the inheritance of man, and that we shall yet conquer our lost
birthright.

Even now our knowledge carries us far enough to warrant the assertion
that there was a time when our earth was in a state of igneous fusion,
when no ocean bathed it and no atmosphere surrounded it, when no wind
blew over it and no rain fell upon it, but an intense heat held all its
materials in solution. In those days the rocks which are now the very
bones and sinews of our mother earth--her granites, her porphyries, her
basalts, her syenites--were melted into a liquid mass. As I am writing
for the unscientific reader, who may not be familiar with the facts
through which these inferences have been reached, I will answer here a
question which, were we talking together, he might naturally ask in a
somewhat skeptical tone. How do you know that this state of things ever
existed, and, supposing that the solid materials of which our earth
consists were ever in a liquid condition, what right have you to infer
that this condition was caused by the action of heat upon them? I
answer, Because it is acting upon them still; because the earth we
tread is but a thin crust floating on a liquid sea of fire; because the
agencies that were at work then are at work now, and the present is the
logical sequence of the past. From artesian wells, from mines, from
geysers, from hot springs, a mass of facts has been collected proving
incontestably the heated condition of all materials at a certain depth
below the earth's surface; and if we need more positive evidence, we
have it in the fiery eruptions that even now bear fearful testimony to
the molten ocean seething within the globe and forcing its way out from
time to time. The modern progress of Geology has led us by successive
and p