human race, and whose date of
action must be that of its doom. But whether such colossal agencies are
indeed in the existing order of things or not, still the effective
truth, for us, is one and the same. The earth, as a tormented and
trembling ball, may have rolled in space for myriads of ages before
humanity was formed from its dust; and as a devastated ruin it may
continue to roll, when all that dust shall again have been mingled with
ashes that never were warmed by life, or polluted by sin. But for us the
intelligible and substantial fact is that the earth has been brought, by
forces we know not of, into a form fitted for our habitation: on that
form a gradual, but destructive, change is continually taking place, and
the course of that change points clearly to a period when it will no
more be fitted for the dwelling-place of men.

Sec. 6. It is, therefore, not so much what these forms of the earth
actually are, as what they are continually becoming, that we have to
observe; nor is it possible thus to observe them without an instinctive
reference to the first state out of which they have been brought. The
existing torrent has dug its bed a thousand feet deep. But in what form
was the mountain originally raised which gave that torrent its track and
power? The existing precipice is wrought into towers and bastions by the
perpetual fall of its fragments. In what form did it stand before a
single fragment fell?

Yet to such questions, continually suggesting themselves, it is never
possible to give a complete answer. For a certain distance, the past
work of existing forces can be traced; but there gradually the mist
gathers, and the footsteps of more gigantic agencies are traceable in
the darkness; and still, as we endeavor to penetrate farther and farther
into departed time, the thunder of the Almighty power sounds louder and
louder; and the clouds gather broader and more fearfully, until at last
the Sinai of the world is seen altogether upon a smoke, and the fence of
its foot is reached, which none can break through.

Sec. 7. If, therefore, we venture to advance towards the spot where the
cloud first comes down, it is rather with the purpose of fully pointing
out that there is a cloud, than of entering into it. It is well to have
been fully convinced of the existence of the mystery, in an age far too
apt to suppose that everything which is visible is explicable, and
everything that is present, eternal. But besides as