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 sceptical 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 molten materials; 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 substances 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 but from time to
time. The modern progress of Geology has led us by successive and
perfectly connected steps back to a time when what is now only an
occasional and rare phe