n the last case would its
end coincide with the fulfilment of a purpose or object; in the first
case, a long period of purposeless existence would follow after the
culmination of life." [15]

In a word, men delighted at the prospect of human progress on this planet
have made an idol of it, only to discover that on a transient earth it
leads nowhere without God and immortality. One disciple of naturalism
recently denied his desire to believe in God because he wanted a risky
universe. But the universe without God is not risky; it is a foregone
conclusion; the dice are all loaded. After the lapse of millions of
years which, however long they be stretched out, will ultimately end, our
solar system will be gone, without even a memory left of anything that
ever was dreamed or done within it. That is the inevitable issue of such
a "risky" universe. When scientifically-minded men, therefore, now take
a long look ahead, the Utopian visions of the mid-Victorian age are not
foremost in their thought. Rather, as one of them recently wrote:

"One is tempted to imagine this race of supermen, of some millions of
years hence, grimly confronting the issue of extinction. Probably long
before that time science will have perfectly mastered the problem of the
sun's heat, and will be able to state precisely at what period the
radiation will sink to a level which would normally be fatal to the
living inhabitants of the planets. Then will begin the greatest of
cosmic events: a drama that has doubtless been played numbers of times
already on the stage of the universe: the last stand of the wonderful
microcosm against the brute force of the macrocosm. . . . .

"One conceives that our supermen will face the end philosophically.
Death is losing its terrors. The race will genially say, as we
individuals do to-day, that it has had a long run. But it will
none-the-less make a grim fight. Life will be worth living, for
everybody, long before that consummation is in sight. The hovering demon
of cold and darkness will be combatted by scientific means of which we
have not the germ of a conception." [16]

If ever a river ran out into a desert, the river of progressive hopes,
fed only from springs of materialistic philosophy, has done so here. At
least the Greeks had their immortality and the Hebrews their coming
Kingdom of God, but a modern materialist, with all his talk of progress,
has neither the one nor the other, nor anything to t