"The fire was accompanied by the fiercest tornado of wind ever known to blow here."[1]"The most striking peculiarity of the fire was its intense heat. Nothing exposed to it escaped. Amid the hundreds of acres left bare there is not to be found a piece of wood of any description, and,unlike most fires, it left nothing half burned. . . . The fire swept the streets of all the ordinary dust and rubbish, consuming it instantly."[2]The Athens marble burned like coal!"The intensity of the heat may be judged, and the thorough combustion of everything wooden may be understood, when we state that in the yard of one of the large agricultural-implement factories was stacked some hundreds of tons of pig-iron. This iron was two hundred feet from any building. To the south of it was the river, one hundred and fifty feet wide. No large building but the factory was in the immediate vicinity of the fire. Yet, so great was the heat, thatthis pile of iron melted and run, and is now in one large and nearly solid mass."[3]The amount of property destroyed was estimated by Mayor Medill at one hundred and fifty million dollars; and the number of people rendered houseless, at one hundred and twenty-five thousand. Several hundred lives were lost.All this brings before our eyes vividly the condition of things when the comet struck the earth; when conflagrations spread over wide areas; when human beings were consumed by the million; when their works were obliterated, and the remnants of the multitude fled before the rushing flames, filled with unutterable consternation;[1. "History of the Chicago Fire," p. 87.2. Ibid., p. 119.3. Ibid., p. 121.]{p. 423}and as they jumped pell-mell into wells, so we have seen them in Job clambering down ropes into the narrow-mouthed, bottomless pit.Who shall say how often the characteristics of our atmosphere have been affected by accessions from extraterrestrial sources, resulting in conflagrations or pestilences, in failures of crops, and in famines? Who shall say how far great revolutions and wars and other perturbations of humanity have been due to similar modifications? There is a world of philosophy in that curious story, "Dr. Ox's Hobby," wherein we are told how he changed the mental traits of a village of Hollanders by increasing the amount of oxygen in the air they breathed.{p. 424}CHAPTER VI.THE UNIVERSAL BELIEF OF MANKIND.THERE are some thoughts and opinions which we seem to take by inheritance; we imbibe them with our mothers' milk; they are in our blood; they are received insensibly in childhood.We have seen the folk-lore of the nations, passing through the endless and continuous generation of children, unchanged from the remotest ages.In the same way there is an untaught but universal feeling which makes all mankind regard comets with fear and trembling, and which unites all races of men in a universal belief that some day the world will be destroyed by fire.There are many things which indicate that a far-distant, prehistoric race existed in the background of Egyptian and Babylonian development, and that from this people, highly civilized and educated, we have derived the arrangement of the heavens into constellations, and our divisions of time into days, weeks, years, and centuries. This people stood much nearer the Drift Age than we do. They understood it better. Their legends and religious beliefs were full of it. The gods carved on Hindoo temples or painted on the walls of Assyrian, Peruvian, or American structures, the flying dragons, the winged gods, the winged animals, Gucumatz, Rama, Siva, Vishnu, Tezcatlipoca, were painted in the very colors of the clays which came from the disintegration of the granite, "red,{p. 425}white, and blue," the very colors which distinguished the comet; and they are all reminiscences of that great monster. The idols of the pagan world are, in fact, congealed history, and will some day be intelligently studied as such.Doubtless this ancient astronomical, zodiac-building, and constellation-constructing race taught the people the true doctrine of comets; taught that the winding serpent, the flying dragon, the destructive winged dog, or wolf, or lion, whose sphinx-like images now frown upon us from ancient walls and door-ways, were really comets; taught how one of them had actually struck the earth; and taught that in the lapse of ages another of these multitudinous wanderers of space would again encounter our globe, and end all things in one universal conflagration.And down through the race this belief has come, and down through the race it will go, to the consummation of time.We find this "day of wrath" prefigured in the words of Malachi, (chap. iv, v. 1):"1. For behold the day cometh that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch."2. But unto you that fear my name shall the sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall."3. And ye shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that I shall do this, saith the Lord of hosts."We find the same great catastrophe foretold in the book of Revelation, (chap. xii, v. 3):"And there appeared anotherwonder in heaven; and behold a great reddragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads.{p. 426}"4.And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth."And again, (chap. vi):"12. And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake;and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood;"13.And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig-tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind."14. And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; andevery mountain and island were moved out of their places."15. And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman and every freeman,hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains;"16. And said to the mountains and the rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb17.For the great day of his wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand?"Here we seem to have the story of Job over again, in this prefiguration of the future.The Ethiopian copy of the apocryphal book of Enoch contains a poem, which is prefixed to the body of that work, and which the learned author of "Nimrod" supposes to be authentic. It certainly dates from a vast antiquity. It is as follows:"Enoch, a righteous man, who was with God, answered and spoke while his eyes were open, and whilehe saw a holy vision in the heavens. . . ."Upon this account I spoke, and conversed with him who willgo forth from his habitation, the holy and mighty One, the God of the world."Who will hereafter tread upon the mountain Sinai, andappear with his hosts, and he manifested in the strength of his power from heaven.{p. 427}"All shall be afraid, and the watchers be terrified. Great fear and trembling shall seize even to the ends of the earth."The lofty mountains shall be troubled, and the exalted hills depressed,melting like honeycomb in the flame."The earth shall beimmerged, andall thingswhich are in itperish. . . ."He shall preserve the elect, and toward them exercise clemency. . . . The whole earth is full of water."This is either history or prophecy.In the Second Epistle General of Peter, (chap. iii,) we have some allusions to the past, and some prophecies based upon the past, which are very curious:Verse 5. "For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water."That is to say, the earth was, as in Ovid and Ragnarok, and the legends generally, an island, "standing out of the water and in the water."Verse 6. "Wherebythe world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished."This seems to refer to the island Atlantis, "overflowed with water," and destroyed, as told by Plato; thereby forming a very distinct connection between the Island of Poseidon and the Deluge of Noah.We read on:Verse 7. "But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store,reserved unto fireagainst the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men."Verse 10. "But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up."{p. 428}The Gothic mythology tells us that Surt, with his flaming sword, "shall come at the end of the world; he shall vanquish all the gods; he shall give up the universe a prey to the flames."This belief in the ultimate destruction of the world and all its inhabitants by fire was found among the American races as well as those of the Old World:"The same terror inspired the Peruvians at every eclipse; for some day--taught the Amantas--the shadow will veil the sun for ever, and land, moon, and stars will be wrapped in a devouring conflagration, to know no regeneration."[1]The Algonquin races believed that some day Michabo "will stamp his foot on the ground, flames will burst forth to consume the habitable land; only a pair, or only, at most, those who have maintained inviolate the institutions he ordained, will he protect and preserve to inhabit the new world he will then fabricate."[2]Nearly all the American tribes had similar presentiments. The Chickasaws, the Mandans of the Missouri, the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico, the Muyscas of Bogota, the Botocudos of Brazil, the Araucanians of Chili, the Winnebagoes, all have possessed such a belief from time immemorial. The Mayas of Yucatan had a prediction which Father Lizana,curéof Itzamal, preserved in the Spanish language:"At the close of the ages, it hath been decreed,Shall perish and vanish each weak god of men,And the world shall bepurged with ravening fire."We know that among our own people, the European races, this looking forward to a conflagration which is to end all things is found everywhere; and that everywhere a comet is regarded with terror. It is a messenger of[1. Brinton's "Myths," p. 235.2. Ibid.]{p. 429}woe and disaster; it is a dreadful threat shining in the heavens; it is "God's rod," even as it was in Job's day.I could fill pages with the proofs of the truth of this statement.An ancient writer, describing the great meteoric shower of the year 1202, says:"The stars flew against one another like a scattering swarm of locusts, to the right and left; this phenomenon lasted until daybreak; people were thrown into consternation and cried to God, the Most High, with confused clamor."[1]The great meteoric display of 1366 produced similar effects. An historian of the time says:"Those who saw it were filled with such great fear and dismay that they were astounded, imagining that they were all dead men, and that the end of the world had come."[2]How could such a universal terror have fixed itself in the blood of the race, if it had not originated from some great primeval fact? And all this terror is associated with a dragon.And Chambers says:"The dragon appears in the mythical history and legendary poetry of almost every nation, as the emblem of the destructive and anarchical principle; . . . as misdirected physical force and untamable animal passions. . . . The dragon proceeds openly to work, running on its feet with expanded wings, and head and tail erect, violently and ruthlessly outraging decency and propriety,spouting fire and fury from both mouth and tail, and wasting and devastating the whole land."[3]This fiery monster is the comet.[1. Popular Science Monthly," June, 1882, p. 193.2. Ibid., p. 193.3. "Chambers's Encyclopaedia," vol. iii, p. 655.]{p. 430}And Milton speaks from the same universal inspiration when he tells us:"A comet burned,That fires the length of Ophiucus hugeIn th' arctic sky, andfrom its horrid hairShakes pestilence and war."And in the Shakespeare plays[1] we read:"Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night!Comets, importing change of times and states,Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky;And with them scourge the bad revolting stars."Man, by an inherited instinct, regards the comet as a great terror and a great foe; and the heart of humanity sits uneasily when one blazes in the sky. Even to the scholar and the scientist they are a puzzle and a fear; they are erratic, unusual, anarchical, monstrous--something let loose, like a tiger of the heavens, athwart an orderly, peaceful, and harmonious world. They may be impalpable and harmless attenuations of gas, or they way be loaded with death and ruin; but in any event man can not contemplate them without terror.[1. 1 Henry VI, 1, 1.]{p. 431}CHAPTER VII.THE EARTH STRUCK BY COMETS MANY TIMES.IF the reader is satisfied, from my reasoning and the facts I have adduced, that the so-called Glacial Age really represents a collision of the earth with one of these wandering luminaries of space, the question can not but occur to him, Was this the first and only occasion, during all the thousands of millions of years that our planet has been revolving on its axis and circling around the sun, that such a catastrophe has occurred?The answer must be in the negative.We find that all through the rocky record of our globe the same phenomena which we have learned to recognize as peculiar to the Drift Age are, at distant intervals, repeated.The long ages of the Palæozoic Time passed with few or no disturbances. The movements of the earth's crust oscillated at a rate not to exceed one foot in a century.[1] It was an age of peace. Then came a tremendous convulsion. It has been styled by the geologists "the epoch of the Appalachian revolution.""Strata were upraised and flexed into great (olds, some of the folds a score or more of miles in span. Deep fissures were opened in the earth's crust," like the fiords or great rock-cracks which accompanied the Diluvial or Drift Age. "Rocks were consolidated; and over some parts sandstones and shales were crystallized into gneiss,[1. Dana's "Text-Book," p. 150.]{p. 432}mica-schist, and other related rocks, and limestone into architectural and statuary marble. Bituminous coal was turned into anthracite in Pennsylvania."[1]I copy from the same work (p. 153) the following cut, showing the extent to which the rocks were crushed out of shape:###SECTION ON THE SCHUYLKILL, PENNSYLVANIA.P, Pottsville on the coal-measures; 2, Calciferous formation; 3, Trenton; 4, Hudson River; 5, Oneida and Niagara; 7, Lower Helderberg; 8, 10, 11, Devonian; 12, 13, Subcarboniferous; 14, Carboniferous, or coal-measures.These tremendous changes were caused by a pressure of some kind which came from the east, from where the Atlantic Ocean now rolls."It was due to alateralpressure, the folding having taken place just as it might in paper or cloth under a lateral orpushingmovement."[2]"It was accompanied bygreat heatwhich melted and consolidated the rocks, changed their condition, drove the volatile gases out of the bituminous coal and changed it into anthracite, in some places altered it to graphite, as if it had been passed through a furnace."[3]It also made an almost universal slaughter of all forms of life:"The extermination of life which took place at this time was one of the most extensive in all geological history; . . . no fossils of the Carboniferous formation occur in later rocks."[4][1. Dana's "Text-Book," p. 152.2. Ibid., p. 155.3. Ibid., p. 155.4. Ibid., p. 157.]{p. 433}it was accompanied or followed, as in the Drift Age, by tremendous floods of water; the evaporated seas returned to the earth in wasting storms:"The waters commenced the work of denudation, which has been continued to the present time."[1]Is not all this a striking confirmation of my theory?Here we find that, long before the age of man, a fearful catastrophe happened to the earth. Its rocks were melted--not merely decomposed, as in the Drift Age,--but actually melted and metamorphosed; the heat, as in the Drift Age, sucked up the waters of the seas, to cast them down again in great floods; it wiped out nearly all the life of the planet, even as the Drift Age exterminated the great mammals; whatever drift then fell probably melted with the burning rocks.Here are phenomena which no ice-sheet, though it were a thousand miles thick, can explain; here is heat, not ice; combustion, not cold; and yet all these phenomena are but the results which we have seen would naturally follow the contact of the earth with a comet.But while, in this particular case, the size of the comet, or its more fiery nature, melted the surface of the globe, and changed the very texture of the solid rocks, we find in the geological record the evidences of repeated visitations when Drift was thrown upon the earth in great quantities; but the heat, as in the last Drift Age, was not great enough to consume all things.In the Cambrian formation, conglomerates are found, combinations of stones and hardened clay, very much like the true "till."In the Lower Silurian of the south of Scotland, large blocks and bowlders (from one foot to five feet in diameter)[1. Dana's "Text-Book," p. 156.]{p. 434}are found, "of gneiss, syenite, granite, etc., none of which belong to the rocks of that neighborhood."Geikie says:"Possibly these bowlders may have come from some ancient Atlantis, transported by ice."[1]The conglomerates belonging to the Old Red Sandstone formation in the north of England and in Scotland, we are told, "closely resemble a consolidated bowlder drift."[2]Near Victoria, in Australia, a conglomerate was foundnearly one hundred feet in thickness."Great beds of conglomerate occur at the bottom of the Carboniferous, in various parts of Scotland, which it is difficult to believe are other than ancient morainicdébris. They are frequently quite unstratified, and the stonesoften show that peculiar blunted form which is so characteristic of glacial work."[3]Professor Ramsay found well-scratched and blunted stones in a Permian conglomerate.In the north of Scotland, a coarse, bowlder-conglomerate is associated with the Jurassic strata. The Cretaceous formation has yielded great stones and bowlders. In the Eocene of Switzerland, erratics have been found, some angular and some rounded. They often attain great size; one measured one hundred and five feet in length, ninety feet in breadth, and forty-five feet in height. Some of the blocks consist ofa kind of granite not known to occur anywhere in the Alps.Geikie says:"The occurrence in the Eocene of huge ice-carried blocks seemsincomprehensiblewhen the general character of the Eocene fossils is taken into account, for these have a somewhattropicalaspect. So, likewise, the appearance of ice-transported blocks in the Miocene is asore puzzle,[1. "The Great Ice Age," p. 478.2. Ibid., p. 479.3. Ibid.]{p. 435}as the fossils imbedded in this formation speak to us of tropical and sub-tropical climates having prevailed in Central Europe."[1]It was precisely during the age when a warm climate prevailed in Spitzbergen and North Greenland that these erratics were dropped down on the plains of Italy!And, strange to say, just as we have found the Drift-deposits of Europe and America unfossiliferous,--that is to say, containing no traces of animal or vegetable life,--so these strange stone and clay deposits of other and more ancient ages were in like manner unfossiliferous.[2]In the "flysch" of the Eocene of the Alps, few or no fossils have been found. In the conglomerates of Turin, belonging to the Upper Miocene period, not a single organic remain has been found.What conclusion is forced upon us?That, written in the rocky pages of the great volume of the planet, are the records ofrepeated visitations from the cometswhich then rushed through the heavens.No trace is left of their destructive powers, save the huge, unstratified, unfossiliferous deposits of clay and stones and bowlders, locked away between great layers of the sedimentary rocks.Can it be that there wanders through immeasurable space, upon an orbit of such size that millions of years are required to complete it, some monstrous luminary, so vast that when it returns to us it fills a large part of the orbit which the earth describes around the sun, and showers down upon us deluges ofdébris, while it fills the world with flame? And are these recurring strata of stones and clay and bowlders, written upon these widely separated pages of the geologic volume, the record of its oft and regularly recurring visitations?[1. "The Great Ice Age," p. 480.2. Ibid., p. 481.]{p. 436}Who shall say? Science will yet compare minutely the composition of these different conglomerates. No secret can escape discovery when the light of a world's intelligence is brought to bear upon it.And even here we stumble over a still more tremendous fact:It has been supposed that the primeval granite was the molten crust of the original glowing ball of the earth, when it first hardened as it cooled.But, lo! the microscope, (so Professor Whichell tells us,) reveals that this very granite, this foundation of all our rocks, this ancient globe-crust, is itself made up of sedimentary rocks, which were melted, fused, and run together in some awful conflagration which wiped out all life on the planet.Beyond the granite, then, there were seas and shores, winds and rains, rivers and sediment carried into the waters to form the rocks melted up in this granite; there were countless ages; possibly there were animals and man; but all melted and consumed together. Was this, too, the result of a comet visitation?Who shall tell the age of this old earth? Who shall count the ebbs and flows of eternity? Who shall say how often this planet has been developed up to the highest forms of life, and how often all this has been obliterated in universal fire?The earth is one great tomb of life:"All that treadThe globe are but a handful to the tribesThat slumber in its bosom."In endless series the ages stretch along--birth, life, development, destruction. And so shall it be till time is no more.{p. 437}CHAPTER VIII.THE AFTER-WORD.WHEN that magnificent genius, Francis Bacon, sent forth one of his great works to the world, he wrote this prayer:"Thou, O Father, who gavest the visible light as the first-born of thy creatures, and didst pour into man the intellectual light as the top and consummation of thy workmanship, be pleased to protect and govern this work, which coming from thy goodness returneth to thy glory. . . . We humbly beg that this mind may be steadfastly in us; and that thou, by our hands and the hands of others, on whom thou shalt bestow the same spirit, wilt please to convey a largess of new alms to thy family of mankind."And again he says:"This also we beg, that human things may not prejudice such as are divine; neither that from the unlocking of the gates of sense, and the kindling of a greater natural light, anything of incredulity, or intellectual night, may arise in our minds toward divine mysteries."In the same spirit, but humbly halting afar after this illustrious man, I should be sorry to permit this book to go out to the world without a word to remove the impression which some who read it, and may believe it, may form, that such a vast catastrophe as I have depicted militates against the idea that God rules and cares for his world and his creatures. It will be asked, If "there is a special providence even in the fall of a sparrow," how{p. 438}could He have permitted such a calamity as this to overtake a beautiful, populous, and perhaps civilized world?Here we fall again upon the great debate of Job, and we may answer in the words which the author of that book puts into the mouth of God himself, when from out the whirlwind he answered him:"Shall he that contendeth with the Almighty instruct him "He that reproveth God, let him answer."In other words, Who and what is man to penetrate the counsels and purposes of the Creator; and who are you, Job?--"Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare it, if thou hast understanding."Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? Or who has stretched the line upon it?"Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? Or who laid the corner-stone thereof?"When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy."Consider, Job, the littleness of man, the greatness of the universe; and what right have you to ask Him, who made all this, the reasons for his actions?And this is a sufficient answer: A creature seventy inches long prying into the purposes of an Awful Something, whose power ranges so far that blazing suns are seen only as mist-specks!But I may make another answer:Although it seems that many times have comets smitten the earth, covering it withdébris, or causing its rocks to boil, and its waters to ascend into the heavens, yet, considering all life, as revealed in the fossils, from the first cells unto this day,nothing has perished that was worth preserving.{p. 439}So far as we can judge, after every cataclysm the world has risen to higher levels of creative development.If I am right, despite these incalculable tons of matter piled on the earth, despite heat and cyclones and darkness and ice and floods, not even a tender tropical plant fit to adorn or sustain man's life was blotted out; not an animal valuable for domestication was exterminated; and not even the great inventions which man had attained to, during the Tertiary Age, were lost. Nothing died but that which stood in the pathway of man's development,--the monstrous animals, the Neanderthal races, the half-human creatures intermediate between man and the brute. The great centers of human activity to-day in Europe and America are upon the Drift-deposits; the richest soils are compounded of the so-called glacial clays. Doubtless, too, the human brain was forced during the Drift Age to higher reaches of development under the terrible ordeals of the hour.Surely, then, we can afford to leave God's planets in God's hands. Not a particle of dust is whirled in the funnel of the cyclone but God identifies it, and has marked its path.If we fall again upon"Axe-ages, sword-ages,Wind-ages, murder-ages--if "sensual sins grow huge"; if "brother spoils brother" if Sodom and Gomorrah come again--who can say that God may not bring out of the depths of space a rejuvenating comet?Be assured of one thing--this world tends now to a deification of matter.Dives says: "The earth is firm under my feet; I own my possessions down to the center of the earth and up to{p. 440}the heavens. If fire sweeps away my houses, the insurance company reimburses me; if mobs destroy them, the government pays me; if civil war comes, I can convert them into bonds and move away until the storm is over; if sickness comes, I have the highest skill at my call to fight it back; if death comes, I am again insured, and my estate makes money by the transaction; and if there is another world than this, still am I insured: I have taken out a policy in the ----- church, and pay my premiums semiannually to the minister."And Dives has an unexpressed belief that heaven is only a larger Wall Street, where the millionaires occupy the front benches, while those who never had a bank account on earth sing in the chorus.Speak to Dives of lifting up the plane of all the underfed, under-paid, benighted millions of the earth--his fellow-men--to higher levels of comfort, and joy, and intelligence--not tearing down any but building up all--and Dives can not understand you.Ah, Dives! consider, if there is no other life than this, the fate of these uncounted millions of your race! What does existence give to them? What do they get out of all this abundant and beautiful world?To look down the vista of such a life as theirs is like gazing into one of the corridors of the Catacombs: an alley filled with reeking bones of dead men; while from the cross-arches, waiting for the poor man's coming on, ghastly shapes look out:--sickness and want and sin and grim despair and red-eyed suicide.Put yourself in his place, Dives, locked up in such a cavern as that, and the key thrown away!Do not count too much, Dives, on your lands and houses and parchments; your guns and cannon and laws; your insurance companies and your governments. There{p. 441}may be even now one coming from beyond Arcturus, or Aldebaran, or Coma Berenices, with glowing countenance and horrid hair, and millions of tons ofdébris, to overwhelm you and your possessions, and your corporations, and all the ant-like devices of man in one common ruin.Build a little broader, Dives. Establish spiritual relations. Matter is not everything. You do not deal in certainties. You are but a vitalized speck, filled with a fraction of God's delegated intelligence, crawling over an egg-shell filled with fire, whirling madly through infinite space, a target for the bombs of a universe.Take your mind off your bricks and mortar, and put out your tentacles toward the great spiritual world around you. Open communications with God. You can not help God. For Him who made the Milky Way you can do nothing. But here are his creatures. Not a nerve, muscle, or brain-convolution of the humblest of these but duplicates your own; you excel them simply in the coordination of certain inherited faculties which have given you success. Widen your heart. Put your intellect to work to so readjust the values of labor, and increase the productive capacity of Nature, that plenty and happiness, light and hope, may dwell in every heart, and the Catacombs be closed for ever.And from such a world God will fend off the comets with his great right arm, and the angels will exult over it in heaven.End of Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel
"The fire was accompanied by the fiercest tornado of wind ever known to blow here."[1]
"The most striking peculiarity of the fire was its intense heat. Nothing exposed to it escaped. Amid the hundreds of acres left bare there is not to be found a piece of wood of any description, and,unlike most fires, it left nothing half burned. . . . The fire swept the streets of all the ordinary dust and rubbish, consuming it instantly."[2]
The Athens marble burned like coal!
"The intensity of the heat may be judged, and the thorough combustion of everything wooden may be understood, when we state that in the yard of one of the large agricultural-implement factories was stacked some hundreds of tons of pig-iron. This iron was two hundred feet from any building. To the south of it was the river, one hundred and fifty feet wide. No large building but the factory was in the immediate vicinity of the fire. Yet, so great was the heat, thatthis pile of iron melted and run, and is now in one large and nearly solid mass."[3]
The amount of property destroyed was estimated by Mayor Medill at one hundred and fifty million dollars; and the number of people rendered houseless, at one hundred and twenty-five thousand. Several hundred lives were lost.
All this brings before our eyes vividly the condition of things when the comet struck the earth; when conflagrations spread over wide areas; when human beings were consumed by the million; when their works were obliterated, and the remnants of the multitude fled before the rushing flames, filled with unutterable consternation;
[1. "History of the Chicago Fire," p. 87.
2. Ibid., p. 119.
3. Ibid., p. 121.]
{p. 423}
and as they jumped pell-mell into wells, so we have seen them in Job clambering down ropes into the narrow-mouthed, bottomless pit.
Who shall say how often the characteristics of our atmosphere have been affected by accessions from extraterrestrial sources, resulting in conflagrations or pestilences, in failures of crops, and in famines? Who shall say how far great revolutions and wars and other perturbations of humanity have been due to similar modifications? There is a world of philosophy in that curious story, "Dr. Ox's Hobby," wherein we are told how he changed the mental traits of a village of Hollanders by increasing the amount of oxygen in the air they breathed.
{p. 424}
THERE are some thoughts and opinions which we seem to take by inheritance; we imbibe them with our mothers' milk; they are in our blood; they are received insensibly in childhood.
We have seen the folk-lore of the nations, passing through the endless and continuous generation of children, unchanged from the remotest ages.
In the same way there is an untaught but universal feeling which makes all mankind regard comets with fear and trembling, and which unites all races of men in a universal belief that some day the world will be destroyed by fire.
There are many things which indicate that a far-distant, prehistoric race existed in the background of Egyptian and Babylonian development, and that from this people, highly civilized and educated, we have derived the arrangement of the heavens into constellations, and our divisions of time into days, weeks, years, and centuries. This people stood much nearer the Drift Age than we do. They understood it better. Their legends and religious beliefs were full of it. The gods carved on Hindoo temples or painted on the walls of Assyrian, Peruvian, or American structures, the flying dragons, the winged gods, the winged animals, Gucumatz, Rama, Siva, Vishnu, Tezcatlipoca, were painted in the very colors of the clays which came from the disintegration of the granite, "red,
{p. 425}
white, and blue," the very colors which distinguished the comet; and they are all reminiscences of that great monster. The idols of the pagan world are, in fact, congealed history, and will some day be intelligently studied as such.
Doubtless this ancient astronomical, zodiac-building, and constellation-constructing race taught the people the true doctrine of comets; taught that the winding serpent, the flying dragon, the destructive winged dog, or wolf, or lion, whose sphinx-like images now frown upon us from ancient walls and door-ways, were really comets; taught how one of them had actually struck the earth; and taught that in the lapse of ages another of these multitudinous wanderers of space would again encounter our globe, and end all things in one universal conflagration.
And down through the race this belief has come, and down through the race it will go, to the consummation of time.
We find this "day of wrath" prefigured in the words of Malachi, (chap. iv, v. 1):
"1. For behold the day cometh that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.
"2. But unto you that fear my name shall the sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall.
"3. And ye shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that I shall do this, saith the Lord of hosts."
We find the same great catastrophe foretold in the book of Revelation, (chap. xii, v. 3):
"And there appeared anotherwonder in heaven; and behold a great reddragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads.
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"4.And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth."
And again, (chap. vi):
"12. And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake;and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood;
"13.And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig-tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.
"14. And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; andevery mountain and island were moved out of their places.
"15. And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman and every freeman,hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains;
"16. And said to the mountains and the rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb
17.For the great day of his wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand?"
Here we seem to have the story of Job over again, in this prefiguration of the future.
The Ethiopian copy of the apocryphal book of Enoch contains a poem, which is prefixed to the body of that work, and which the learned author of "Nimrod" supposes to be authentic. It certainly dates from a vast antiquity. It is as follows:
"Enoch, a righteous man, who was with God, answered and spoke while his eyes were open, and whilehe saw a holy vision in the heavens. . . .
"Upon this account I spoke, and conversed with him who willgo forth from his habitation, the holy and mighty One, the God of the world.
"Who will hereafter tread upon the mountain Sinai, andappear with his hosts, and he manifested in the strength of his power from heaven.
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"All shall be afraid, and the watchers be terrified. Great fear and trembling shall seize even to the ends of the earth.
"The lofty mountains shall be troubled, and the exalted hills depressed,melting like honeycomb in the flame.
"The earth shall beimmerged, andall thingswhich are in itperish. . . .
"He shall preserve the elect, and toward them exercise clemency. . . . The whole earth is full of water."
This is either history or prophecy.
In the Second Epistle General of Peter, (chap. iii,) we have some allusions to the past, and some prophecies based upon the past, which are very curious:
Verse 5. "For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water."
That is to say, the earth was, as in Ovid and Ragnarok, and the legends generally, an island, "standing out of the water and in the water."
Verse 6. "Wherebythe world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished."
This seems to refer to the island Atlantis, "overflowed with water," and destroyed, as told by Plato; thereby forming a very distinct connection between the Island of Poseidon and the Deluge of Noah.
We read on:
Verse 7. "But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store,reserved unto fireagainst the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men."
Verse 10. "But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up."
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The Gothic mythology tells us that Surt, with his flaming sword, "shall come at the end of the world; he shall vanquish all the gods; he shall give up the universe a prey to the flames."
This belief in the ultimate destruction of the world and all its inhabitants by fire was found among the American races as well as those of the Old World:
"The same terror inspired the Peruvians at every eclipse; for some day--taught the Amantas--the shadow will veil the sun for ever, and land, moon, and stars will be wrapped in a devouring conflagration, to know no regeneration."[1]
The Algonquin races believed that some day Michabo "will stamp his foot on the ground, flames will burst forth to consume the habitable land; only a pair, or only, at most, those who have maintained inviolate the institutions he ordained, will he protect and preserve to inhabit the new world he will then fabricate."[2]
Nearly all the American tribes had similar presentiments. The Chickasaws, the Mandans of the Missouri, the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico, the Muyscas of Bogota, the Botocudos of Brazil, the Araucanians of Chili, the Winnebagoes, all have possessed such a belief from time immemorial. The Mayas of Yucatan had a prediction which Father Lizana,curéof Itzamal, preserved in the Spanish language:
"At the close of the ages, it hath been decreed,Shall perish and vanish each weak god of men,And the world shall bepurged with ravening fire."
"At the close of the ages, it hath been decreed,Shall perish and vanish each weak god of men,And the world shall bepurged with ravening fire."
"At the close of the ages, it hath been decreed,Shall perish and vanish each weak god of men,And the world shall bepurged with ravening fire."
We know that among our own people, the European races, this looking forward to a conflagration which is to end all things is found everywhere; and that everywhere a comet is regarded with terror. It is a messenger of
[1. Brinton's "Myths," p. 235.
2. Ibid.]
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woe and disaster; it is a dreadful threat shining in the heavens; it is "God's rod," even as it was in Job's day.
I could fill pages with the proofs of the truth of this statement.
An ancient writer, describing the great meteoric shower of the year 1202, says:
"The stars flew against one another like a scattering swarm of locusts, to the right and left; this phenomenon lasted until daybreak; people were thrown into consternation and cried to God, the Most High, with confused clamor."[1]
The great meteoric display of 1366 produced similar effects. An historian of the time says:
"Those who saw it were filled with such great fear and dismay that they were astounded, imagining that they were all dead men, and that the end of the world had come."[2]
How could such a universal terror have fixed itself in the blood of the race, if it had not originated from some great primeval fact? And all this terror is associated with a dragon.
And Chambers says:
"The dragon appears in the mythical history and legendary poetry of almost every nation, as the emblem of the destructive and anarchical principle; . . . as misdirected physical force and untamable animal passions. . . . The dragon proceeds openly to work, running on its feet with expanded wings, and head and tail erect, violently and ruthlessly outraging decency and propriety,spouting fire and fury from both mouth and tail, and wasting and devastating the whole land."[3]
This fiery monster is the comet.
[1. Popular Science Monthly," June, 1882, p. 193.
2. Ibid., p. 193.
3. "Chambers's Encyclopaedia," vol. iii, p. 655.]
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And Milton speaks from the same universal inspiration when he tells us:
"A comet burned,That fires the length of Ophiucus hugeIn th' arctic sky, andfrom its horrid hairShakes pestilence and war."
"A comet burned,That fires the length of Ophiucus hugeIn th' arctic sky, andfrom its horrid hairShakes pestilence and war."
"A comet burned,That fires the length of Ophiucus hugeIn th' arctic sky, andfrom its horrid hairShakes pestilence and war."
And in the Shakespeare plays[1] we read:
"Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night!Comets, importing change of times and states,Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky;And with them scourge the bad revolting stars."
"Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night!Comets, importing change of times and states,Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky;And with them scourge the bad revolting stars."
"Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night!Comets, importing change of times and states,Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky;And with them scourge the bad revolting stars."
Man, by an inherited instinct, regards the comet as a great terror and a great foe; and the heart of humanity sits uneasily when one blazes in the sky. Even to the scholar and the scientist they are a puzzle and a fear; they are erratic, unusual, anarchical, monstrous--something let loose, like a tiger of the heavens, athwart an orderly, peaceful, and harmonious world. They may be impalpable and harmless attenuations of gas, or they way be loaded with death and ruin; but in any event man can not contemplate them without terror.
[1. 1 Henry VI, 1, 1.]
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IF the reader is satisfied, from my reasoning and the facts I have adduced, that the so-called Glacial Age really represents a collision of the earth with one of these wandering luminaries of space, the question can not but occur to him, Was this the first and only occasion, during all the thousands of millions of years that our planet has been revolving on its axis and circling around the sun, that such a catastrophe has occurred?
The answer must be in the negative.
We find that all through the rocky record of our globe the same phenomena which we have learned to recognize as peculiar to the Drift Age are, at distant intervals, repeated.
The long ages of the Palæozoic Time passed with few or no disturbances. The movements of the earth's crust oscillated at a rate not to exceed one foot in a century.[1] It was an age of peace. Then came a tremendous convulsion. It has been styled by the geologists "the epoch of the Appalachian revolution."
"Strata were upraised and flexed into great (olds, some of the folds a score or more of miles in span. Deep fissures were opened in the earth's crust," like the fiords or great rock-cracks which accompanied the Diluvial or Drift Age. "Rocks were consolidated; and over some parts sandstones and shales were crystallized into gneiss,
[1. Dana's "Text-Book," p. 150.]
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mica-schist, and other related rocks, and limestone into architectural and statuary marble. Bituminous coal was turned into anthracite in Pennsylvania."[1]
I copy from the same work (p. 153) the following cut, showing the extent to which the rocks were crushed out of shape:
###
SECTION ON THE SCHUYLKILL, PENNSYLVANIA.
P, Pottsville on the coal-measures; 2, Calciferous formation; 3, Trenton; 4, Hudson River; 5, Oneida and Niagara; 7, Lower Helderberg; 8, 10, 11, Devonian; 12, 13, Subcarboniferous; 14, Carboniferous, or coal-measures.
These tremendous changes were caused by a pressure of some kind which came from the east, from where the Atlantic Ocean now rolls.
"It was due to alateralpressure, the folding having taken place just as it might in paper or cloth under a lateral orpushingmovement."[2]
"It was accompanied bygreat heatwhich melted and consolidated the rocks, changed their condition, drove the volatile gases out of the bituminous coal and changed it into anthracite, in some places altered it to graphite, as if it had been passed through a furnace."[3]
It also made an almost universal slaughter of all forms of life:
"The extermination of life which took place at this time was one of the most extensive in all geological history; . . . no fossils of the Carboniferous formation occur in later rocks."[4]
[1. Dana's "Text-Book," p. 152.
2. Ibid., p. 155.
3. Ibid., p. 155.
4. Ibid., p. 157.]
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it was accompanied or followed, as in the Drift Age, by tremendous floods of water; the evaporated seas returned to the earth in wasting storms:
"The waters commenced the work of denudation, which has been continued to the present time."[1]
Is not all this a striking confirmation of my theory?
Here we find that, long before the age of man, a fearful catastrophe happened to the earth. Its rocks were melted--not merely decomposed, as in the Drift Age,--but actually melted and metamorphosed; the heat, as in the Drift Age, sucked up the waters of the seas, to cast them down again in great floods; it wiped out nearly all the life of the planet, even as the Drift Age exterminated the great mammals; whatever drift then fell probably melted with the burning rocks.
Here are phenomena which no ice-sheet, though it were a thousand miles thick, can explain; here is heat, not ice; combustion, not cold; and yet all these phenomena are but the results which we have seen would naturally follow the contact of the earth with a comet.
But while, in this particular case, the size of the comet, or its more fiery nature, melted the surface of the globe, and changed the very texture of the solid rocks, we find in the geological record the evidences of repeated visitations when Drift was thrown upon the earth in great quantities; but the heat, as in the last Drift Age, was not great enough to consume all things.
In the Cambrian formation, conglomerates are found, combinations of stones and hardened clay, very much like the true "till."
In the Lower Silurian of the south of Scotland, large blocks and bowlders (from one foot to five feet in diameter)
[1. Dana's "Text-Book," p. 156.]
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are found, "of gneiss, syenite, granite, etc., none of which belong to the rocks of that neighborhood."
Geikie says:
"Possibly these bowlders may have come from some ancient Atlantis, transported by ice."[1]
The conglomerates belonging to the Old Red Sandstone formation in the north of England and in Scotland, we are told, "closely resemble a consolidated bowlder drift."[2]
Near Victoria, in Australia, a conglomerate was foundnearly one hundred feet in thickness.
"Great beds of conglomerate occur at the bottom of the Carboniferous, in various parts of Scotland, which it is difficult to believe are other than ancient morainicdébris. They are frequently quite unstratified, and the stonesoften show that peculiar blunted form which is so characteristic of glacial work."[3]
Professor Ramsay found well-scratched and blunted stones in a Permian conglomerate.
In the north of Scotland, a coarse, bowlder-conglomerate is associated with the Jurassic strata. The Cretaceous formation has yielded great stones and bowlders. In the Eocene of Switzerland, erratics have been found, some angular and some rounded. They often attain great size; one measured one hundred and five feet in length, ninety feet in breadth, and forty-five feet in height. Some of the blocks consist ofa kind of granite not known to occur anywhere in the Alps.
Geikie says:
"The occurrence in the Eocene of huge ice-carried blocks seemsincomprehensiblewhen the general character of the Eocene fossils is taken into account, for these have a somewhattropicalaspect. So, likewise, the appearance of ice-transported blocks in the Miocene is asore puzzle,
[1. "The Great Ice Age," p. 478.
2. Ibid., p. 479.
3. Ibid.]
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as the fossils imbedded in this formation speak to us of tropical and sub-tropical climates having prevailed in Central Europe."[1]
It was precisely during the age when a warm climate prevailed in Spitzbergen and North Greenland that these erratics were dropped down on the plains of Italy!
And, strange to say, just as we have found the Drift-deposits of Europe and America unfossiliferous,--that is to say, containing no traces of animal or vegetable life,--so these strange stone and clay deposits of other and more ancient ages were in like manner unfossiliferous.[2]
In the "flysch" of the Eocene of the Alps, few or no fossils have been found. In the conglomerates of Turin, belonging to the Upper Miocene period, not a single organic remain has been found.
What conclusion is forced upon us?
That, written in the rocky pages of the great volume of the planet, are the records ofrepeated visitations from the cometswhich then rushed through the heavens.
No trace is left of their destructive powers, save the huge, unstratified, unfossiliferous deposits of clay and stones and bowlders, locked away between great layers of the sedimentary rocks.
Can it be that there wanders through immeasurable space, upon an orbit of such size that millions of years are required to complete it, some monstrous luminary, so vast that when it returns to us it fills a large part of the orbit which the earth describes around the sun, and showers down upon us deluges ofdébris, while it fills the world with flame? And are these recurring strata of stones and clay and bowlders, written upon these widely separated pages of the geologic volume, the record of its oft and regularly recurring visitations?
[1. "The Great Ice Age," p. 480.
2. Ibid., p. 481.]
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Who shall say? Science will yet compare minutely the composition of these different conglomerates. No secret can escape discovery when the light of a world's intelligence is brought to bear upon it.
And even here we stumble over a still more tremendous fact:
It has been supposed that the primeval granite was the molten crust of the original glowing ball of the earth, when it first hardened as it cooled.
But, lo! the microscope, (so Professor Whichell tells us,) reveals that this very granite, this foundation of all our rocks, this ancient globe-crust, is itself made up of sedimentary rocks, which were melted, fused, and run together in some awful conflagration which wiped out all life on the planet.
Beyond the granite, then, there were seas and shores, winds and rains, rivers and sediment carried into the waters to form the rocks melted up in this granite; there were countless ages; possibly there were animals and man; but all melted and consumed together. Was this, too, the result of a comet visitation?
Who shall tell the age of this old earth? Who shall count the ebbs and flows of eternity? Who shall say how often this planet has been developed up to the highest forms of life, and how often all this has been obliterated in universal fire?
The earth is one great tomb of life:
"All that treadThe globe are but a handful to the tribesThat slumber in its bosom."
"All that treadThe globe are but a handful to the tribesThat slumber in its bosom."
"All that treadThe globe are but a handful to the tribesThat slumber in its bosom."
In endless series the ages stretch along--birth, life, development, destruction. And so shall it be till time is no more.
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WHEN that magnificent genius, Francis Bacon, sent forth one of his great works to the world, he wrote this prayer:
"Thou, O Father, who gavest the visible light as the first-born of thy creatures, and didst pour into man the intellectual light as the top and consummation of thy workmanship, be pleased to protect and govern this work, which coming from thy goodness returneth to thy glory. . . . We humbly beg that this mind may be steadfastly in us; and that thou, by our hands and the hands of others, on whom thou shalt bestow the same spirit, wilt please to convey a largess of new alms to thy family of mankind."
And again he says:
"This also we beg, that human things may not prejudice such as are divine; neither that from the unlocking of the gates of sense, and the kindling of a greater natural light, anything of incredulity, or intellectual night, may arise in our minds toward divine mysteries."
In the same spirit, but humbly halting afar after this illustrious man, I should be sorry to permit this book to go out to the world without a word to remove the impression which some who read it, and may believe it, may form, that such a vast catastrophe as I have depicted militates against the idea that God rules and cares for his world and his creatures. It will be asked, If "there is a special providence even in the fall of a sparrow," how
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could He have permitted such a calamity as this to overtake a beautiful, populous, and perhaps civilized world?
Here we fall again upon the great debate of Job, and we may answer in the words which the author of that book puts into the mouth of God himself, when from out the whirlwind he answered him:
"Shall he that contendeth with the Almighty instruct him "He that reproveth God, let him answer."
In other words, Who and what is man to penetrate the counsels and purposes of the Creator; and who are you, Job?--
"Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare it, if thou hast understanding.
"Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? Or who has stretched the line upon it?
"Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? Or who laid the corner-stone thereof?
"When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy."
Consider, Job, the littleness of man, the greatness of the universe; and what right have you to ask Him, who made all this, the reasons for his actions?
And this is a sufficient answer: A creature seventy inches long prying into the purposes of an Awful Something, whose power ranges so far that blazing suns are seen only as mist-specks!
But I may make another answer:
Although it seems that many times have comets smitten the earth, covering it withdébris, or causing its rocks to boil, and its waters to ascend into the heavens, yet, considering all life, as revealed in the fossils, from the first cells unto this day,nothing has perished that was worth preserving.
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So far as we can judge, after every cataclysm the world has risen to higher levels of creative development.
If I am right, despite these incalculable tons of matter piled on the earth, despite heat and cyclones and darkness and ice and floods, not even a tender tropical plant fit to adorn or sustain man's life was blotted out; not an animal valuable for domestication was exterminated; and not even the great inventions which man had attained to, during the Tertiary Age, were lost. Nothing died but that which stood in the pathway of man's development,--the monstrous animals, the Neanderthal races, the half-human creatures intermediate between man and the brute. The great centers of human activity to-day in Europe and America are upon the Drift-deposits; the richest soils are compounded of the so-called glacial clays. Doubtless, too, the human brain was forced during the Drift Age to higher reaches of development under the terrible ordeals of the hour.
Surely, then, we can afford to leave God's planets in God's hands. Not a particle of dust is whirled in the funnel of the cyclone but God identifies it, and has marked its path.
If we fall again upon
"Axe-ages, sword-ages,Wind-ages, murder-ages--
"Axe-ages, sword-ages,Wind-ages, murder-ages--
"Axe-ages, sword-ages,Wind-ages, murder-ages--
if "sensual sins grow huge"; if "brother spoils brother" if Sodom and Gomorrah come again--who can say that God may not bring out of the depths of space a rejuvenating comet?
Be assured of one thing--this world tends now to a deification of matter.
Dives says: "The earth is firm under my feet; I own my possessions down to the center of the earth and up to
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the heavens. If fire sweeps away my houses, the insurance company reimburses me; if mobs destroy them, the government pays me; if civil war comes, I can convert them into bonds and move away until the storm is over; if sickness comes, I have the highest skill at my call to fight it back; if death comes, I am again insured, and my estate makes money by the transaction; and if there is another world than this, still am I insured: I have taken out a policy in the ----- church, and pay my premiums semiannually to the minister."
And Dives has an unexpressed belief that heaven is only a larger Wall Street, where the millionaires occupy the front benches, while those who never had a bank account on earth sing in the chorus.
Speak to Dives of lifting up the plane of all the underfed, under-paid, benighted millions of the earth--his fellow-men--to higher levels of comfort, and joy, and intelligence--not tearing down any but building up all--and Dives can not understand you.
Ah, Dives! consider, if there is no other life than this, the fate of these uncounted millions of your race! What does existence give to them? What do they get out of all this abundant and beautiful world?
To look down the vista of such a life as theirs is like gazing into one of the corridors of the Catacombs: an alley filled with reeking bones of dead men; while from the cross-arches, waiting for the poor man's coming on, ghastly shapes look out:--sickness and want and sin and grim despair and red-eyed suicide.
Put yourself in his place, Dives, locked up in such a cavern as that, and the key thrown away!
Do not count too much, Dives, on your lands and houses and parchments; your guns and cannon and laws; your insurance companies and your governments. There
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may be even now one coming from beyond Arcturus, or Aldebaran, or Coma Berenices, with glowing countenance and horrid hair, and millions of tons ofdébris, to overwhelm you and your possessions, and your corporations, and all the ant-like devices of man in one common ruin.
Build a little broader, Dives. Establish spiritual relations. Matter is not everything. You do not deal in certainties. You are but a vitalized speck, filled with a fraction of God's delegated intelligence, crawling over an egg-shell filled with fire, whirling madly through infinite space, a target for the bombs of a universe.
Take your mind off your bricks and mortar, and put out your tentacles toward the great spiritual world around you. Open communications with God. You can not help God. For Him who made the Milky Way you can do nothing. But here are his creatures. Not a nerve, muscle, or brain-convolution of the humblest of these but duplicates your own; you excel them simply in the coordination of certain inherited faculties which have given you success. Widen your heart. Put your intellect to work to so readjust the values of labor, and increase the productive capacity of Nature, that plenty and happiness, light and hope, may dwell in every heart, and the Catacombs be closed for ever.
And from such a world God will fend off the comets with his great right arm, and the angels will exult over it in heaven.