ON THE END OF THE WORLD.

Waikato Times, Volume VIII, Issue 448, 1 April 1875, Page 2

ON THE END OF THE WORLD.

If the body's death seems to teach the lesson, that modesty is becoming to the scientific speculator, what shall we say as to the prospects of that material frame which is beyond ourselves — the general orderly frame of the universe as we see it around us 9 People would suppose, from, the way in, which you hear men talk now, that there was not the slightest chance of any great organic- change ever coming across the outward -world in which we live. No doubt God works by fixed laws No doubt the world goes on morning and evening, and sumnier and winter ; but what reason have you to suppose that it will so go on to infinity 1 Have no great catastrophes befallen the world before now? Does not physical science itself speak of these catastrophes'? What is there to prevent other catastrophes, produced by the operation of laws of which at present we are very ignorant, coming athwart the globe on which we live, and a complete change taking place in the relations in which things even in the oat ward world stand at present, so that in the sciiptural sense of the word there may be an end to the world, as there is certainly to be an end of our earthly life I To be sure, things have gone on for a long time in the same way, but is that any proof that they are to go on in the same way for ever ! You arise morning after morning in good health and strength, and seem to say to yourself for a time that this will last for ever ; but o»e morning something happens, you cannot explain what ; the best physician in the world cannot tell you what ; but something has happened that lays jou on a bed of sickness, and in two days sends you off to your grave a corpse. Will the experience of the reality of the way in which everything has gone on since you were young, till you have attained maturity, save you from that great mischance 1 Again, men for centuries had ranged over the mountains in Campagne, they thought that all would go on there, herds and flocks feeding, and vineyards growing as they had done for centuries ; and suddenly a sound was heard, and a volcano burst forth, and the greatest philosopher of the age came to look at it, and lost his life while he was looking. But neither he nor any of the men who had speculated with him ever expected that these great cities were to be swept to destruction, and their beautiful pastures to become for a time an arid wilderness. Ido not say such instances explain or tell us disliuctly that such catastrophes will befall the whob globe, but, at all events, I think they ought to make us modest, seeing- that the wisest know so very small a portion of the kwg that regulate God's creation. Surely we may not dogmatically assume that such catastrophes are beyond the range of possible or probaMe events, • It is true, I say, tilings have gon« on for a long time, and men say," Where is the promise of His coming, for all things continue as they were from the beginning of the world ? " But «iill with Him witU whom one day is as a tbouiaod few** and a thousand y«ar« hs one day, there «»y be change* maturing whioh no philosopher of the present pr of any previous age has ever dreamed of, which will bring this great catastrophe to the globe whioh wiU answer, on the whole outward creation, to something as groat in ohange as is our passage from life to death, and what is beyond it, I do not think tljere is anything fanciful in suoh *n exf*est*tion, I believe that a man of that modest naind which is the characteristic of true science, will hesitate before he pronounces with any assurance that such a change may not com© over the world as has been distinctly predicted in the Scriptures.— A w l,u; u lw»n ,»f C.mh'rbnrv in » M/uMMillatiV* M>um-