Page:The Judgment Day.pdf/51

 ders permission we will mutually dismiss our fears about this fair world which a merciful Creator has formed for our use, ever being consumed by the breaking forth of its internal fires. I have known by sad and painful experience the depressing, and withering effect of that gloomy anticipation of the approaching dissolution of our earth. And never shall I forget the joyful delight with which I looked abroad upon the fair face of nature and the works of human industry, when this unhappy delusion first passed away from my mind. I found myself in a new world! New scenes were around me, I had supposed,—for my teachers had told me so, that this earth was soon to be destroyed. And as I had long been accustomed to suppose that the Creator works by means, and in accordance with certain established laws, I had turned my thoughts downwards, towards that great volume of fire of which I had been told the central portions of the earth were composed. I looked to this as the most probable means of putting an end to the present order of things. It is true I thought the man who would venture to predict that awful catastrophe as about to take place on a certain day within twelve months, must be deranged and aught to be sent to a mad house. But on the other hand I looked upon the man who would put off the destruction of the world, for more than a few hundred years at the most, as a great heretic who ought to have his name erased from the church books, or as a hopeless infidel who means to put off the destruction of the world intirely. But since I have become rationally convinced that this earth was made for permanent use, I have been led to inquire whether those internal fires by which I had supposed it would be burned up, have any other than an imaginary existence. The result of my investigation has just now been placed before the reader, and is most respectfully commended to his candid and enlightened judgment.

But if there is no reason to believe that the earth will be