Page:The Philosophy of Creation.djvu/325

 of life. Though ages have past, their uses are all present and enduring.

Plants reach their limit of age, and decay, yet their uses are perpetuated; and plant life, through the production of seed, does not perish. Likewise animals die; but, through the production of seed, their kind is reproduced, and their uses are permanent. The crumbling material forms do not argue the final destruction of creation, but, when interiorly viewed, they reveal that nature is the outer plane where creative forces, which are eternal, form and reform, preserving and perpetuating use.

Looking merely upon the outward appearance, it has been concluded that as the lower material forms, plants and animals, perish, as ages change, seas shift, and mountains are levelled, nature herself must come to an end, the sun burn out, and the universe be dissolved; but the very things from which such deductions are drawn, if the sight penetrates to their uses, show that the earth is permanent, that the sun can not fail, and that the universe is eternal. For since the uses to the earth of lesser things, like plants in providing alluvium, do not perish, the uses of the earth to the plant that are so much more vast and prior must be equally permanent. And if the uses of the earth to the plant are per-