New Earth

“ There is, above all this thought of parts, of features, of phenomena, the conception of the Earth as a whole, existing in itself, and for itself, an organic thing, advancing by growth, and becoming more and more perfect and beautiful. Without trying to impose on you anything vague and transcendental, I wish to lead you to view the globe as almost a living thing,—not a crystal, assuming new grace by virtue of an external law,—but a world, taking on grandeur and worth, by virtue of an inward necessity. The individuality of the earth must be the watchword of re-created Geography. ”

“ Each in its own way and in its own time was capable of bearing and supporting new life. But of the three, the one called Earth was fairest. Like a fertile womb it lay sleeping, a perfect cloud-veiled globe of wide red lands and mighty oceans. Already the throbbings of life could be seen, as tiny colonies of cells swam restlessly among themselves, waiting only for direction. ”

“ Geology, I should thus conclude, admits us a step nearer than any of the other sciences, even than astronomy itself, to the actings of the divine Architect. The revolution of every season demonstrates a providence—the workings of a perpetual miracle—in its sustaining energies. But geology shows us, not the mere annual renovation of things already existing, but the circumstances under which they began to exist. The fiat of Omnipotence peals through the bounds of creation. The earth and the seas obey. We see new things starting into being. ”

“ Why should there not be a new and higher plane of existence to be attained to by humanity—a new geological period, so to speak, in which present anomalies shall be corrected, and the grand unity of the universe and its harmony with its Maker fully restored. ”

“ With this triad, which originally sprang from a mysterious cow, the new world began. This new world, which represents the present system, will in time be devoured by flames; but another earth will arise from the ocean,—an earth far more beautiful than this, upon which all kinds of grain and delicious fruits will grow without cultivation. ”

“ If the new earth contains only the same proportion of land as the old, there would still be about forty acres for every redeemed soul But the new earth is represented by the Apostle John, as being without any sea, which increases its capacity for inhabitants above the old four fold. The farmer who is looking forward to to the new earth for his everlasting inheritance, need have no fears of of being too much limited in his possessions. ”

“ Then succeeded an interval of chaotic confusion, and when at length the waters subsided, and dry land again appeared, a new age in the history of the Globe was ushered in, and the Earth was again peopled by a new creation. ”

“ In the period between the wreck of the globe as the habitation of the rebel angels and the epoch of the first day, the earth was as described in Gen 1:2, "without form and void, and darkness upon the face of the deep,"-a globe of mineral structure, submerged in water, and mantled in impenetrable night. Out of these crude materials, a new habitation was constructed, and adapted to the abode of new races of living creatures. ”

“ This old creation, with its temporary mediatorial constitution, then, is but a grand system of means, elementary of a still grander and inconceivably more magnificent creation, which will be of an unchangeable and eternal constitution. The old Mosaic physical heavens and earth are to the new creation as the accumulated materials of a building are to the edifice about to be built: and hold the same relation to the new heavens, as the natural system does to the spiritual. ”

“ But, taking into account the internal forces of the earth, which, upheaving the sea bottom, give rise to new land, he thought that these operations of degradation and elevation might compensate each other; and that thus, for any assignable time, the general features of our planet might remain what they are. ”

“ Supposing the ordeal of fiery purification to take place upon this earth, these experiments appear to indicate the mighty changes which would thence result. There would be no annihilation, but everything would be transformed from the centre of the globe to the verge of its atmosphere—old things would pass away, all things become new, and the beautiful mythos of the phœnix be realized in the fresh creation. ”

“ And then a new creation of plants and animals succeeded; still living under the fostering influence of the united pair, Air and Water, which never ceased to brood over the World of Life, their Nurseling; and then, perhaps, a new change of the limits of land and water, and a new creation again: till at last, Man was placed upon the Earth ”

“ And although he may not have been exempt from the law of evolution,—that method of creation which has made all life on earth akin,—yet his appearance was an event which in importance ranks with the advent of life upon the planet, and marks a new manifestation of creative energy upon a higher plane. ”

“ And sun and moon and starry fires and earth and air and sea
Are creatures from the deep let loose who pause in ecstasy,
Or wing their wild and heavenly way until again they find
[12] The ancient deep and fade therein, enraptured, bright and blind. ”

“ All generation is motion. But the rational probability is, that the various species of homo found on this globe, were always upon it; Nature propagating each upon that part of its surface that is congenial to the particular species; and that in the almost inconceivably slow process of the change, by which portions of the globe's surface become alternately sea and land, they migrated in succession, as old lands were wasted by the sea, and as new lands afforded asylums. ”

“ For they were the first to set foot on a vast new planet! An entire new world, containing heaven alone knew what forms of life, what monstrous or infinitesimal creatures, lay before them. Even the profound awe they had experienced when landing on the moon was dwarfed by the solemnity of this occasion; just as it is less soul stirring to discover an arctic continent which is perpetually cased in barren ice, than to discover a continent which is warmly fruitful and, probably, teeming with life. ”

“ Even now continents are being slowly depressed or upheaved, even now mountain ranges are being raised to a different level, table-lands are being formed, great valleys are being gradually scooped out; old shore-lines shift their place, old soundings vary; the sea advances in one place and retires in another; on every side nature’s plastic hand is still at work, modelling and remodelling the earth, and making it constantly a fit abode for those who dwell upon it. ”

“ Who now can fancy a limit to the social movement with which that vast hemisphere is heaving all over—the advancing tide of its population spreading in every region—the forests cleared and covered with a net-work of railways, the rivers bridged from end to end with a navy of steamships—and all vivified and in motion through the agency of this long undiscovered product of the earth? Geological time rolled on, and the surface of our planet was replenished with the hidden treasure, and the man of science has no numbers to reckon the years that are past. ”

“ Now, the earth as a planet is in process of evolution. Not many things are more certain than this. The earth has come out of fire. It has grown to be what it is. Its mountains, valleys, plains, seas, shores, islands, lakes, rivers, and continents—these were not always here. They have been evolved. Not only the earth, but the entire family of spheres of which the earth is a member—the solar system—are all evolving. ”

“ He recognises that the world he studies has in it the elements of change—the forces of Nature are everywhere modifying the earth’s surface—considerable changes are sometimes brought about — 9 — even in one’s lifetime, while within the course of historical ages still greater mutations have taken place—he becomes conscious, in short, that the existing state of things is but the latest phase of an interminable series of changes stretching back into the illimitable past, and destined to be prolonged into the indefinite future. ”

“ The just view is this, that when the former land of the globe had been complete, so as to begin to waste and be impaired by the encroachment of the sea, the present land began to appear above the surface of the ocean. In this manner we suppose a due proportion to be always preserved of land and water upon the surface of the globe, for the purpose of a habitable world such as this which we possess. We thus also allow time and opportunity for the translation of animals and plants to occupy the earth. ”

“ According to the speculations of some writers, there have been in the past history of the planet alternate periods of tranquillity and convulsion, the former enduring for ages, and resembling that state of things now experienced by man: the other brief, transient, and paroxysmal, giving rise to new mountains, seas, and valleys, annihilating one set of organic beings, and ushering in the creation of another. ”

“ It suggests that the succession of organic forms which, in a due series, the earth's surface in the long lapse of time has presented, is the counterpart of a like progress which other planets in the solar system exhibit in myriads of years, and leads us to the conception of the rise, development, and extinction of a multiplicity of such living forms in other systems—a march of life through the universe, and its passing away. ”

“ Whether there is a change in the organization itself we cannot tell; but this is certain,—that, as the planet varies with the atmosphere which surrounds it, so each new generation varies from the last, because it inhales as its atmosphere the accumulated experience and knowledge of the whole past of the world. ”

“ It seems almost ridiculous thus to connect the persistence of the form of a little plant with the subsidence and elevation of whole continents, and the lapse of enormous periods of time. Yet the Power which preserves unchanged from generation to generation the humblest animal or plant, is the same with that which causes the permanence of the great laws of physical nature, and the continued revolutions of the earth and all its companion spheres. ”

“ We may believe that having become separated in the lapse of ages, by vast oceans and countries which they could not traverse, they have gradually been affected by, and derived impressions from, a climate which has itself been modified so as to become a new one through the operation of those same causes which dissociated the individuals of the old and new world from one another ”

“ CONSERVING OUR NATURAL ENVIRONMENT Beyond civilization we will conserve, share, beautify and, if possible, improve the earth, which is our physical base of operations.
The earth is an irregular sphere, one of a number of planets circling the sun, from which we get light, heat and radiation. The earth has a shell or crust made of various minerals. ”

“ I wish you to learn that World building is not only a process of bygone ages, but that far off in the depths of space innumerable Worlds are now being formed, just as this Planet and Earth have been formed. ”

“ How amazing it is that this ponderous globe should be suspended in the fluid air, without any visible support, and upheld only by the sovereign will of its almighty Creator! His power, who “hangeth the earth upon nothing,” is inconceivably great; and the revolutions of this globe produce the most beneficial effects. The daily rotation of the earth causes the uniform succession of light and darkness; and its annual motion occasions the difference of the length of the days and nights, and the beautiful diversity of the seasons. ”

“ In my recent works, Man's Place in the Universe and The World of Life, the conclusion was forced upon me, that the scheme of the development of the universe of stars and nebulæ with which we are acquainted, and especially of our sun and solar system, was such as to furnish the exact conditions on our earth, and there only, which should allow of the origin and evolution of the organic world culminating in man. ”

“ We told of a new world discovered four hundred years ago, of its primeval forests and virgin soil, of its unwritten pages on which we should inscribe the opening chapters of a new Genesis. And, lo! the new world, like the old, is but a palimpsest! ”

“ The Earth, considered as one of those spheres which circulate round the sun amidst the wide expanse of the firmanent, holds but an insignificant position among them, especially when compared with those great and magnificent orbs, Jupiter and Saturn; but, in another point of view, as the dwelling-place of all the animated beings, vegetables, and minerals, with which we have any practical knowledge, it holds to us a position in creation far above all the others. ”

“ And through the working of this ideal, and under the influence of the rest of the world, the Earth has developed from a flaming sphere into a molten ball, into a globe of barren land and sea, and so on into the verdure-covered and animal- and man-inhabited Earth of the present age. The Earth, like the rose-seed, contained within it a core of Activity which permeated every particle and constrained it with its fellow-particles to direct itself towards the ideal—a core of Activity which was animated by the ideal, while the ideal on its part had an innate faculty of perfecting itself. ”

“ He transforms the surface of the globe by irrigation, cultivation, mining, quarrying, making canals and railways, breeding certain animals, and destroying others; and when we ask ourselves, from the standpoint of an outside observer, what is the end achieved by all these activities, we find that it can be summed up in one very simple formula: to transform as much as possible of the matter on the earth's surface into human bodies. ”