The Project Gutenberg EBook of Beside the Still Waters, by Charles Beard

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Title: Beside the Still Waters
A Sermon

Author: Charles Beard

Release Date: January 20, 2007 [EBook #20402]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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BESIDE THE STILL WATERS:

A SERMON,

PREACHED IN

RENSHAW STREET CHAPEL, LIVERPOOL,

ON

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 1871.

BY

CHARLES BEARD, B.A.

PRINTED FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION.

LONDON:
PRINTED BY C. GREEN AND SON,
STRAND, W.C.

In Memory of

ELIZABETH GREENE GAIR.

BESIDE THE STILL WATERS.

"He leadeth me beside the still waters."
PSALM xxiii. 2.

There has been a period of geological speculation, at which all the
changes which have taken place upon the earth's surface, and have left
their unmistakable marks in countless relics of animal and vegetable
life, were attributed to the action of sudden and violent forces, of
which, to-day, earthquake and tempest and volcano are only the feeble
and transitory types. Those changes have manifestly been so great and so
universal, as to stand out in vivid contrast to the imperceptibly slow,
the gently gradual processes, which are all that we are now able to
watch and to record: surely we can attribute them only to causes as
exceptional as themselves. We see Niagara cutting its backward way
through the ravine, so many feet in a thousand years; the lava stream
descends the mountain-side like a black and burning glacier, and
destruction too plainly marks its path; a storm bursts upon the hills,
and for long miles the valleys are choked with barren mud, the bridges
scattered in ruin through the stream, the cheerful husbandry of men laid
hopelessly waste. But we cannot watch the slow upheaval of a long line
of coast, where the fisherman hardly knows at the end of a lifetime
whether the sea has drawn back or his own landmarks have been moved; we
are all unable to note how new continents are now being formed in the
ocean's stillest depths, from