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er rocks being harder than the upper and newer ones. But why should the lower rocks be older and the upper rocks newer? You told me just now that the high mountains in Wales were ages older than Windsor Forest, upon which we stand: but yet how much lower we are here than if we were on a Welsh mountain. Ah, my dear child, of course that puzzles you, and I am afraid it must puzzle you still till we have another talk; or rather it seems to me that the best way to explain that puzzle to you would be for you and me to go a journey into the far west, and look into the matter for ourselves; and from here to the far west we will go, either in fancy or on a real railroad and steamboat, before we have another talk about these things. Now it is time to stop. Is there anything more you want to know? for you look as if something was puzzling you still. Were there any men in the world while all this was going on? I think not. We have no proof that there were not: but also we have no proof that there were; the cave-men, of whom I told you, lived many ages after the coal was covered up. You seem to be sorry that there were no men in the world then. Because it seems a pity that there was no one to see those beautiful coral-reefs and coal-forests. No one to see them, my child? Who told you that? Who told you there are not, and never have been any rational beings in this vast universe, save certain weak, ignorant, short-sighted creatures shaped like you and me? But even if it were so, and no created eye had ever beheld those ancient wonders, and no created heart ever enjoyed them, is there not one Uncreated who has seen them and enjoyed them from the beginning? Were not these creatures enjoying themselves each after their kind? And was there not a Father in Heaven who was enjoying their enjoyment, and enjoying too their beauty, which He had formed according to the ideas of His Eternal Mind? Recollect what you were told on Trinity Sunday--That this world was not made for man alone: but that man, and this world, and the whole Universe was made for God; for He created all things, and for His pleasure they are, and were created. CHAPTER X--FIELD AND WILD Where were we to go next? Into the far west, to see how all the way along the railroads the new rocks and soils lie above the older, and yet how, when we get westward, the oldest rocks rise highest into the air. Well, we will go: but not, I think, to-day.
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