ects from causes,
wholly free from everything vindictive.

Secondly. The ecclesiastical doctrine makes the dreadful
conclusion a sudden event, an inconceivable shock of horror,
falling in an instant, overwhelming all its victims with the
swiftness of lightning in the unutterable agony of their ruin. But
the scientific doctrine makes the climax a matter of slow and
gradual approach. Whether the worlds are to be frozen up by
increasing cold, or to evaporate in culminating heat, or to be
converted into gas as they meet in their career, the changes of
the chemical conditions will be so steady and moderate beforehand
as to cause all living creatures to have diminished in numbers by
insensible degrees, and to have utterly ceased long before the
final shock arrives.

Thirdly. The ecclesiastical doctrine makes the sequel imminent,
near, ready to fall at a moment's warning. At any hour the signal
may strike. Thus it is to the earnest believer a constant, urgent
alarm, close at hand. But the scientific doctrine depicts the
close as almost unimaginably remote. All the data in the hands of
our scientists lead their calculations as to the nearest probable
end to land them in an epoch so far off as to be stated only in
thousands of millions of years. Thus the picture is so distant as
to be virtually enfeebled into nothing. We cannot, even by the
most vivid imagination, bring it home closely enough to make it
real and effective on our plans.

And, finally, the theological dogma of the destruction of the
world professes to be an infallible certainty. The believer holds
that he absolutely knows it by a revelation of supernatural
authority. But with the scientist such a belief is held as merely
a probability. A billion of centuries hence the world may perhaps
come to an end; and, on the other hand, the phenomena which lead
to such a belief may yet be explained as implying no such result.
And these two issues, so far as our social or ideal experience is
concerned, are virtually the same.

A brilliant French writer has suggested that even if the natural
course of evolution does of itself necessitate the final
destruction of the world, yet our race, judging from the
magnificent achievements of science and art already reached, may,
within ten thousand centuries, which will be long before the
foreseen end approaches, obtain such a knowledge and control of
the forces of nature as to make collective humanity master of this
planet, able