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.
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.
Indeed I hardly know how we could get as far as Reading;
for all the world is in the hay-field, and even the
old horse must go thither too, and take his turn at
the hay-cart. Well, the rocks have been where
they are for many a year, and they will wait our leisure
patiently enough: but Midsummer and the hay-field
will not wait. Let us take what God gives when
He sends it, and learn the lesson that lies nearest
to us. After all, it is more to my old mind,
and perhaps to your young mind too, to look at things
which are young and fresh and living, rather than
things which are old and worn and dead. Let
us leave the old stones, and the old bones, and the
old shells, the wrecks of ancient worlds which have
gone down into the kingdom of death, to teach us their
grand lessons some other day; and let us look now
at the world of light and life and beauty, which begins
here at the open door, and stretches away over the
hay-fields, over the woods, over the southern moors,
over sunny France, and sunnier Spain, and over the
tropic seas, down to the equator, and the palm-groves
of the eternal summer. If we cannot find something,
even at starting from the open door, to teach us about
Why and How, we must be very short-sighted, or very
shallow-hearted.
