II. But there will be in space what the world has become. It is
nowhere intimated that matter had been annihilated. Worlds shall
perish as worlds. They shall wax old as doth a garment. They will be
folded up as a vesture, and they "shall be changed." The motto with
which this article began says heavens pass away, elements melt, earth
and its works are burned up. But always after the heaven and earth
pass away we are to look for "new heavens and a new earth." On all
that God has made he has stamped the great principle of progress,
refinement, development--rock to soil, soil to vegetable life, to
insect, bird, and man. Each dies as to what it is, that it may have
resurrection or may feed something higher. So, in the light of
revelation, earth is not lost. Science comes, after ages of creeping,
up to the same position. It, too, asserts that matter is
indestructible. Burn a candle in a great jar hermetically sealed. The
weight of the jar and contents is just the same after the burning as
before. A burned-up candle as big as the world will not be
annihilated. It will be "changed."
It is necessary for us to get familiar with some of the protean
metamorphoses of matter. Up at New Almaden, above the writer, is a
vast mass of porous lava rock into which has been infiltrated a great
deal of mercury.
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