We are permitted to look a little
way into these great secrets of Nature; not far enough, indeed, to clear
up every difficulty, but quite enough to penetrate us with admiration of
that wonderful system of counterbalances and compensations, that
adjustment of causes and consequences, by which, throughout all nature,
evils are made to work their own cure, life to spring out of death, and
renovation to tread in the steps and efface the vestiges of decay." And
he finds the clew to the secret, the key of the whole matter, in the
earth's vast central heat. This it is which produces the convulsions
that change the terrestrial configuration, and fill the minds of men
with fear and awe. Conceive of "a sea of fire, on which we are all
floating, land and sea,"--a boiling, seething, incandescent reservoir in
the centre of our planet; and the solution of the problem will seem to
you not difficult. Such a sea would necessarily roll its liquid matter
to and fro; and the removal of ever so small a portion from one point to
another on the earth's surface would tend to disturb the equilibrium of
the floating mass; just as, when a ship is launched into the river, the
water it displaces is carried to the opposite bank with greater or less
violence, according to the amount of displacement.
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