and Earth, or the whole material universe, were afterward to be formed. Modern scientists, in their hunger for a physical cause to every phenomenon, have studied long and hard to account for the first existence of matter and of force. Failing to find in Nature an adequate cause, they are driven to the illogical supposition that they never had a beginning. In Genesis we have the only information the human mind has yet acquired as to their origin. Matter was created.

In the second verse the Earth, "without form and void," was mixed up in confusion with the other matter destined to form our solar system. This whole mass of matter was in a dead and useless condition, and without any definite shape because it had no force of attraction or motion, no manifestation of light or heat. No force in any form had yet been caused to act upon or through matter. We know that this must have been the condition of things at that time, for we are told that "darkness was upon the face of the deep," (the "deep" here mentioned was not the deep of ocean, for water as such could not then exist, but the deep of chaos). Attractive forces, whether molar, molecular, or atomic, produce motion, motion produces heat, and cosmical heat and light are inseparable. All forms of force are transformable into light, and without these forces light is a physical impossibility. Force, like matter, is held by so-called "modern science" to be eternal, and to be an inseparable accompaniment of matter. Yet here we are taught that matter once existed without any power to attract, repel or influence other matter. It would ever have remained so, and would now relapse at once into its original chaos but for the brooding spirit of God. Force is not a property of matter but an attribute of spirit. When the "Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters," or hovered with creative power over this unmeasured expanse of dead matter, the particles were made to attract one another and they rushed together producing an enormous conflagration. If, as the chemist asserts, the light of a common fire is due to the clashing of atoms of oxygen and carbon, and the intensity of the calcium light results from the concussion of the atoms of oxygen and hydrogen in the blowpipe, it is easy to conceive that the first collision of all the atoms in the universe would produce no ordinary illumination.

When matter became capable of attraction and motion it was for the first time prepared to obey the command: "Let there be light." Dividing the light from the darkness could not refer to the alternation of day and night due to the rotation of the Earth on its axis, though many thus explain it; for the Earth was not at this time a distinct planet but a part of the nebulous solar mass, and the Sun and Moon were not appointed to divide the day from the night till the fourth day. The term "light" is, without doubt, used here in the abstract as now separated from the darkness of all the past. The passage would, perhaps, be more correctly understood if rendered: And God called the light what we call day, or day-light, and the darkness what we call night.

This ends the first creative Day. At this point in the history of the matter of which our Earth formed a part, it had reached the condition in which the ebular hypothesis first takes it up.

The word "firmament" originally means, not something solid, but an expanse, and doubtless here refers to the open space occupied by the heavenly bodies, perhaps both in and out of the solar system. The word is evidently used in a more restricted sense in recording the work of the fourth day. There it has reference to the space occupied by the Sun and Moon; and in the fifth day, to our atmosphere in which birds and insects fly. As to what is meant by dividing "the waters from the waters," there has been much difference of opinion. While most understand by it the separation of seas from clouds by precipitation of the moisture, and the clearing up of mist in our atmosphere, the idea of Dana that then the "planets were invidualized," and of Mitchell that the matter they now contain was then collected around centers of aggregation, seem more reasonable.

The same difficulty occurs in defining satisfactorily the waters under and and above the firmament. They are commonly understood to mean respectively seas and clouds, and plausibility for this view is given in verse nine when the waters under the Heavens were gathered into one place and the dry land was made to appear. But doubtless the most satisfactory interpretation is to consider the waters under the firmament as the nebulous matter, out of which our earth was formed, separate and distinct from the other members of the solar system, and these as the waters above the firmament. For, from the conditions of the nebu lous mass of dead matter uniformly diffused in space just vivified with powers of attraction and motion, and having just manifested the result of its first molecular activity in the first appearance of light. before it had contracted, before a single planet had separated from the parent mass, the transition seems too abrupt to pass all at once to the time when the Earth had already left the solar mass, had concentrated from its original ring, thrown off its Moon, contracted to its present size, and cooled till its aqueous vapor had been precipitated to its surface. Again, if the the separatiou of these waters referred to the clearing up of mists in the Earth's atmosphere, why should not the Sun and Moon have become visible at once instead of two days later? So slow a progression of events from the second to the fourth creative day seems strangely out of harmony with their rapid progression between the first and second days, of which, if the generally accepted view is correct, Moses makes no record whatever. Hence I conclude that this separation and concentration of matter so as to leave the firmament, or empty space, between the planets of the solar system, was the work of the second day.

As the statement, "God saw that it was good," concludes the record of each day's work except the second, scholars have expended much fruitless labor in their attempts to explain this omission; but as it occurs twice in the records of the third day, Patrick, Bush, and others, claim that verses nine and ten belong to the second day. This would make a more natural division of creative work, as others without regard to this expression of approval have suggested, -and make the recorded approval of the Creator to conclude the work of each day. If we accept this division, we must add to the changes on the second day the concentration of the gaseous matter of the earth, first to the liquid form, then

to a solid till it resulted, according to the hypothesis, in the elevation of land above the ocean.

After the upheaval of the land, the next thing in natural order would be the utilizing of it, as soon as sufficiently cooled, by the growth thereon of low orders of plant-life. And Moses next records that the Earth brought forth grass, the herb yielding seed and the fruit-bearing tree, following each other in the same ascending order as determined in nature by the advanced paleobotanist. It should be noticed: 1. That the grass is not mentioned as yielding seed; it perhaps refers to sea-weeds, lichens and fungi,-the lowest of plants and the first found fossils in the rocks, which propagate by means of spores instead of seeds; 2. that the herb is mentioned as yielding seed after his kind; and 3. that the tree is specified as yielding fruit, as if for food. Now the fact that these three groups of plants, evidently representing all the great subdivisions of the vegetable kingdom, were all created on the third day, would lead to the supposition that the work begun on the several days might be only initiatory, and might continue to unfold with higher forms of life during the succeeding days; for geology furnishes us no evidence that all these kinds of plants existed before the commencement of animal life introduced on the fifth day. In fact geology has not yet satisfactorily shown that plant remains exist in older rocks than do those of animals. Yet the presence of graphite, a pure carbon, and so far as known the result of vegetable growth, which is found in abundance in the older rocks, argues the pre-existence of rank vegetation. The presence of iron ore is also considered by some an indication of vegetable life, and iron is especially abundant in the earlier strata. The statement is common that plant remains doubtless exist in the Earth and only await future discovery. But this statement, based as it is upon our ignorance, can have but little scientific weight.

Another supposition, open to the same criticism, is that the conditions necessary for the preservation of plants were not as favorable as for the preservation of animals. This theory, however, has some plausibility because it is well known that the woody structure of plants is far more destructible than the calcareous or silicious shells of animals, and it is only these remains of animals that are usually found. Physiology teaches the priority of vegetable life, for it is essential to animal life, being its universal food. Another question that frequently arises in this connection is: How are we to account for the existence of vegetable life upon the Earth before the Sun appeared, when plants cannot grow without sunlight?

According to the nebular hypothesis, the light and heat from the nebulous Sun would have been sufficient to promote vegetable growth, even while it was yet so enveloped in the vapors of its own atmosphere, or concealed by the unprecipitated vapors surrounding the earth, as to be invisible. And, according to the Mosaic record, the light abstract or cosmical of the first day would be sufficient to promote vegetable growth. But it is highly probable as we shall see a little later in discussing the creative days, that, in the panorama of creation which Moses saw, his attention was not arrested by the low orders of plants

which first appeared, but what he records as the creation of the third day was the luxuriant vegetable growth of a later geologic age.

The work of the fourth day consisted in bringing into full view the two great lights understood to be our Sun and Moon. To appear with disks of distinct outline as we now see them, instead of immense masses of nebulous matter, the process of condensation must have been far advanced. Whether the work of this day resulted in far greater condensation than existed at its beginning, or simply in clearing up the mists and clouds in the Earth's atmosphere so as to reveal the Sun and Moon, seems difficult to determine. The former view would seem to make the work more in harmony with that of the other days, as regards the magnitude of results accomplished; while the latter seems more consistent with the facts as we understand them. We could not expect the Moon and Sun to arrive at the same state of condensation at the same time, for we known the Moon, on account of its small size, is now a cold inactive cinder, a "dead planet," while the Sun is still in a glowing state of igneous fusion. But it is not neces sary that we should suppose the same amount of time and force to be expended in the work of each day or that the accomplished results should be of equal importance. The only essential seems to be, an event sufficiently striking and important to impress the mind of the inspired writer as one worthy of especial attention and record.

On the fifth day the waters were commanded to bring forth the various lower animals. "Moving creatures" are understood from the original to be those which rapidly multiply, probably for the most part oviparous. "Fowls" include every flying thing, insects, pterodactyls and other bird-like reptiles. "Whales" include the monstrous saurians of the Reptilian Age, and also, doubtless, sharks, crocodiles, and the like. In the order in which these are mentioned, it is not easy to trace exact harmony between Genesis and Geology. Fishes might answer to the moving creatures, as they are among the most productive of all animal life, one fish often depositing hundreds of thousands and even millions of eggs. But several other forms of life appear in the geological record before fishes. Radiates and Mollusks were especially abundant, and Trilobites less so. These may be included in the expression "moving creatures," as well as other peculiarly prolific animals.

As Moses notices only the most prominent points in the earth's history, the few objects he mentions are doubtless typical representatives of many others he passes over in silence. If we reason from other points in this history on which increased knowledge of nature has thrown great additional light, it is safe to infer that when we thoroughly understand the affinities of all the lower animals both fossil and living, and their exact relations to one another through a more careful and intelligent study of these forms; and when we have acquired a more thorough knowledge of the Scripture record itself by more profound study of shades of meaning in the original words, and more exhaustive comparison of manuscripts, not omitting, in either line of investigation, the illumination of the Holy Spirit, then we may expect to find that, for their number, the few words

Moses uses are the most comprehensive that could be found, and represent most fully the real relations existing among the lower animals.

While most of the life referred to in the creations of this day belongs to the water and is brought forth in it, this cannot be true, with our present understanding of the birds, though it may be of all other flying things. In verse twenty-one, however, the winged fowl is not included in the expression, "which the waters brought forth;" and in verse nineteen of chapter two we are told that God formed every fowl of the air, as well as every beast of the field, 'out of the ground." From this it would be reasonable to conclude that the fowl of the earlier part of this day were not the same as those of the latter. If we consider the first fowl as representing pterodactyls and other bird-like reptiles, and also aquatic insects upon which these reptiles fed, and the last to be reptilian birds of the Mesozoic age, followed by real birds associated with beasts of the field, we have an order of succession exactly parallel with that which we find in the record of the rocks. Moreover, the lack of definiteness in the term fowl, and also its application to both water and land animals, may be a covert indication of the transition from reptilian to bird characteristics in the Reptilian age, as has been shown by Prof. Marsh, and others; and thus evidence the fact that the inspired Word of God, even in its secondary office as expositor of nature, is superior to the latest discoveries of modern science.

The sixth day is devoted to the creation of the highest of the lower animals and, lastly, of man. Like the plants of the third day, the lower animals of this last day are represented as brought forth from the Earth. These, no doubt, include the gigantic mammals of the Tertiary Age and all the quadrupeds from that time to the present. As man is the highest of mammals the physical work of this day was devoted entirely to the creation of mammals. The physical part of man, we are told in Genesis ii., 7, was formed of the dust of the ground. But there was more than a physical creation on this day; and the form of expression relating to it is entirely different. The record represents the Creator as summoning all the powers of the triune godhead in this last and crowning work of all His wondrous acts of creation. Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. While man's body was formed of the dust, and in this one thing related to the lower animals,-whether by genetic descent or by immediate creation neither Scripture nor science fully assures us,-this was not all of man. In addition to this, God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul. This cannot refer to animal life of air-breathing animals, for all quadrupeds possessed this before, and the same statement is nowhere made of them. None of the beasts of the Earth, or of the cattle, or of the creeping things had this breath of life. They were never made to become such living immortal souls. No doubt the lower animals have limited thinking and reasoning powers, but they have no power of abstract reasoning and no moral sense. They were not created, as was man, in knowledge, righteousness and true holiness after the image of God. Man in the image of God is a spiritual being. God is spirit. It is this spiritual part of man which entitles him to dominion over the lower ani