In the nature of the case geological science can tell us nothing of the condition of things prior to their first motion toward forms, organizations, worlds, and systems. All that it can say of that remote beginning is that there was inchoate matter and motion, and that according to the so-called nebular theory-which is now generally accepted by the most approved scientists, whether believers or unbelievers-it is "in the highest degree probable " that all the members of our solar system have had a common origin out of a common nebulous mass, and that all the stars and systems of the material universe received their births and forms from rents, motions, and chemical interactions in one original and immeasurable ocean of nebulous matter diffused through space.

I do not stop to give the explanations which the holders of this theory advance. I merely take it as they give it. But I find in it just what the first sentence in the Record says.

Both science and the Record agree in giving the universe as one, though made up of many parts. The Record says: "In the beginning God created the heavens [plural] and the earth ;" and "the heavens and the earth," in the ancient diction, mean the universe, the whole concatenation of worlds.

Science and the Record likewise agree touching

the primordial condition of the universe. Some have taken the first verse of Genesis as an independent statement of the whole act of God by which all things were brought into completed existence, and treat it as simply the preface or summation of what is subsequently given in detail. This may be partly right, but the chief force of the description falls upon an original stage of the great creation-work— namely, the bringing into being of the undefined elements out of which the subsequently completed heavens and earth were formed. Some find this signified in the Hebrew particle eth, which is assigned no meaning in our English translations, and claim that the passage may be legitimately rendered: "In the beginning God created toward the heavens and the earth;" that is, called into being the original elements of them, putting them in process of becoming what they afterward became. The word created, as distinguished from the word made in the after parts of the narrative, would well bear out this idea, as the creation of the elements is one thing, and the making or forming of them into definitive shapes and conditions is quite a different thing. The condition of the earth, as described in the second verse, would also imply that the creative act of the first verse still left the worlds in a state of becoming, but needing to be wrought into defined elements, consistency, and

form. And in this view of the case the Record answers exactly to what science now accepts as the primordial history of the formation of the universe.

In this process of world-formation from original nebulous matter some portions of the separating and forming masses, from difference in size and other causes, would reach a condition of order and habitableness long in advance of others, and some systems and portions of systems would be in a state of defined worlds while others were yet in the toils of the primordial nebulosity and confusion. Science thinks it has abundant evidence that some worlds are still in processes which others passed through long ages ago. And this also is the natural implication of the Record.

How long it was from the time these separating and formative processes began to the time in which our earth appeared as a distinct orb in our solar system, no one can begin to tell. It may have been ages of ages as we now count. Science claims that

it must have been millions on millions of years. But, whatever length of time was required, there is ample room for it in the gap between the statement in the first verse and that in the second; so that the Record on this point amply responds to what science has been led to conclude.

It is now also put forth as scientifically proven

that the original condition of the earth, after becoming detached and rolled into a distinct mass to itself, was that of a dark, fluid, gaseous mist, in which all its elements were confusedly held. And this, again, is precisely what is affirmed in the second verse of the Record, which says: "The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep."

This tohu va bohu, darkness and deep, of the Hebrew version is correspondingly explained in other ancient versions. The Babylonian, according to Berosus, says: "There existed nothing but darkness and an abyss of waters." According to the tablets, "The chaos of waters gave birth to all.” The Egyptian version says: "There was a vast abyss enveloped in boundless darkness." The Phoenician says: "All was a dark windy air and an unbroken dark chaos." The Indian, according to Max Müller, says that the like of it has not been since; darkness covered all in gloom profound, and the whole was a vast ocean without light. Ovid among the ancient poets, and Milton among the modern, have poetically enlarged upon the Record, and spoken of the presentation as a scene of confused desolation

"A dark

Illimitable ocean, without bound,

Without dimensions, where length, breadth, and height,

And time, and place, are lost; where eldest Night

And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, held

Eternal anarchy, amidst the noise

Of endless wars, and by confusion stood,

For hot, cold, moist, and dry, four champions fierce,
Strove here for mastery, and to battle brought
Their embryon atoms."

And this "formless, void, dark, deep" of confused fluid matter, rolling in a vast undefined mass, as described in the Record, answers precisely to the theory which the latest and best science now puts forth as the truth in the case.

Another particular which science now affirms with reference to the formation of the earth is, that in the course of the turmoil and confusion of this vast mass of warring embryonic atoms the whole extent of it became so heated as to become one scene of burning fire, such as now exists over the face of the sun. Thus it is said that "the first clear view which we obtain of the early condition of the earth presents to us a ball of matter fluid with intense heat, spinning on its own axis and revolving around the sun."

A world of fire means the presence of light, just as we have light from the burning face of the sun, but light independent of the sun. And this answers again with wonderful satisfactoriness to the third