the heretofore dark mass began to give light.

This at first was poor in quality, as shown by the spectroscopic study of present nebulæ. They give a spectrum with only three or four narrow bright lines indicating a very small range of colors. But as condensation went on, its quality kept improving until our planet attained the temperature of our sun, and then the light was good for all its present uses.

This completion of the evolution of good light occurred before the earth was covered with a dark crust, and, therefore, before its opaque body divided the light on the sun side from the darkness on the other.

Then day and night began.

And then was the first day.

"And God saw the light that it was good."

before

"he divided the light from the darkness."

"And the light he called Day, and the darkness he called Night." "And the evening and the morning were the first day."

So far as I can see, I have set down every physical statement in these first five verses with the closest adherence to their literal meaning, and without any change in the order in which they stand. The reader, if he will turn to the chapter, can verify this for himself, and it is hoped he will do so. If any one imagines that what Genesis says is unimportant, he is greatly mistaken. In fact the better physicist he is, the better will he realize the serious and far-reaching effects of a successful reversal of the statements, or the order, of those few verses. It may make this more evident if I again use parallel columns.

GENESIS REVersed.

The heavens and earth had no beginning.

THE EFFECT IF THE REVERSAL
IS ESTABLISHhed.

Then there cannot be any tidal friction, the sun cannot be losing

I know of no document whose successful refutation would be more important than the established reversal of what is said For science to deny their truth would

Compare with it the Chaldean myths, trivial platitudes when true, and grossly absurd as to the rest. The first tablet, the one which is so often said to correspond with the first two verses of Genesis, is in substance as follows, condensed but with no item omitted:

At that time the heavens and earth were not named.

The deep was their father; the chaos of the sea, their mother.
Their waters flowed together in one.

The reed was not gathered, the marsh plant was not grown.

The great gods were not yet made, any one of them.

Destiny was not yet established.

Lamu and Lahamu were produced first.

Asher and Kisher next, and then Bel and Ea, their offspring.

It seems unaccountably strange that any one should seriously talk of agreement between this and the story in Genesis, yet many have done so.

Before going farther, I would call the reader's attention to the remarkable fact that although the writer knew nothing of the nature of a nebula, he had nevertheless given a description of one which is unsurpassed. It was, he says, tohu, "vanity," "nothingness"; bohu,“void”; tehom, “a profound deep"; mahyim, "non-solid," a "fluid." Our word "nebula" is poor in comparison, for it tells us nothing more than that there is something which looks like a little wisp of cloud.

The division between light and darkness, a thing possible only in case of a world cooled down so far as to cease to emit light, was the characteristic phenomenon, and the only one conceivable, indicating the end of the nebulous and self-luminous stage. It indicated, too, the beginning of the present or true planetary condition in which our world is dependent on the sun for heat and light.

The fact is well worth the consideration of scientists, that these few verses are not only exceedingly important, but they foreshadow almost everything now known about the earth that is peculiar to the period before it ceased to give light,1 foreshadow it so manifestly that a denial of the one is fatal to the other. Some things are plainly stated; as, for instance,

1 The earth's revolution about the sun is not mentioned or implied, but belongs to the present, and therefore was not peculiar to that early period. Perhaps the only thing not foreshadowed was the segregation of our planet from the great nebulous mass and the primal formation of the continental plateaus.

the finite preexistence of the heavens and earth, their unfinished condition at first, the primary state of the earth, the beginning and perfection of light, etc. Some other things are logically to be inferred. Moses says nothing, for example, about the intensely hot condition of the earth, but he does say that the light became "good," and good light requires intense heat.1 So, too, he says nothing about the fact that the earth continued to cool, and after a time became opaque, but his account necessarily implies it when it tells us that a division was made between the light and the darkness, for this proves the existence of an opaque surface to the earth, since nothing but such a body could then, or now, separate the two.

How different this is from the once current "science" which taught that light and darkness were two substances originally mingled together, which needed to be separated, and how wrong it must have seemed to such scientists that the light was styled good before the separation took place.

"And 't was evening, and 't was morning. Day one."

A WORLD WITH DAYS AND NIGHTS.

Days and nights having begun, the once glowing earth must have so far cooled down as to cease to give light, by which we know, thanks to science, that its external temperature had fallen to close about 1000° F. Its surface, therefore, was still hot enough to keep the oceans very largely in a state of vapor-forming clouds, hundreds of miles in thickness, which totally shut out the rays of the sun. Hence the next thing to be done towards fitting the world for the support of plants and animals was to thin out the clouds by a further fall in temperature, and consequent deposition of their water, until an open space, or "expanse," separated, as now, the waters in the seas below it from the waters in the clouds above it.

It is an interesting fact, that the Hebrew word for light is used also for fire, the only difference being in the vowel-points, and these did not exist till centuries after Genesis was written.

Science tells us furthermore, that the phenomenon which would have indicated to a spectator, had one been there, that the process had gone far enough to permit life to begin, was that the heavens became visible, for this proved that light reached the earth's surface, and that its temperature had by that time fallen considerably below 212° F.

Turning now to Genesis (verse 7), we read that an "expanse" was made in the midst of the waters dividing the waters below it from those above it, and that, at the close of the transaction, the writer calls the "expanse" heavens.

But this is not all. Paleochemistry tells us that the “expanse" was filled, not with our present atmosphere alone,— that formed but a small part of it,—but with a mixture of poisonous gases and vapors in which life was impossible, except perhaps for the lowest forms.

If we turn to Genesis we discover a unique omission. Every period of progress has at least one verdict of completion,in other words, is pronounced good, but the second period is an exception. Commentators have been at a loss how to explain why, and, where they have not ignored the fact, have offered some absurd reason for it.1

"Expanse" does scant justice to the onomatopoetic wealth of meaning in rakia, the word thus translated in the Revised Version. The Greek stereoma, with the Latin firmamentum, Anglicized into "firmament," is no translation at all, but was forced into the text to make it harmonize with the science of Alexandria. If we turn to the lexicon, and examine rakia and all its cognates, we shall find it means primarily any process of making thin, accompanied with violence and noise, and secondarily, that which is produced by such action. It is, therefore, exquisitely applicable to the operation of reducing the thickness of those dense clouds, thinning them, accompanied, as we know it was, by the inconceivably great

'I think it is Luther's Commentary that says, The devils were made on that day.