658 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



previous duration or previous eternity. The words of Moses, then, 

 " In former duration God created the heavens and the earth," may 

 mean millions of years just as easily as one. A few verses later, 

 describing the second day of creation, Moses declares that God made 

 the firmament and called it heaven. It is plain from this that the 

 heavens of the first day's creation are different from the heavens of 

 the second day ; the difference of time proves a difference of subject. 

 The heavens of the first verse were made in former duration, before 

 the moving of the Spirit, before the creation of light ; the heavens of 

 the second day were made after the earth and after light. 



Another statement made by Moses is an extraordinary anticipa- 

 tion of the most recent cosmological doctrines. " The earth was 

 desolation and emptiness and darkness upon the face of the raging 

 deep, and the Spirit of God brooding upon the face of the waters." 

 It is now hardly doubtful that the earth was a molten sphere, over 

 which hung, in a dense vapor, all the water which now lies upon its 

 surface. As the crust cooled, the aqueous vapor that surrounded it 

 became condensed into water and rested on the surface of the land. 

 The conflicts between the waters and the fiery heat, as the crust of 

 the earth was broken, fell in, or was upheaved, are well described by 

 the words of Moses, " The earth was desolation and emptiness." It is 

 curious that the great facts of the submersion of the earth and its 

 condition of emptiness should have been thus exactly described by 

 Moses. 



We are then told that God said, " Let there be light, and there 

 was light." Celsus, Voltaire, and a writer in " Essays and Reviews," 

 have found it strange that' there should have been light before the 

 creation of the sun ; but, according to the theory of cosmogony now 

 almost universally received, the earth did in fact exist before the con- 

 densation of the sun. Light there would be, from the gradually-con- 

 densing mass of nebulous and incandescent matter which occupied 

 the whole space now circumscribed by the orbit of the earth. If 

 Moses had wished to describe the modern doctrine concerning light, 

 he could not have done so more happily. The sun is not called " 6r," 

 light, but Maor, a place of light, just what modern science has dis- 

 covered it to be. If light be not matter, but vibrations of luminif- 

 erous ether, no words could more precisely explain what must have 

 occurred when God set in motion the undulations which produced 

 light, and said, " Let light be." The account given of the creation 

 of the sun very closely anticipated modern science : " Let there be 

 light-holders in the firmament of heaven, and let them be for light- 

 holders in the firmament of heaven to give light upon the earth . . . 

 and the stars." When the sun began to give his light, then, for the 

 first time, the earth's fellow-planets, the stars, began to reflect his 

 brilliance, and became luminaries also. 



"Vestiges of Creation" was one of the first books which fairlv 





