II 81 EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 



in depth. Of any light that could penetrate this 

 dense mass of gaseous and watery vapor there 

 could be no slightest question. Most literally 

 there was verified in every detail the sublime de 

 scription of the inspired writer: 

 { And the earth was void and empty, and dark 

 ness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit 

 of God moved over the waters. 



All the earth surface was then, in the strictest 

 sense of the word, one waste of waters that cov 

 ered the solid land, and over their mighty waves 

 moved, with his vivifying and energizing power, 

 the Spirit of God. Slowly the seething volumes 

 of vapor were now condensing and falling in per 

 petual rains upqn the earth, an unending Noa- 

 chian deluge. The conditions are most graph 

 ically described by the Yale professor of struc 

 tural geology already quoted, whose words read 

 like a commentary on the Scripture passage just 

 cited. Yet nothing doubtless was ever farther 

 from his mind. Here, then, as he sees it, is the 

 picture of the earth at this stage of its develop 

 ment: 



Then rain, ever descending from the shield of perpetual 

 cloud, but never heretofore reaching the bottom of the atmos 

 phere, at last began to splash on the hot surface of the earth. 

 The raindrops at first were dissipated by contact and sent 

 flying as scattered molecules of gas. But, owing to the low 

 conductivity of rocks, the transition stage was very brief, and 

 perhaps even in a few thousand years from the time when the 

 crustal congelation of the earth had taken place a permanent 

 ocean of acid water began to rest upon the surface. For a 



