130 EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 



The light may have been of electric origin, as in 

 an X-ray tube, since the depths of space form a 

 very complete vacuum. Eons of years passed, 

 we may well believe, between the shining forth of 

 the immense solar nebula and the flinging off of 

 the potential earth nebula, luminous with its own 

 electric and compressional forces, and gradually 

 growing cooler after condensation. The moon, 

 too, whether detached from the earth's mass or 

 from the solar nebula directly, gradually con- 

 densed, and in fact much sooner than the earth, 

 since its size was much smaller. 



But the moon could shed no light, as it now 

 floated, cold and dead, in its orbit, until it had 

 first been caught up in the brilliant radiance of the 

 sun. Only then could the Scripture speak of the 

 first appearance of this lesser luminary, at the 

 same time that it mentions the sun and the stars. 

 Here too we can therefore establish the perfect 

 conformity of the Scripture account with the scien- 

 tific chronology. 



From the surface of the earth, also, the vapor- 

 ous, deadening blanket had now been removed, an 

 atmosphere had been formed and clarified until 

 at length it became the transparent medium we 

 know it to be at present. It was possible, there- 

 fore, for the light of sun and moon and stars to 

 fall upon it. The first vegetative forms, as we 

 have seen, could already have sprung up under 

 the diffused light of an earlier period. The time 



