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to this little globe, as inspired truths ; and however adverse 
the mere hypotheses of scientific men may he as to these 
being matters of fact, we have, as believers in the Sacred 
Word, in absence of positive and incontestible proof of their 
error, no option, in due reverence of the Word and its Divine 
author — omniscient as to the works of Nature, as their sole 
Designer— but to receive such assertions as truths explainable 
in Nature, were we but adequately acquainted with it.* 
Geologists hold, also, on the merest conjecture, that the 
earth was originally a mass of fluid matter in igneous fusion, 
which assumed its globular form in virtue of the mutual 
gravitation of its parts, and subsequently taking the form of an 
oblate spheroid in virtue of the centrifugal force attending 
its rotation. But may we not as reasonably conjecture it to 
have been a mass of mud propelled into space at the fiat of 
the Almighty Architect, and assuming a globular form by 
transmission from its matrix hither, as drops of melted lead 
are rounded into spherical shot by fall from a height. In 
the beginning, the inspired Word declares "the Earth was 
without form and void." It is now the finished handiwork 
of the Almighty, — His work, perhaps the model for the after 
construction of vaster worlds, as imperfect as to fitness for 
residence by a human and intelligent creature,— rapidly pro- 
gressing Godward, as our earth was at its beginning. The 
scientific problem has heretofore apparently been, in discard- 
ing the record of the inspired Word, — Given molten matter, 
a sufficiency of time, and asserted laws of Nature, — based on 
feasibility, not on absolute proof of their action, — to con- 
truct the crust of the earth as we now find it, without aid of 
a Deity. The great Sir Isaac Newton, though he submitted 
* " The apparent phenomena of the heavens must he the same whether 
the latter complete an entire revolution from east to west in 24 hours, 
the earth remaining fixed, or whether the earth itself performs an 
entire revolution in the same time. This proposition is true if the 
transmission of light be instantaneous, however great the distance 
through which it has to pass. But if the velocity of light be not infinite, 
that is to say, if the rays take some perceptible time to travel to us from 
the stars, then the proposition does not hold good, as Aiago has proved, 
by the following ingenious method of reasoning : — ' A star can only be 
seen in the horizon, or meridian, by means of those rays, which it 
emitted when actually in the prolongation of those planes.' 
But the determination of the velocity of light pre-supposes a knowledge 
of the true system of the world, the fact is, the apparent aberration of 
the stars, the reason being unknown to us, leads to the hypothesis of 
the translatory motion, or rotation of the earth , No instruments can 
be made of adequate delicacy to interpret to us the answer to the 
question bv experiment on the earth." From the Rotation of the 
Earth, by"Henry Worms, F.R.A.S,, F.G.S., &c, London, 1862. 
