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modern astronomy, has been held, during the last half-century, to be over 
95,000,000 miles, because it had been produced by the calculations of a late 
first-rate German astronomer, — calculations so vast, so difficult, and with such 
prestige of accuracy and power about them, that no living man cared to dis- 
pute their results. One group of astronomers declared the true mean sun- 
distance to be about ninety- one to ninety-one and a half millions of 
miles; another group declared it to be ninety to ninety-two and a 
half millions of miles. While they were fighting together as to whose 
results were the better (an actual duel with swords was expected at 
one time between M. Leverrier and the late lamented M. de Launay), an 
eminent chemical engineer, when studying the mensurations of the great 
pyramid of Ghizeeh, came to the conclusion that 91,840,000 miles was the 
true measure of the sun’s distance from the earth ” (see Our Inheritance in the 
Great Pyramid, by Piazzi Smyth, F.E.S.E., F.R.A.S., Astronomer Royal for 
Scotland, pp. 49-51 ; also a valuable pamphlet On the Sun's Distance and. 
Parallax, by St. John Vincent Day, C.E., F.R.S.S.A.). If this estimate of 
the sun’s distance be confirmed by the calculations resting upon the transit 
of Venus in 1882, and the velocity of light be only slightly reduced in con- 
sequence, the effect would be, as I venture still to think, notwithstanding 
the able remarks of Professor Birks, to lower the distance of the nebulae in 
Orion from a period of 60,000 years, according to the estimate of Herschel 
as the time required for light to pass from Orion to our solar system, 
to about 50,000 years. And this would have had but slight effect 
upon my illustration of our distance from the fixed stars, which 
I used as an argument in proof that the simultaneous creation of 
the heavens and the earth “ in the beginning,” according to the 
Mosaic cosmogony, must have meant something far more distant in point 
of time, than merely 6,000 years ago, when man was first made after the 
image and likeness of God. I have spoken at § 83 of La Place’s theory 
respecting creation as hypothetical, and only so as it does not appear to me 
to contradict what we may gather from Scripture respecting cosmogony as 
contained therein ; but I readily bow to the superior judgment of Professor 
Challis respecting the nebular hypothesis, and accept his assurance that 
“ the spectroscope has proved (since Lord Rosse’s telescope was first directed 
to the nebulm in Orion) that, in addition to those stars, there is a large 
portion of the nebulae which is strictly nebulous or gaseous matter, and there- 
fore quite irresoluble,” — merely remarking that if the nebular hypothesis, 
over which the scientific world has been battling so long, be confirmed or 
not, it in nowise affects my argument respecting the beginning of creation, 
according to the testimony of the Divine record. I may add that neither 
Sir John Hercshel, in his Astronomy, nor Mr. Grant, in his History 
of Physical Astronomy, both standard works, makes any mention of the 
nebular hypothesis. In reply to another remark of Professor Challis, ho 
misunderstands me in supposing that I advocate “ Buckland’s idea of inter- 
posing an interval of long duration between the first and second verses of 
