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Stability in Creation. 
Science and Faith part company at the first verse of the 
first chapter of Genesis. Faith is an act of submission which 
science declines to yield. Science knows nothing, and can 
know nothing, of a “ beginning.” It is inconceivable to the 
mind of man, and the truth can only be received by faith, on 
the authority of Divine testimony. So we read (Heb. xi. 3) 
that it is “ through faith we understand that the worlds were 
framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were 
not made of things which do appear.” Sound philosophy will 
take into account and examine this testimony, and will record 
its perfect harmony with what meets our observation. 
The stability of the Creation is found in God himself. We 
have only recently begun to appreciate the stability which 
He has communicated to the ether, which is the medium of 
conveying the impressions of light. Of this we are assured, 
that it consists of created particles, which we call imponder- 
able, because we have no means of weighing them ; but its 
pressure must be prodigious, as is shown by its elasticity, of 
which the swift transmission of light is an indication, and 
through which the lightning-flash, in passing, produces the 
accompanying thunder which results, from a slight disturbance, 
and a local one, of this equilibrium.* The ethereal creation is, 
in the most eminent degree, stable, and has more the pro- 
perties of a solid than of a liquid. 
In the composition of the masses of inorganic matter which 
form the strong foundations of the earth we have absolute 
stability. I have shown sufficiently, in previous papers,! that 
this is the nature of the atoms themselves, and also of the 
molecules resulting from the balancing of the atoms in more 
or less elaborate systems, arranged according to never-changing 
laws. These attractions or repulsions opei’ate with mathe- 
matical exactness between atom and atom, or between molecule 
and molecule, but no further. There is no consent of atoms 
to produce a certain effect ; no central force organizing ; no 
variability of structure, such as comes in with life, and pervades, 
more or less, all its manifestations. Such as the chemical 
relationships of matter now are, such they must have been 
* L’ Architecture chi Monde des Atonies. Gaudin, Paris, 1873, p. 5. 
f See Victoria Ins. Trans., 1873 : “ Scientific Facts and Christian Evi- 
dence.” Id., 1874 : “ The Contrast between Crystallization and Life.” 
