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THE BEAUTIFUL LADDER. 
fiat of the Almighty, which brings forth and 
potentializes the grand requisites: ‘ And God 
said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of 
the water, and let it divide the waters from the 
waters. And God made the firmament, and 
divided the waters which were under the fir¬ 
mament from the waters which were above 
the firmament; and it was so.’ The waters 
below were the great primal ocean, and the 
waters above, the ‘ thick clouds of the sky.’ 
And what arm save that of Omnipotence could 
lift up this aerial ocean and send its cloudy 
waves surging over the whole face of the earth ? 
Let it be remembered that water is more than 
eight hundred times heavier than air, and its 
pressure gives one of the mightiest forces 
known. By what machinery can the incom¬ 
prehensible billions of tons of water be raised 
miles above the surface of the earth and held 
there floating in wreaths of vapory beauty? 
Eight parts of water, by volume, is composed 
of hydrogen gas, the lightest of known sub¬ 
stances, and God bids his great sun-force to 
touch the invisible molecules of hydrogen, and 
they at once expand into balloons sixteen hun¬ 
dred times larger than they were before; and 
