presence of the Eternal, absolutely apart from time. Between these conceptions of creation-one of infinite extent and eternal duration, the other a gathering of all into one comprehensive "Now "-intervenes all that variety of representation ranging from a glance-as by instantaneous flash revealing a vast panorama, to that display which we possess in Genesis when, enlarged by scientific conception and knowledge, we discern

"Our destiny, our being's heart and home,

Are with Infinity, and only there."

Thus searching the Divine Narrative, we find that events are as the rise and fall of a curtain, day and night cast light and shadow, voices and commands order the process, the formless takes shape, a long-hidden beginning is revealed and developed, the Spirit of God shines on the face of a great deep, and chaos passes into Creation. There are shinings-light; openingsfirmamental expanse; gatherings and flowings - the great deep; rising as from watery womb-the new land; life germinating-afterwards to grow in power beneath sunny beams. We conceive that this whole process might pass before the spirit of Moses in a series of days-a thousand of years to a day, or a day as a moment. The element of time is index, not computation: every day being yesterday's child and tomorrow's parent. The creations of God in plant and fish, in bird and mammal, appear not so much near or wide apart, as standing out with distinctness.

We are bound by the same analogy to regard the order or progress as not necessarily in a straight line; but, possibly, that described by those complex curves in which are contained the progress yet continual return of the heavenly bodies in their vast career. Expositors of the Divine Procedure do not bind Scriptural narrative in those cords of exact order and sequence which science imposes on her own small essays and experiments. Revelation states why God made the world, science endeavours to find how God made it. Revelation is for moral purpose, science for physical investigation. At a time when men worshipped the sun as Lord of Life-as did the Egyptians, and as do some Materialists now-that moral purpose is best served, and men are best instructed, by decla

ration that they live not by sun-power, but by God-power. On this moral ground we vindicate the insertion of life as precedent to acknowledgment of the sun as ruler. Should our scientific argument fail to convince, the Divine Act stands by its own integrity.

Try the scientific investigation.

Time has surprises and revenges. We have seen how light shone out of darkness, now we shall find that the sun is not a naked and terrible wilderness of tempestuous combustion; but affords in its consideration a well-spring of intellectual delight.

The Sun's Origin.

Till of late it was tacitly assumed that the sun did during the past, and will through the future, emit an unfailing amount of light and heat. All that is now abandoned. In whatever shape energy manifests itself in the world, it must have existed previously under another shape. Solar radiations are the changed form of some other energy: possibly that by which the matter of the sun, once diffused in space, was drawn to his centre of gravity from a distance extending far beyond the outermost planet. A mass of coal, the size of the sun, would only suffice to give so large an amount of heat for five thousand years. The hypothesis of the falling together, from widely scattered distribution in space, of the matter which now forms the various suns and planets, is generally accepted. As the mass of our sun aggregated and condensed, heat grew with the force of impact, and the luminous atmosphere was of gradual formation.

According to another theory, possibly the rarefied gaseous condition was caused by excessive temperature, and condensation began with the cooling and contraction of the mass. If we unite both theories, then the solar system was evolved by the processes of contraction and accretion; and, according to the theory of Laplace, the planets were fashioned in the order of their distances from the sun, the remoter being first formed. In the drawing of cosmical matters to the sun, the vaster the distances the more violent the impact. "The rush of matter which we now recognise affords, perhaps, but the faintest indications of the amazing conflicts in which our

system had its birth. Tracing back the history of that system, we seem to recognise a time when the sun's supremacy was still incomplete, when the planets struggled with him for the continually inrushing materials from which his substance as well as theirs was to be recruited. We see him clearing, by the mighty energy of his attraction, a wide space around him of all save such relatively tiny orbs as Venus and the Earth, Mars, Mercury, and the asteroids. With more distant planets the struggle was less unequal. The masses which flowed in towards the centre of the scheme swept with comparatively slow motion past its outer bounds, so that the subordinate centres there forming were able to grasp a goodly proportion of material to increase their own mass or to form subordinate systems around them. And so the planets, Jupiter and Saturn, Uranus and distant Neptune, grew to their giant dimensions, and became records at once of the sun's might as a ruler-for without his overruling attraction the material which formed these planets would never have approached the system and of the richness of the chaos of matter from which his bulk and theirs was alike derived. Nor is the consideration without a mysterious attraction, that in thus looking back at the past history of our system, we have passed, after all, but a step towards that primal state whence the conflict of matter arose. We are looking into a vast abysm, and, as we look, fancy we recognise strange movements and signs, as if the depths were shaping themselves into definite forms. But in truth those movements show only the vastness of the abysm; those depths speak to us of far mightier depths, within which they are taking shape. 'Lo! these are but a portion of His ways; they utter but a whisper of His glory.'"1

Truth is stranger than fiction and excels romance. Many ages back, in the immeasurable swoop of the past, an enormous moving mass existed and collided at and around the place now occupied by the solar system. This mass, obtaining swift and vehement rotation, assumed a somewhat globular shape. Huge rings of matter were integrated during successive ages of spinning and revolving-so were the planets formed. These again broke into portions-so are satellites

"The Sun:" R. A. Proctor.

accounted for-while certain whiffs or puffs gave birth to some of the eccentric comets. Many of the meteorite systems still visit us, although they belong to the great primary mass. The array of sun and planets, the pomp of all material worlds, are a procession and gathering from the unseen to the seen, out of infinite to finite space. Their duration, compared with eternity, is as the flight of birds into our horizon-to pass out again and be no more seen.

The Sun's Age.

"It has never been maintained that the matter of the sun was created or even organised on the fourth day." Theologians hold that the development of the solar system includes all terrestrial arrangements. The formation and operation of the sun and of the earth were co-ordinate and partly contemporaneous. The sun, the earth, and other planets, being for one another, their whole substance formed part of that universal cosmical arrangement which is described Genesis i. I. Dr. Buckland, p. 27, “Bridgewater Treatise," observes—“We are not told that the substance of the sun and moon was first called into existence on the fourth day. The text may equally imply that those bodies were then prepared and appointed to certain offices of high importance to mankind, to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, to be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years. The fact of their creation had been stated before in the first verse."

Against this it may be urged-"The text says the sun was made on the fourth day, not made to appear. Just as God made the firmament, made the beast of the earth, made man, so did He make two great lights and the stars. There is an end of all ingenuousness in interpreting Scripture, if we foist in one of these examples a meaning not borne in any of the others." The reply is simple and convincing-The word "made" is not to be strained in the least, and when we say it means, not the making of globular and opaque masses in the depths of space, but the making of visible lights as they appear moving in the sky, that meaning is correct and natural. If, moreover, our science is correct as to the progressive con1 46 Genesis," p. 151: Prof. Lange.

densation of the sun, the luminous atmosphere would be cleared gradually during the sun's process of integration as a revolving light. The development of the earth is an analogue of the development of suns and stars. As the earth condensed, so the sun condenses. One theory supposes the condensation of the sun and planets from a nebulous mass, whatever that may mean; and the condensation of the sun from the original mass can be calculated. Professor Helmr2 Ma holtz gives a formula.1 Work of condensation=3 -g. The mass of the sun is M, the mass of the earth is m; the sun's radius is R, the earth's radius is r. Taking M=4230× 1027 lbs., m=11,920 lbs., R=2,328,500,000 feet, and r=20,889,272 feet, we have for the total work performed by gravitation in foot-pounds—

Work= =

3. (20,889.2725)x(4230 x 1097)

R m

5 2,328,500,000 x 11,920 x 101 = 168,790 x 10 foot-pounds. The heat, thus produced, would suffice for 20,237,500 years; and the quantity of heat given out, which previously existed as original temperature, was 49,850,000 years' heat; making in all 70,087,500 years' heat. This represents the total amount of heat given out since the mass began to condense. Mr. Croll says "Let us assume that by the time that the mass of the sun had condensed to within the space encircled by the orbit of the planet Mercury (that is, to a space having, say, a radius of 18,000,000 miles) the earth's crust began to form; and let this be the time when the geological history of our globe dates its commencement. The total amount of heat generated by the condensation of the sun's mass from a sphere of this size to its present volume would equal 19,740,000 years' sun-heat. The amount of original heat given out during that time would equal 48,625,000 years' sun-heat, thus giving a total of 68,365,000 years' sun-heat enjoyed by our globe since that period." 2 If the sun's gravity is greatly increased at the centre, the quantity will be considerably more; but there is no warrant for anything like the

1 "Phil. Mag." sect. 4, vol. xi. p. 76 (1856). Also in “Climate and Time," p. 348 James Croll.

:

2 "Climate and Time," p. 352: James Croll.