to be if any one is justified in comparing them with another
scientific statement, they fail to convey any intelligible
conception to my mind.

The account proceeds: "And darkness was upon the face of the
deep." So be it; but where, then, is the likeness to the
celestial nebulae, of the existence of which we should know
nothing unless they shone with a light of their own? "And the
spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." I have met
with no form of the nebular hypothesis which involves anything
analogous to this process.

I have said enough to explain some of the difficulties which
arise in my mind, when I try to ascertain whether there is any
foundation for the contention that the statements contained in
the first two verses of Genesis are supported by the nebular
hypothesis. The result does not appear to me to be exactly
favourable to that contention. The nebular hypothesis assumes
the existence of matter, having definite properties, as its
foundation. Whether such matter was created a few thousand years
ago, or whether it has existed through an eternal series of
metamorphoses of which our present universe is only the last
stage, are alternatives, neither of which is scientifically
untenable, and neither scientifically demonstrable. But science
knows nothing of any stage in which the universe could be said,
in other than a metaphorical and popular sense, to be formless
or empty; or in any respect less the seat of law and order than
it is now. One might as well talk of a fresh-laid hen's egg
being "without form and void," because the chick therein is
potential and not actual, as apply such terms to the nebulous