suggestive statement that "the spirit of God"--the great formative force
of the universe--moved upon the face of the depths, after which the
evening and the morning were the first day, that is, the first distinctive
epoch in the order of creation. When materialistic science shall define
"gravitation"--the supposed aggregating force of infinitely diffused
matter in space--so as to make it a distinct and separate factor in the
universe from "the spirit of God,"--that spirit which was breathed into
man when he became a living soul, and which, we are told, "upholds the
order of the heavens," then its devotees may sneer at the Bible Genesis,
and the logical deductions to be drawn therefrom.

3. Again, science can have no conflict with the Bible Genesis, except in
the most hypercritical way, in the affirmative statement that God set two
great lights in the firmament, the one to rule the day and the other to
rule the night; and that "he made the stars also." For it is nowhere
stated that the "greater light" was not made to perform a similar office
for each of the other planets of our system, or that it was not set in the
firmament to adorn the skies of other and far-distant worlds, as "bright
Arcturus, fairest of the stars," adorns our own.

4. Nor can materialistic science dispute the more explicitly revealed
fact, that the order of creation, so far at least as animal and vegetable
life are concerned, is precisely that to be found in geological
distribution, or as unerringly recorded in the lithographic pages of
nature. And yet nothing was known of these pages--not a leaf had been
turned back--at the time the Bible Genesis was written. So that, whoever
was its author, this precise order of distribution could only have been
"guessed at," setting aside its inspirational claims, by the writer of
this most remarkable genesis.