"And as any table of the earth's crust will show you there are rocks above and below the chalk, for the production of which millions heaped upon millions of years were required." (Clodd's "Childhood of Religions.") Such eminent scientists as Sir Wm. Thomson, Helmholtz, Newcomb, Croll, Bishop, Reade, Lyell, Darwin, and others think it would have taken many millions of years for the original nebulæ to condense to the present dimensions of the sun. PROPHECY. "A prophecy, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, signifies a prediction of future events, which could not have been foreseen by human sagacity, and the knowledge of which was supernaturally communicated to the prophet. It is clear, therefore, that in order to establish the claim of anticipatory statement, promise, or denunciation, to the rank of a prophecy, four points must be ascertained with precision; namely, (1.) what the event was to which the alleged prediction was intended to refer; (2.) that the prediction was uttered in specific, not vague, language before the event; (3.) that the event took place specifically, not loosely, as predicted; (4.) and that it could not have been foreseen by human sagacity. * * * "It is probably not too much to affirm that we have no instance in the prophetical books of the Old Testament of a prediction, in the case of which we possess, at once and combined, clear and unsuspicious proof of the date, the precise event predicted, the exact circumstances of the event, and the inability of human sagacity to foresee it. "The state of the case appears to be this: That all the Old Testament prophesies have been assumed to be genuine inspired predictions; and, when falsified in their obvious meaning and received interpretation, by the event, have received immediately a new interpretation, and been supposed to refer to some other event. When the result has disappointed expectation, the conclusion has been, not that the prophecy was false, but the interpretation was erroneous. It is obvious that a mode of reasoning like this is peculiar to theological inquirers. * * *