In the beginning--we use this word in a kind of preter-perfect sense--in the _very_ beginning of things, immense portions of infinite space were filled with finely diffused nebulous matter, heated to an intensity that is altogether inconceivable. The particles of this "fire mist," as it is appropriately called, were the true _primordia rerum_,--the elements of the universe,--the principles of all the forms of inorganic matter and all organic things. At the outset, the Creator endowed these particles with certain qualities and capacities, and then stood aside from his work, as there was nothing farther for him to do. The subsequent progress of creation is only the successive _development_, upon mechanical and necessary principles, and as fast as proper occasions were offered, of these qualities thus made inherent in the primitive constitution of matter. The atoms thus marvellously endowed have gone on, without any further aid from Almighty power, to form suns, and astral systems, and planets with their satellites, and worlds tenanted by successive generations and races of vegetable and animal things. And this work of creation, or rather of development, is still in progress all around us, and in all its various stages, though in the portion most directly exposed to the observation of man it is far advanced towards perfection. Upon this earth, the unaided action of these atoms is still evolving all the phenomena of generation, progress, and decay, of vegetable and animal life, of instinct and of mind. In the abyss of space, it is also forming new suns, and solar systems, and worlds that are to pass through the same stages and wonderful transformations to which our own planet has already been subjected. All that has occurred with respect to this earth, and the system of which it forms a part, is but a type of what is constantly going on in the countless other systems of stars that people the firmament.