Another more cunning class of religionists have propounded the hypothesis that the whole story is meant to be an epitome of what occurred at the origin of the universe and life, and that ordinary days were really meant, and purposely utilised to epitomise long periods of time, as was customary with ancient writers, who frequently availed themselves of poets’ licence in this manner. This theory is _primâ facie_ a plausible one, and has, no doubt, satisfied many restless and thoughtless spirits amongst us; but in reality it differs but little, if at all, from the preceding hypothesis, both leaving us in much the same position. They declare that the very same order is maintained in the narrative as that adopted by scientists; that both agree that the earth was formed first, and then, in the following order, vegetation, fishes, birds, beasts of the field, and man. We know well enough, however, that the sun is absolutely necessary for the existence of the vegetable kingdom; that birds did not appear before reptiles and worms, but long after them; and that placental mammals made their appearance, not before creeping animals, and kangaroos, opossums and others of the marsupial species, but many ages after them. In direct contradiction of this fable in Genesis, we learn from science that our solar system once existed in a condition of highly attenuated nebulous vapour; and that in the course of millions of years this huge chaotic mass of matter, with its sum of force or energy, subject alike to the laws of gravitation and transformation, gradually condensed, and became moulded into cosmic order, forming in process of time a number of rotating spherical nebular masses, in a state of intense heat, owing to the shock of their recently united atoms. These spheres gradually cooled by radiation, consequently contracting and becoming possessed of a more rapid rotary movement, throwing off from their equatorial regions large rings of vapour, which in their turn also condensed, and, under the influence of the same two laws, formed separate spheres for themselves. Thus gradually came into existence our sun, planets and moons.