'Before entering into a detailed examination of the Mosaic narrative, I will glance at the order and operation of its incidents. This is the more necessary, as the sequence of those operations becomes a leading and important feature in the final deductions. 'Genesis, read in its literal sense, teaches that, on the first day God directed light to be, and divided light from darkness, calling the light day and darkness night, 'On the second day He placed a firmament to divide the waters, gathering the waters together and forming dry land, which He commanded to bring forth grass and herbs yielding seed, and trees yielding fruit. 'On the fourth day He placed lights in the firmament to give light upon the earth; and, on the same day, He made two great lights, the greater to rule the day, the lesser the night; and he also made the stars, and placed them in the firmament to give light upon the earth. On the fifth day the sea was commanded to bring forth the living creature that had life, and the fowl that might fly above the earth in the open firmament. 'The great whales were also created on that day, and every living thing that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind. 'The first part of the sixth day opens with the creation of the beasts of the earth, and cattle, and everything that creepeth on the earth; consummating the mighty work with the creation of man. 'My task is to prove that, so far as geology and the sister sciences have examined into the results of this creation, neither the order, the mode, nor the period of operations can, on physical evidences, be sustained. '"God said, let there be light, and there was light." We have here a fiat originating light; but from what physical source was that luminous effect evolved? Neither sun nor moon was yet made; not a single star had twinkled in the heavens; nor was a firmament or atmosphere placed, as a vehicle for the rays. By what natural law could there be light? The common rudiments of Physics teach us that air diffuses the solar beams, thereby causing the brightness of that portion of light called, from the earliest recorded period, "day." Without that diffusive medium, the heavenly bodies would be sharply {9} defined balls of apparent fire, in the profoundly black vault of heaven. Science has never, hitherto, found a substitute for the sun; nor research discovered a period since the earth existed, having evening and morning, without one.