water could exist on its surface, the known rate of cooling of bodies of the dimensions and materials of the earth shows that the time included in these two verses of Genesis must have been enormous, amounting it may be to many millions of years. There are two other sciences besides geology which have in modern times attempted to penetrate into the mysteries of the primitive abyss, at least by hypothetical explanations--astronomy and chemistry. The magnificent nebular hypothesis of La Place, which explains the formation of the whole solar system by the condensation of a revolving mass of gaseous matter, would manifestly bring our earth to the condition of a fluid body, with or without a solid crust, and surrounded by a huge atmosphere of its more volatile materials, gradually condensing itself around the central nucleus. Chemistry informs us that this vaporous mass would contain not only the atmospheric air and water, but all the carbon, sulphur, phosphorus, chlorine, and other elements, volatile in themselves, or forming volatile compounds with oxygen or hydrogen, that are now imprisoned in various states of combination in the solid crust of the earth. Such an atmosphere--vast, dark, pestilential, and capable in its condensation of producing the most intense chemical action--is a necessity of an earth condensing from a vaporous and incandescent state. Thus, in so far as scientific speculation ventures to penetrate into the genesis of the earth, its conclusions are at one with the Mosaic cosmogony and with the traditions of most ancient nations as to the primitive existence of a chaos--formless and void, in which "nor aught nor nought existed."