not as being the ordinary human day of twenty-four hours. It may be admitted, moreover, that the phraseology and the whole shaping of the narrative in respect to days may have contemplated the institution of the Sabbath――to be founded as shown above upon the analogy of God’s labor and rest with man’s permitted labor and enjoined rest in commemoration of God’s work of creation. (3.) We are to consider _the geological facts bearing on this point and the weight legitimately due to them_. If the point last put has been sustained, it will be seen at the outset that even should geology make large demands for time, far beyond the ordinary human day, we shall have no occasion to strain the laws of interpretation to bring the record into harmony with such demands.――――We open this inquiry therefore into the facts of geology, not so much to make out if possible a harmony between them and Genesis by toning down the facts of science or by toning up the inspired record, as to show how readily and how beautifully the facts just as they are (so far as known) accord with the legitimate sense of the sacred record. Preliminary to the main inquiry before us is the question as to the primary original state of matter. Was it brought into existence in its primordial elements――those molecules which not only defy all human effort at analysis, but which seem to be in their nature the simplest forms of matter?――――Chemistry has shown that many of the most familiar substances, long supposed to be simple, are really compound. Were they brought into existence in the state in which we commonly see them, or in their ultimate, most simple elements? For example, did God originally create water, or the two gases (hydrogen and oxygen) of which it is composed, which were subsequently combined chemically into water?――――On this point the Scriptures are silent. If Science has any thing to reveal about it, the field is open to her and she may proceed, nothing in the sacred Scriptures dissenting or restricting. If she succeeds in proving or half proving that the first state of matter was nebulous――a “fire-mist”――gaseous in form, very well. I do not see that the record of Moses contests this theory. It passes this point with no dogmatic statements whatever, not even a fact which necessarily implies either the affirmative or the negative. The record in Genesis does assume that at the point where the second day’s work begins, the atmosphere was heavily charged with vapor, and that a part of this was precipitated upon the earth in water and a part borne upward into the higher strata of the atmosphere. The third day’s work gathered the waters then upon the earth’s surface into the ocean beds and left portions of the land dry. Consequently the state of the atmosphere, and in general the condition of the waters of our globe were not arranged at first just as we have them now. So much we are told. There are yet other preliminary questions.