The word which in the English version is translated "rested," in the concluding verses of the narrative, does not mean rested from fatigue, but rested as a pendulum rests when it ceases to vibrate. Had the word been rendered "came to a state of rest," it would have been far more accurate and true to the sense of the original. What is meant is that these pent-up forces had operated, under the guidance of Jeove, to rupture a state of unstable equilibrium in the attenuated matter of space, just as similar forces are now said to gather energy to produce a volcanic eruption of the earth's crust, preceded by earthquakes and other vast disturbances radiating from the center of rupture of these tensions between the molecules of matter, accompanied by explosive expansion and all the phenomena of disorganization and repulsion, and succeeded by condensation, development, harmony, and final quiescence of these specially energized and self-opposing forces in a newly formed state of molecular equilibrium. To quote from Professor Guyot, "God rests as the creator of the visible universe. The forces of nature are now in that admirable equilibrium which we now behold, and which is necessary to our existence." In "The Unity of Nature" the Duke of Argyle says, "We strain our imaginations to conceive the processes of Creation, whilst in reality they are around us daily." The words which conclude the third verse of chapter ii. are also imperfectly rendered in our English version, and this defect has led to a popular misconception almost universal. They are construed to mean "created--and made," as though marking a broad class distinction between the different processes before described. From this the inference has been drawn that while, for the more subordinate features, the word rendered "made" indicated that these were stages in the process of creation merely involving the use of coexisting materials, in the grander features of the work it was supposed that there had been a creation ab initio,--that is, out of nothing. Whole libraries have been written on this theme; but the words used bear no such meaning; on the contrary, they signify the exact opposite. There is, however, a broad distinction between the interpretation of the two words; but it is that the word which is to be rendered "fashioned like the work of a sculptor" is narrower and not broader in significance than the simple word "made;" so that the former is included in, but is not generically distinct from, the latter. The word Bra means that these portions of creation were fashioned with the care and artistic skill of a sculptor, as contradistinguished from turning out the productions in mass; this distinction does not relate to the origin, but to the workmanship. However interstellar or primordial space was formed, or when, if it ever was formed, there is nothing in this record which excludes a pre-existent space substantially like that which now is.