posure after the subsiding of the conflagration, which, by chemical affinities, happily reduced all chaos to order.

The words describing that which was in the beginning, exclude any gross conception of the earth and of water, such as that which has been referred to. These general terms are there so defined as to describe a state which harmonized the two propositions in the schools of old; for in it all stands and all flows. All, then, is fluid, and yet something there is which subsists as the upholding ground of the fluidity. It is a ghostlike state of matter, in which the conception of solid and fluid interblend. If the figure of birth can be applied to the formation of the world, if in creation there were natural processes, then that which was in the beginning, and which was there set forth in the only mode in which its identity through all its changes could well be indicated, must be conceived of as very different from those elements which represent it, as they finally appear.

The identity of that appearing at first with that which appears at last, is predicated. What is identity? is one of the most difficult of questions; but it is certain that it may consist with almost any conceivable outward change of substance, as is well illustrated in the changes through which the human body passes. At each step in the process, these ideas must be kept in mind, until the record definitely announces substance as appearing in forms in which it now appears; and the principle, somewhat modified, applies even after the birth-time of air, earth and water; for they undergo subsequent minor changes. Before that point in time, thought might recognize their identity with what was after it, but probably the senses would not; while after it, the senses would testify to their identity through all their stages, notwithstanding the differences. Any difference, then, in the meaning of the term waters, which is consistent with identity, is admissible previous to this point, and great variations from their final appearance must be firmly assumed.

At the instant when the opening scene of the third age is revealed, the term waters, it is thought, still retains that uni

versality of meaning which it had when used of previous stages of the world. The globe, which still is fluid, with the exception of a circle of rock separating the waters of fire from the waters of air, was then all fluid.

The divine naming of the Seas being coincident with the gathering of the waters together, the element water was then created out of that preëxistent fluid, the same out of which the dry appears, which on its appearing is named earth. In endeavoring to arrive at some stage in the records of the earth corresponding in its great features with this period as revealed, we found that this planet, at an early period, was encircled with a band of crystalline rock, seemingly solidified from a previous state of fusion. Its transformation into that state seemed coincident with a point beyond which, if the formation of the crystalline structure had proceeded, it would not have been convertible into soil. The process seemed as if it might have been suddenly disturbed; and it farther appeared that this rock was such that it instantly began to disintegrate when open to atmospheric agencies. This very general view was approached from the side of solidity, but in thought it might have been approached from the side of fluidity, and thus have reached an idea more exactly coincident with the point indicated in Revelation, where the whole mass seems to present itself as fluid above, and where the absolute solidification of that which is beneath in perhaps a denser form, may have resulted from the command, "Let the dry appear," and where the language may indicate the more solid parts of a semi-fluid mass, generally homogeneous in composition. It seems, then,

the same basis may be assumed for the earth and the water; and that basis is Rock; though the rock does not assume absolutely its present form till an instant succeeding. This change, however, is only in its solidity; while that subsequent change which results in earth, is a change in rock itself, and seemingly consequent upon its appearing, when looked at solely in its natural aspects, though in truth a direct result of Divine command.

Assuming, then, a rocky basis as the one source of both these elements, thought is free to elect, among all the known forms of this basis, that which most harmonizes with the idea that it was the preëxisting form of that substance which in the third age God called into water; nor could it do better than to take that whose resemblance to water is such that Seneca and

Pliny supposed its crystals were water, so solidified by intense cold. This clear crystal rock is one of the few forms of those oldest rocks, out of whose disintegrated particles, combined anew, other rocks were formed by aqueous action. One of its known elements is one of the constituent elements of water; what the other element in it may hold concealed, so long as it appears a simple substance, is of course unknown. But no stress is laid upon this. It is not put forth as an argument, further than to show that nature herself seemed, to some of old, so clearly to intimate a relationship between the crystal water and the crystal of rock, that they did not hesitate to affirm it as a fact; and further, to show that verification of the general idea from the side of nature is not impossible. And though the idea has to encounter all the difficulties arising from novelty, it cannot be pronounced inconceivable, that as the soil flows out of the rock, so out of crystalline rock, not then solidified, the crystal element flowed at the Divine command.

The idea is thought to come from the Record itself. The term used is thought, in conformity with its previous use, to convey the idea of some universally fluid substance, whose nature is not specified. This fluid is solidified into something which is convertible into earth. Here no other change appears, and hence in that state its previous state discloses itself. But in the change into water there was more; and it was a calling from out of that preëxisting substance, which at the same instant solidified, of a new element; this was coincident with the gathering of the waters, which was coincident with the appearing. This preexisting substance then, which, solidified, is rock, is, by the creating power of the Word, in the same instant not only solidified into rock, but called into water. It might be thought

that the language denotes a separation of the solid and fluid particles, and hence that there might be ground of thinking that no inference could be drawn from the solid, as to what preceded it. The fact may be so; but the homogeneousness of its composition is implied in the term which describes it before it hardened into rock, or flowed into water.

These conclusions bring to mind the miracle wrought in the primitive rock of Horeb. There, certainly, from the rock the water flowed; there, the affinity between the two is neither fanciful nor doubtful. The mighty Seer might have raised his wand to the dry, hot air, and summoned forth in streams its ever-present rain, or called up from their deep hiding the waters which flow even beneath desert rocks, and sands. But this miracle is far greater. It carries the mind back to the mysteries of Creation. It impresses the soul with the idea that this wonder and sign was equal and like to the sign and wonder it could not transcend. the creation of the element. God is revealed there, as he is revealed in no other miracle. He says, "I will stand before thee there upon the rock in Horeb; and thou shalt smite the rock, and there shall come water out of it." Moses, then, a type of Christ, standing in time between the creating Word and the redeeming Word, repeated the sign of old, when he caused water to flow from the rock; and in creation, Christ, the Word, prefigured himself as Christ the Redeemer, the living Rock out of which comes living water and living bread.

1 Exodus xvii. 6. See also 1 Cor. x. 4.

CHAPTER VI.

MOSES Conceives of Creation as summed up in Light, Life, and Man. The first word which God pronounces in Creation is Light, the second great word is Life, the final word is Man.

Reason, reflecting upon that many-sided force, with many names, which creates the inorganic world, and tracing its presence into the secret chambers of organic existence, marvels whether it be not itself the cause of that mysterious phenomenon. Life never exists separate from Light. In view of this constant presence of the one with the other, science and reason are utterly unable to decide, whether, as the many forms of the one power are convertible into each other, even so the power and the principle may not also be convertible into each other; that is, whether they are not, in the highest conception of them, one and the same. Is life the product of organization, or is it the cause? Around this question has ever vainly wrought the unresting intellect of man, doomed forever to seek and never to find, forever to question and never to know, unless, in the lower sphere of scientific research, where things are seen in their forms, it avails itself of the light of the higher region of Revealed truth, where all things are disclosed as they really exist.

From the side of reason or science, this question, which in one form or another has engaged thinking minds from earliest time, never can be decided. For the principle and the power can never be found separate, and neither reason nor science can pierce into the essence of either. The power and the principle are alike inscrutable. If Light, as the Scripture intimates, is forever to be a marvel and a mystery, Life must be,