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 Moore, George R. 
 Bible views of creation 
 
BIBLE VIEWS OF CREATION. 
 
'bible views 
 
 OF 
 
 CREATION 
 
 BY 
 REV. GEORGE R. MOORE 
 
 ^ 
 
 Philadelphia 
 
 JOHN McGILL WHITE AND COMPANY 
 
 1328 Chestnut Street. 
 
CopyrighLed i8gs 
 BY GEORGE R. MOORE 
 
 All Rights Reserved. 
 
TO BIBLE STUDENTS. 
 
 To Bible Students the following pages 
 ;are respectfully dedicated. 
 
 G. R. M. 
 
Sc\oT>CO '^^ ^^^ reading aright the reve- 
 lations of God in nature and 
 the Bible. 
 
 Nothing is scientific that is out of har- 
 mony with any truth from any source. 
 
 " Consider the lillies of the field."— Matt. 
 
 6:28. 
 
 " And this is life eternal, that they 
 might know thee the only true God, and 
 Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." — 
 John, 17:3. 
 
Bil)le Yiews of Creation, 
 
 " In the beginning God created the heaven 
 and the earth." — Gen. i : i. 
 
 " By the word of the Lord were the heav- 
 ■ens made, and all the host of them by the 
 breath of his mouth." — Ps. xxxiii : 6. 
 
 "Through faith we understand that the 
 worlds were framed by the word of God, so 
 that things which are seen were not made of 
 things which do appear." — Heb. xi : 3. 
 
 The Bible does not make the mistake of 
 alluding to our world as of a separate crea- 
 tion from the other parts of the universe. It 
 presents the universe as the creation of God 
 in unity, and then the earth for our special 
 consideration. 
 
 Having said that the heaven and the earth 
 was the creation of God "at the begin- 
 ning," the next information given us relates 
 to the earth's substance as it was then 
 
8 Bihle Views of Creation, 
 
 known to have been before any change or 
 transformations were set in motion within 
 it (that created substance), so as to make it 
 discoverable as a visible world. In its first 
 stage of being, and prior to its second stage 
 of being, " it was without form and void." 
 
 "All visible nature is a multifarious asso- 
 ciation of very compound substances, of 
 which the particles must have been in some 
 other state before they were compounded 
 together. The simple condition of the ele- 
 ments must have preceded their union in the 
 compound, and thus it is physically impos- 
 sible that a compound can have been eternal. 
 Composition and eternity are as incompat- 
 ible as to be and not to be." — Turner. 
 
 It is equally clear that the elements thus 
 spoken of were not visible prior to their be- 
 ing compounded, and hence that all visible 
 things are of a later formation than the in- 
 visible, and " that the things that are seen 
 were not made of things that do appear." — 
 Heb. xi : 3. 
 
''And the earth was without form, and 
 void." 
 
 —Genesis, 1:2. 
 
SEEN AND UNSEEN. 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 I see here a blade of grass. I am curious 
 to kuow what it is aud how it came here. 
 Whether it is simple or compound. What 
 are the elements in it ? How did it become 
 a blade of grass ? I see that it is a material 
 thing. What I see and feel are certainly 
 matter, but where did it come from ? And 
 what was the shape of this matter when it 
 was being worked up into this blade of grass ? 
 
 Not seen here three days ago, and now 
 such a clean, tiny thing it is ! I look another 
 day, and lo ! my blade of grass is twenty 
 times as high as it was when I saw it before, 
 and I say : " How fast it grows." What is 
 it to grow ? It has twenty times as much 
 matter in it now as it had before. 
 
 I cannot see one atom of this matter as it 
 
12 JSeen and Unseen. 
 
 is taking its place in this spear of grass and 
 causing it to grow. These materials are in 
 some way being invisibly placed where we 
 now see them. The matter itself could not 
 be seen until it became grass. As a seen 
 thing this grass has come from things un- 
 seen. 
 
 I look upon the carpet in my room and 
 think of the wool in it as it was once seen 
 growing on a sheep's back in the pasture. 
 Our spear of grass may have helped this 
 wool-making, but not until it was eaten up 
 by the sheep and thoroughly digested and 
 well circulated in the animal's fluids, and 
 then by some invisible selections of the in- 
 visible atoms required to make the wool 
 grow, it came out upon the surface of the 
 sheep's body as a seen thing from atoms 
 that a little time before were unseen. 
 
 I notice the paper upon which I am writ- 
 ing. What is it ? It is fibrous material, 
 wrought out in some way into these thin, 
 smooth sheets of paper. Fiber is always a 
 product of some living thing that grows ; it 
 
Seen and Unseen. 13 
 
 may have come from the cotton plant, or it 
 may be of wood growth, or flax, or of some 
 other growth of fiber made by a vegetable 
 or animal life in some past time and in some 
 other form than it now presents to us. As a 
 seen thing all of its material atoms have 
 once or more passed through a state of 
 growing in which they were unseen. 
 
 I look upon the table I am using to wrice 
 upon. Most of it is made of wood ; but 
 there is no wood in the world, or knowledge 
 that any has ever existed in it, that did not 
 become a seen thing by growing as the trees 
 about us are now doing, invisibly increasing 
 their bulk as the blades of grass do. 
 
 If now we question any other visible thing 
 simply to find the original state of its ma- 
 terial atoms, our progress will be towards 
 invisible fluids, and we shall find by exact 
 history and careful analysis that the final 
 material elements out of, and by which, all 
 things seen are made have been in some 
 previous time invisible atoms in a fluid 
 state. 
 
14 Seen and Unseen. 
 
 And no exception to be made to this state- 
 ment as a universal truth. There is nothing 
 in all the world about us, of things organized 
 or unorganized, that does not bring to our 
 minds the clear testimony that its visible 
 form comes of the assembling or collecting 
 of material atoms that somewhere existed 
 before in a fluid and invisible state. 
 
 I am not speaking now of what it is that 
 has changed the fluid atoms and made some 
 of them into visible things, but simply of 
 the fact that they have been changed, or 
 collected, and are now held together in mak- 
 ing what is seen out of the unseen. 
 
 Our visible world has all come out to view 
 by reason of changes from a former state of 
 its own elements, in which it was an unseen 
 existence and its elements were free in space 
 and of such variety and number as Infinite 
 Wisdom chose to use, or to provide for His 
 intended use in the making of things visible 
 for this world and probably for all worlds. 
 
 A perfect analysis of any solid shows its 
 elements to be of fluid descent. The granu- 
 
Seen and Unseen. 15 
 
 lation and crystallization of rocks and metals 
 bears witness to the same thing as clearly 
 and certainly as a cake of ice bears witness 
 to its former condition as water. There was 
 liquid before crystallization and fluid before 
 liquid. But without actual analysis we find 
 the atoms singly are quite too small to be 
 visible. No single atom of matter has ever 
 been seen, hence by reason we know if they 
 were liberated from cohesion and each one 
 to go free in space, solids would again pass 
 to a fluid state and be obedient to the law of 
 repulsion. There would then be no visible 
 things anywhere. The atoms of the world, 
 in that state, would be spread out in space, 
 floating among themselves and changing 
 places with one another by diff"usion, as 
 atoms now do and doubtless have always 
 done when free in space. 
 
 If now we think of the new made earth in 
 that state, simply manifesting the law of 
 repulsion, its atoms all spread out so as to 
 be very nearly transparent, as they certainly 
 must have been at the first, there will come to 
 
16 Seen and Unseen. 
 
 our minds the most fitting descriptive words 
 that have ever been written, and these were 
 written thousands of years ago, (Gen. 1:2,) 
 
 " And the earth was without form and void." 
 
 Yes, and not the earth only, but the ma- 
 terial universe entire, as it first emanated 
 from its Creator, invisible to the eyes of men. 
 
 I use the words fluids and solids in con- 
 trast with each other, so that the two words, 
 fluids and solids, may include every atom of 
 matter in the whole physical world with the 
 ether beyond the skies. The two words re- 
 late to matter in exactly opposite conditions 
 and in all possible measures of differences, 
 from the least to the greatest. 
 
 Matter in a solid state is always visible and 
 capable of being examined by our senses, 
 always has some cohesion of atoms, and is 
 capable of being acted upon by gravitation 
 and many other laws of coherent matter. 
 But in a fluid state, free from the law of co- 
 hesion, we find it manifesting only the 
 opposite ; that is, the law of repulsion of all 
 its atoms. Every atom repels every other 
 
Seen and Unseen. 17 
 
 atom, so that the mass, in the infinity of its 
 numbers, spreads abroad as the fluids of the 
 air are now doing. In this condition all 
 atoms are out of sight, because each one is 
 too small to be seen ; but when these same 
 atoms are combined and brought under the 
 law of cohesion, and any two or more of 
 them are chemically united and made one — 
 as, for example, oxygen and hydrogen 
 gas, each one invisible by itself, but when 
 the two are joined by electricity or heat, the 
 product is water, a plainly visible liquid — I 
 do not say fluid, for, by our definition of 
 fluids and solids, water and all liquids are on 
 the side with solids. Some cohesion is 
 manifested in its formation of drops, which 
 is not discoverable in fluids or atoms free in 
 space. In this state, the fluid, repulsion of 
 atoms is the law manifested ; in the other 
 cohesion of atoms is the law manifested. 
 The one force makes things visible and many 
 atoms to occupy a small space, in the other 
 matter is invisible and many atoms spread 
 themselves out over a very large space. So 
 
18 Seen and Unseen. 
 
 it is evident that no microscope can ever 
 show to us an isolated atom of matter. We 
 class water and all other liquids with solids 
 because they are visible and have cohesion 
 in a slight degree. Air and all the gases of 
 every kind, however many there may be, 
 while free in space, the light ether in the 
 skies in which the stars are seen, electric- 
 ity, magnetism, heat, light and whatever 
 in matter is either matter, or a property or a 
 force manifested in matter and known to 
 move in it as a force without being organ- 
 ized in it as a living thing, we will regard as 
 a fluid. 
 
 The practical distinction thus made in all 
 the material things in the whole world is 
 between the seen and the unseen. 
 
 The seen things are solids, the unseen are 
 fluids. The heaviest of solids, as gold, may 
 be made volatile by heat, and we often see it 
 in a semi-fluid state giving a golden hue to 
 the smoke that rises skyward from the tall 
 chimney at the mint where gold is fused and 
 liquified for . manufacture and coinage. 
 
Seen and Unseen. 19 
 
 ^Electricity has long been called a fluid, and 
 there is no reason for withholding the name 
 from other occult forces exclusive of life and 
 spirit. Let material elements in invisible 
 form be fluids if we speak of them as things, 
 and the same elements when in seen things 
 be solids, and our definition will be easily 
 understood and applied to all material 
 •existences as belonging, at the time we are 
 speaking of them, to one or the other of 
 these two classes — 
 
 " Seen and Unseen." 
 
 The material world, as now understood, by 
 itself consists of many kinds of matter, 
 seventy or more, the exact number not yet 
 known. All these simple kinds of matter 
 are capable of existence and can be found in 
 space free from cohesion, and in that state 
 we can think of them as a vast expanse of 
 misty matter, enough for a world it may be, 
 but without objective form, or gravitation, 
 or manifested, orbital, or axial motions. 
 
 But a change came, and art-like a visible 
 world appeared within the invisible ; objec- 
 
20 Seen and Unseen. 
 
 tive form, cohesion and gravitation, orbital 
 and axial motions, and numerous other laws 
 of matter were manifested ; and still the law 
 of repulsion continues its manifestations as 
 it did from the beginning and as now seen 
 in the air. 
 
 The aggregate work of repulsion is seen 
 now in all existing space not taken up with 
 solids, and the aggregate work of cohesion 
 in the world is seen in all the solids thus far 
 made. To the eye of reason the latter must 
 have come in time relations after the former. 
 
 There is a likeness to this truth in the 
 relation of letters to the words in our printed 
 language. A few letters (26) are the ele- 
 ments out of which all the words are made. 
 Each letter had an existence before it had a 
 place in any word in which it is now found. 
 And we do not think of a dictionary with its 
 many thousands of words as coming into 
 existence otherwise than by collection, 
 arrangements and contribution of letters 
 from the alphabet. First the mass of letters, 
 then the words, sentences and discourses to 
 
Seen and Unseen. 21 
 
 be put in due form for priuting. So in like 
 manner we think of all solids as made of 
 atoms of matter selected from pre-existing 
 matter in a fluid state, but now assembled, 
 arranged and combined so as to cohere to- 
 gether in the beautiful forms we see in 
 greater numbers, thousands of times more 
 in number than the words of the largest 
 dictionary unabridged. To think of one 
 such object as existing before the atoms of 
 which it is made would be to break away 
 from logical thinking, and to bow a leave- 
 taking from our own common sense. Reason 
 stands on the ample evidence that the gene- 
 sis of every visible thing, and therefore of 
 all the world, was in fluid atoms too small 
 to be seen by the human eye, even with the 
 microscope, and when so crowded as to be 
 faintly visible in places it was a nebulous 
 cloud, "without form and void," in- 
 capable in that state of acting conformably 
 to the law of gravitation or of performing 
 any of the distinctive functions of a solid 
 body. 
 
'12 Seen and Unseen. 
 
 The earth iu that coiiditiou would mani- 
 fest supremely the law of repulsion, while all 
 the other laws of matter would for the time 
 being be hidden from our view. We do not 
 imagine they were not in existence, only 
 they could not be manifested to outside ob- 
 servers. It is true that gravitation is dis- 
 coverable in the air and in gases, but the air 
 is a compound fluid and presumably has 
 some cohesion. It is not entirely invisible 
 for its blue gives us the sky over our heads. 
 There is a strong probability that the fluid 
 ether beyond the sky has no cohesion, and 
 is therefore invisible and the law of repul- 
 sion alone is there manifested, and that 
 light is not there obstructed by any atmos- 
 pheric color. 
 
 Notice now that we can see no reason in 
 science or in law why matter might not 
 have remained in that state of repulsion of 
 atoms unchangeably forever, as it was at 
 the creation, an unorganized quantity 
 of material, and there left for eternity. 
 So far as reason is concerned it says 
 
Seen and Unseen. 23- 
 
 nothing agaiust it. But the Creator of 
 the universe had not so intended. He 
 started what He had made to become visible • 
 on a great career of changes not yet, if ever, 
 to be completed. The Divine v^ord to the 
 world as a material creation was that it 
 should take up its work and not stay one 
 moment in one state, place and condition; 
 and it did not, but is still progressing on- 
 ward in its system of orderly changes. But 
 let us think a moment of that marvelous 
 condition of a world all afloat in atoms too 
 small to be seen, some of them to be made 
 into light, and what microscope is there 
 that can show to the eye of man one isolated 
 atom of light ? Only the Creator, we be- 
 lieve, has ever seen an ultimate atom of 
 matter. Hence we can never know any dif- 
 ference in the atoms of different substances 
 until, in the laboratory of nature, or art they 
 are brought together, each after its own 
 kind, in sufficient quantities to be apprecia- 
 ble. No single atom ever reflects light or 
 produces any impression upon the most deli- 
 
24 Seen and Unseen. 
 
 cate of our sense organs. Yet in such infin- 
 itesimal atoms did God create the 
 ** heaven and the earth." From this new 
 heaven and earth, in such a state, visible 
 things were eventually made to come forth ; 
 and we now see uncounted millions of ob- 
 jects about us free from the manifestation of 
 repulsion and obedient to the law of cohe- 
 sion. 
 
 The field of repulsion is still as vast as it 
 was at the beginning, but there is now a 
 comparatively small field within it in which 
 the law of cohesion is exhibiting in contrast 
 a wonderful world of visible things, and 
 the two laws are now co-acting harmoni- 
 ously together, but in exact contrast. Reason 
 asks whence came this transference of so 
 many of the atoms of matter and yet not of 
 all of them ? Why did not the law or force 
 of cohesion which holds some of all kinds of 
 atoms together in solids, a law which is 
 confessedly everywhere present with power 
 to act, why did it not make a complete 
 
Seen and Unseen. 25 
 
 victory over repulsion and so hold all the 
 atoms of matter together in solids ? 
 
 Transforming them from fluidity to solids, 
 or even to one solid mass and nothing more. 
 If cohesion among atoms had been a spon- 
 taneity, an inheritance of force in the atoms 
 themselves, such a result would be our rea- 
 sonable expectation. 
 
 But the law of cohesion that has part in 
 all the solids in the world and preserves their 
 integrity, giving to us all the variety and 
 beauty there is in things seen, that law 
 was not a spontaneity. If by any chance 
 thought of ours we might imagine atoms of 
 matter in long time becoming in some way 
 magnetized so as to stick together of them- 
 selves, there would be no reason why all 
 atoms should not go right on in like manner 
 accreting together until all should become 
 one mineral mass, an unspeakably worthless 
 thing, and nothiag more. 
 
 We', read of the creation, that "the 
 morning stars sang together and all the sons 
 of God shouted for joy," (Job. 38: 7,) and 
 
"26 Seen and Unseen. 
 
 we may be very certain that the unfolding 
 plans of God, the Father, were seen from 
 above before such thrills of admiration vi- 
 larated down upon the work from its high 
 witnesses in heaven. But our question re- 
 mains—Why did not the force of cohesion 
 take in all the matter of which it did 
 take some ? Science has no answer. 
 Philosophy hints no solution. We can see 
 no reason in the laws themselves, and 
 we have not advanced enough in world 
 reading to find an answer. So we must 
 look upwards to the Divine Creator's 
 will. There we find the adequate and ulti- 
 mate cause of all causes. As our minds are 
 constituted, it is unavoidable that we turn 
 to the personal being who knows, when no 
 other cause can be given, as in this case. 
 We find the law of cohesion acting within 
 certain limitations, just the limitations In- 
 finite beneficence would advise, and we be- 
 lieve God decreed those limitations ; but no 
 man can tell why some atoms were taken 
 and some were left. As we can see no 
 
Seen and Unseen. 27 
 
 reason beforehand, but Our Father's own 
 will, why He made the world, so the adjust- 
 ments of all the laws of nature, one with 
 another, takes us back to the same fouutaiu 
 of causes. 
 
 The Divine beneficence. His love of 
 moral beings, the Fatherhood of God to 
 angels and men, is becoming plainer and 
 plainer as the world's career is better known 
 and the use of its changes better understood. 
 The law of repulsion as first seen was a 
 marvelous display of Divine Power, but it 
 did not then show any moral quality or any 
 good will to men, or that it was to be for 
 the use of men. But now it has an exalted 
 place of usefulness in the world. It has now* 
 a moral work, a work of beneficence not 
 exceeded by any other law of physical na- 
 ture. If we think of what it now does in 
 keeping the air fit for us to breathe, in 
 keeping it in a fit condition to bear the light 
 to our open eyes, in a fit condition for the 
 bright shining orbs of distant worlds to be 
 seen by us, and with all in a fit condition to- 
 
"28 Seen and Unseen. 
 
 make life real and joyous and hopeful; 
 whoever will consider the contrast between 
 pure air and malaria, and then behold all 
 the indications of the Divine plan to im- 
 prove the atmosphere of our world by all 
 the geological changes He appointed for it 
 from the first, will not be wanting in proofs 
 of the beneficence of the Divine Will. All 
 -advances in science and religion show this. 
 Compared with the very first this is now a 
 new earth and heaven, and the old is ever 
 vanishing away to give place to the new. 
 We feel that our Heavenly Father intended 
 good results, and provided for them by an 
 ascending scale of creative progress into the 
 future of the world to come. This is our 
 abiding confidence in our Creator Father. It 
 is quite impossible for us who live in a Chris- 
 tian land to feel that the will of God is not 
 beneficent and the safest guide to us for our 
 own well being. Whatever we may fear 
 from our own ill deservings, we do not fear 
 any injustice from the Creator Almighty — 
 " Our Father in Heaven." No other court 
 
Seen and Unseen. 29 
 
 of final appeal cau be opened to us, and no 
 other could compare with this in " Wisdom, 
 Holiness, Justice, Goodness and Truth." The 
 will of Him who is the "King Eternal, Im- 
 mortal, Invisible — the only wise God" — 
 holds the scepter of Righteousness and 
 Good Will to men. 
 
 It is rather a boast of science to explore 
 all known things to their original elements 
 or sources, to a point where we can know 
 no more of them at present. And such a 
 vanishing point of human knowledge is 
 always present in the final analysis of any 
 created thing, when we must needs refer to 
 the Divine Will and stand upon the Omni- 
 present line that distinguishes the created 
 thing from its Creator — God. 
 
 As we now understand the known things 
 of the creation of the world, as we now read 
 the world, the Supreme Act of Original 
 Creation included nothing in itself to be 
 seen of men, and nothing in itself known to 
 men. 
 
 No one atom of matter in all the universe. 
 
30 Seen and Unseen. 
 
 furnished as it uow is with atoms made vis- 
 ible iu the heaven and the earth, was at first 
 made large euongh to be seen of men. And 
 this plan of the Creator's w^ork has never 
 changed. It is now as then, first the unseen 
 then the seen. 
 
 " No man hath seen God at any time. The 
 only Begotten Son, which is in the bosom of 
 the Father, he hath declared him." — John 
 i:i8. 
 
 All life is from the unseen, and all its 
 normal physical works begin in the use of 
 atoms iu an unseen manner; in the use of 
 atoms in such a manner it makes for itself 
 bodies, the seen from the unseen. 
 
 We may marvel at such a plan and won- 
 der if God could make a world out of such 
 unstable things, and so great a world with- 
 out being seen in doing it. But God's ways 
 not as our ways and His thoughts as 
 our thoughts, and His works are not per- 
 formed as our works are. In World Read- 
 ing our eyes must look patiently upon the 
 things He has made for us to look upon in 
 
Seen and Unseen. 3.1 
 
 the " heaven and in the earth" — seen and 
 unseen . 
 
 Behold the witnesses for God ! The sun 
 by day leads the train and the moon and 
 stars by night, forever singing as they shine, 
 the hand that 
 
 " Made Us Is Divine." 
 
 Truly the heavens declare the glory of 
 God and the firmament showeth His handi- 
 work. Day unto day uttereth speech, and 
 night unto night showeth knowledge. There 
 is no speech nor language where their voice 
 is not heard." Their line is gone out through 
 all the earth, and their words to the end of 
 the world. In them hath He set a taber- 
 nacle for the Sun, which is as a bridegroom 
 coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth 
 as a strong man to run a race. His going 
 forth is from the end of the heaven, and his 
 circuit unto the ends of it, and there is 
 nothing hid from the heat thereof. The law 
 of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. 
 The testimony of the Lord is sure, making 
 wise the simple. The statutes of the Lord 
 
32 Seen and Unseen. 
 
 are right, rejoicing the heart. The com- 
 mandmeut of the Lord is pure, eulighteuing- 
 the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, 
 enduring forever. The judgments of the 
 Lord are true and righteous ahogether. 
 More to be desired are they than gold, yea 
 than much fine gold. Sweeter also than 
 honey and the honeycomb. Moreover, by 
 them is thy servant warned, and in keeping 
 of them there is great reward. Who can 
 understand his errors ? Cleanse thou me 
 from secret faults. Keep back thy servant 
 also from presumptuous sins ; let them not 
 have dominion over me; then shall I be up- 
 right and I shall be innocent from the great 
 transgression. Let the words of my mouth 
 and the meditation of my heart be accept- 
 able in thy sight, "O Lord, My Strength 
 and My Redeemer."— Ps. 19. 
 
"And darkness was upon the face'of 
 
 the deep." 
 
 —Genesis, 1:2. 
 
SOIvIDS AND FLUIDS. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 We have defined the words, fluids and 
 solids ; names of all the matter in the world 
 in opposite conditions of atoms and reveal- 
 ing to us the opposite laws, repulsion and 
 cohesion. 
 
 As long as the world consisted of atoms, all 
 in a state of repulsion of one another, no 
 human conception of a solid earth coming 
 out of them could reasonably be formed. 
 Hence the outcome of a visible world in the 
 midst of those created atoms, " without 
 form and void," was a transformation, on its 
 first appearance, truly wonderful beyond 
 expression. As things are now manifested 
 around us the number of atoms held to- 
 gether in solids, the visible world, gains 
 
o^5 Solids and Fluids. 
 
 our first attention. And we are liable to 
 think of the invisible world as a place pretty- 
 far away and not as a place into which we 
 are born, and in which we are still living, 
 though it be at the lower border of it where 
 it broods on the visible. 
 
 We a re not told in simple words in what 
 way or by what means the earth, " without 
 form and void," was made ready to evolve 
 the visible world out of its midst, or so to 
 divide its atoms that some of them should be 
 made to evolve from the invisible to the 
 visible state and thus to manifest the law of 
 cohesion, while others remained as they were, 
 spread abroad to the outer boundaries of 
 creation as far as the law of repulsion has 
 dominion. But we are furnished with the 
 most graphic picture ever written of what 
 the world looked like when that change was 
 in progress. " And darkness was upon the 
 face of the deep." Gen. i : 2. This, like 
 the first view of the earth after its creation, 
 was taken by an outside observation. The 
 darkness was seen objectively as a visible 
 
Solids and Fluids. 37 
 
 tbiug, and thus cohesiou was manifested as 
 a law acting upon material atoms in solids. 
 We must know, however, that cohesion acts 
 only between atoms at an insensible distance 
 apart and never directly upon matter in a 
 «tate of repulsion of atoms. Cohesion does 
 not collect atoms ; it holds them together 
 when they touch each other ; hence we do 
 not mean to say in any case that cohesion 
 ^lone makes solids, but that solids always do 
 manifest that law to us as a constant law of 
 their existence. 
 
 It is reasonable for us therefore to ask 
 "how the atoms so situated in space became 
 disposed to a simultaneous act of self assem- 
 bling in readiness to cohere ? How were 
 they removed from their first situation 
 abroad and apart and so drawn together as to 
 become visible, becoming obedient to a 
 new law and to many new laws besides the 
 law of cohesion ? The atoms now cohering 
 in the earth and all the solids of the same 
 must have spread out in a state of repulsion 
 millions of miles around and away from any 
 
38 Solids and Fluids. 
 
 common centre. The question is, who gave 
 so many of them a rallying impulse, a sim- 
 ultaneous mobility towards a common 
 centre ? In a general way they moved up to 
 each other and all towards a common centre. 
 The existence of the visible earth is proof 
 that something of that kind has taken place ; 
 atoms did come together, for here they are 
 under the law of cohesion, many of them 
 solid rocks, and every one of them has the 
 true character of a transformation from a 
 fluid state. Whatever may have been the 
 distance apart of these atoms in the atomic 
 world before they were collected, at the 
 time appointed they arrived at the places 
 where we now find them in this small cen- 
 tral part of the first created atomic w^orld. 
 We here notice a well-known and universal 
 law of matter, which is, that motion with 
 compression of atoms always produces heat 
 in proportion to the rapidity of motion and 
 intensity of pressure combined. We judge 
 therefore that the motion and compression 
 of atoms concerned in this first stage of the 
 
Solids and Fluids. 39 
 
 world evolution, by which the solids came 
 forth, must have produced a volume of heat 
 of such intensity as to stap^ger arithmetical 
 calculations. 
 
 Heat by chemical action was, of course, 
 •one of the forces in this compression, as 
 well as electricity ; but that does nothing to 
 solve the question, or to tell how the atoms 
 were made ready for that special, electrical 
 and chemical action, either alone or with 
 other forces. 
 
 The compression of matter by whatever 
 means from a volume so immense as the 
 ■earth was in its nebulous form, and is now 
 in its unseen part, to a sphere so small as 
 8000 miles in diameter, must have produced 
 an enormous amount of heat in the com- 
 pressed materials ; while at the same time 
 the outlying and surrounding space would 
 "be so rarefied by the matter withdrawn 
 from it as to occasion a high degree of cold 
 in all the space so rarefied. The compres- 
 sion of atoms would generate fervent heat 
 and the rarefaction of the outlying atoms 
 
40 Solids and Fluids. 
 
 from which they were taken the most in- 
 tense cold. So we may, for the time, think 
 of a fiery centre all aglow with consuming 
 heat, inclosed in a hollow sphere of vaporous 
 fluid of intensest cold. The two states of 
 matter, hot and cold, are placed in the 
 strongest contrast and their battle grouud is- 
 now between them. 
 
 If we stop here we shall not get the 
 world's true appearance as it must have 
 been at that time. A glowing ball of fire 
 was not what an outside observer at a dis- 
 tance would have seen, for we find that 
 the elements of the solids of the earth are 
 not all capable of being solidified by heat 
 alone. Some of them cannot be so solidi- 
 fied. Water, the largest of all the external 
 solids, cannot, though heat is generated in 
 its production by the union of the gases in 
 the chemical and electrical fire that forms 
 it; when thus formed into water it is by heat 
 turned into steam, and wafted by heat force 
 into the cold air surrounding it, where it be- 
 comes a dense cloud of vapor and cooling 
 
Solids and Fluids. 41 
 
 returns to Avater and ice. When we think 
 of all the liquids, with their respective 
 properties, as carbon and other materials 
 that heat would turn into smoke and steam 
 to be condensed on reaching the outside 
 cold circle above, yet somewhat nearer the 
 fiery mass than the circle of extreme cold, 
 we shall see at once that it was not the fiery 
 ball that an outside observer would see far 
 away from without, but rather the darkness 
 of the steam and smoke inclosing the globe 
 of fire within it. This outside wrapper that 
 the consumption of gases must have pro- 
 duced could have been nothing else than a 
 globe of darkness. When a great city is on 
 fire it is not the fire that is seen afar oflf, 
 but the smoke. When Abraham looked 
 away upon the burning Sodom and Gomor- 
 rah, the cities of the plain, '* Lo, the smoke 
 of the country went up as a furnace," (Gen. 
 19 : 28.) 
 
 The greater the fire the greater the dark- 
 ness to a distant outside observer must be, 
 until the fuel becomes incandescent, for 
 
42 Solids and Fluids. 
 
 however high the flames may mount up the 
 smoke keeps always above it with its dark- 
 uess. Combustion is a process of intense 
 chemical action in which two or more kinds 
 of elements must undergo extreme changes. 
 If we think of an electric fire 8,000 miles in 
 diameter, over 25,000 miles in circumfer- 
 ence, all aglow under the great open arch 
 of creation, and fed by the inflow of all the 
 chemical atoms that became the solids of 
 the earth, including liquids, we shall find it 
 impossible to exaggerate the quantity of 
 smoke that rose to the rarefied ether, to the 
 cold above it around the whole circle of 
 the globe. 
 
 Let us call the earth as it then was, '*A 
 Deep," and then say, "And darkness was 
 upon the face of the deep," (Gen. 1:2) — 
 A deep of fire around which was an envelope 
 of smoke, within which the elemental fire 
 of creation was making ready the materials 
 to come forth in due time as the original 
 solids of the earth at its own natural center 
 of the world. Chemical transformations 
 
Solkh and Flukh. 43 
 
 are pre-emiuently like uew creations. No 
 man can forecast what the product will be 
 from any uew combination of elements 
 •chemically united. We have learned that 
 <;arbon and oxygeu so uniting produce fire 
 during the process of uuiting and then leave 
 a resultant that is counter fire. And though 
 to outward appearances the carbon is gone, 
 it is not. It is simply transformed into a 
 gaseous state and combined with the oxygen 
 that consumed it. And though the change 
 is so inconceivably great, nothing is lost ; 
 and presumably these changes will continue 
 to produce surprising transformations for- 
 ever, and that not one atom will be de- 
 stroyed thereby. Neither fire nor anything 
 •else ever destroy the atoms of matter, but 
 ' only set them free to form new combina- 
 tions or to go again under the law of re- 
 pulsion and diffusion. All combinations 
 are formed by definite laws, and many of 
 them in definite proportions of atoms also. 
 Thus we see reasons for an enormous heat 
 in the chemical processes of the fluids 
 
44 Solids and Fluids. 
 
 brought together iu making their endless 
 adjustments. But as fast as adjustments 
 were reached in the formation of com- 
 pounds, rocks, metals and water, a compara- 
 tive state of quietude must have ensued. 
 
 How long the hot world was kept busy 
 with its chemical adjustments with rock, 
 metals, salts, alkalies, acids, carbon and 
 lime before the removal of its outside dark- 
 ness, we cannot tell. Internal chemical 
 action in all the elements of its mineral 
 formation, keeping up heat, steam and smoke 
 in opposition to the ethereal cold beyond it, 
 would indicate a condition that might be so 
 balanced as to continue for long ages of 
 time. The Bible gives us no hint upon this 
 question. We are left with full liberty to 
 take all the time needed. But it must have 
 been an exceedingly long time before all the 
 processes of nature included in the forma- 
 tion of the complete list of mineral solids 
 now known, together with all the changes 
 of place and state in the elements that 
 could be affected as well without the direct 
 
Solids and Fluids. 45 
 
 rays of the suu as with them, were fully ac- 
 complished. Evidently it may have ex- 
 tended through millions of years. It must 
 have continued until the world was shaped 
 up to a great extent and its crust became 
 cool enough in places to allow carbon to be 
 taken up in vegetable organisms, and lime 
 to be worked over and used by animal lives 
 for the frame work of their bodies, that is 
 shells. And until much of the condensed 
 steam upon it was reduced to the form of 
 water. And not only so, but an enormous 
 quantity of water. If a fraction of the water 
 now on the earth were turned into steam at 
 the earth's surface, an envelope of fog 
 would again cut off the direct rays of the 
 sun and darkness would again be on the 
 earth during its continuance, and yet, pos- 
 sibly, without stopping in a large degree 
 some of the processes of nature. 
 
 I emphasize my remark that much may 
 have been done in the world without the 
 direct rays of the sun, and before the suu 
 could have been clearly seen from its sur- 
 
46 Solids and Fluids. 
 
 face, because it is reasonable in itself and 
 accordant with the report given in Genesis. 
 *' God said let there be light and there was 
 light," evidently before the firraanent was 
 completed and while the skyward region 
 was in a state of mixture of light and dark- 
 ness as we now have in foggy mornings. 
 Fogs in England sometimes obscure for 
 days the direct rays of the sun over their 
 well kept and beautiful fields and gardens. 
 Probably the sun's rays did not touch the 
 solid parts of the earth so as to reveal its 
 own bright form in the heavens, as seen 
 from the earth for a long time after it was 
 lighting the earth suflficiently for some 
 purposes. Perhaps not until a comparatively 
 late period. Certainly not until the granite 
 and other primary rocks had been formed 
 and cooled down in part, then broken up 
 again and again, and seethed and boiled in 
 the liquid floods, and still cooling in greater 
 quantities until rocks and mountains and 
 volcanoes began to make a frame work over 
 the fiery deep and amid the immensity of 
 
Solids and Fluids. 47 
 
 prevailing waters, before the fog could have 
 cleared away. It may have been that at any 
 time during long ages, if need be, an out- 
 side observer looking towards the earth 
 would see but a globe of darkness, for we 
 must not forget that this view was objective 
 and that the observer's standpoint was out- 
 side of the earth until a iirmament was 
 made. 
 
 *' God said let there be a firmanent in the 
 midst of the waters, and let it divide the 
 waters from the waters." Gen. i : 6. Now 
 the observer's standpoint must be entirely 
 changed. He must now be down upon the 
 solids of the earth, which are a very small 
 part of its whole magnitude, and the fir- 
 manent must be over him. And thus the 
 materials of the whole world throughout all 
 of its original space, including the firmanent, 
 all that was included in the " beginning 
 when God created the heaven and the 
 earth," is clearly separated into tw^o mineral 
 parts — the 
 
 SOLIDS AND FI^UIDS. 
 
48 Solids and Fluids. 
 
 Science teaches that all that is known as 
 matter in the world may be conveniently- 
 divided into three classes, and that each one 
 of these classes may be called a kingdom. 
 The first, which is the mineral kingdom, 
 then the vegetable and animal kingdoms. 
 And now where do we place the air in which 
 all the fluids, the gases and extended ether 
 by which the light comes to us from the sun 
 and the moon and the stars, where shall we 
 place all the matter that exists in a fluid 
 state ? Not in the animal kingdom certainly, 
 for animals have form and organs of life by 
 which they may be known separately, even 
 microscopic lives may be known separately. 
 The air in its nature is not animal and does 
 not belong to the animal kingdom. Is the 
 air then a vegetable ? Well, vegetables have 
 form and organs of life, and a place to stay 
 while they grow, and where they 'may be 
 found to-day and to-morrow. " But the 
 wind bloweth where it listeth and we 
 hear the sound thereof, but cannot tell 
 
Soluh and Fluids. 49 
 
 whence it cometh and whither it goeth." 
 This is not a vegetable ; and now we 
 are left alone in the mineral kingdom. 
 Each of the others has failed us. If we can- 
 not get gaseous fluids, the air and like 
 matter in here, it will be left out alone with 
 no class to receive it. But it is not left 
 out. The essential elements of matter in 
 the air and of all fluids are mineral elements. 
 In every human breath there is some car- 
 bonic acid gas, some carbon. And the dia- 
 mond, among the hardest of minerals and 
 the most brilliant of gems, is nearly all car- 
 bon. Reduce the diamond to invisible 
 atoms and it will still be mineral. In our 
 breaths the atoms of carbon are fluid, or 
 free in space and in a state of repulsion, 
 while in the diamond like atoms are held in 
 a state of cohesion in the closest of contact, 
 like atoms, indeed, but changed in their re- 
 lations to one another from a state of repul- 
 sion to a state of cohesion. This change 
 does not remove them from one and the 
 same kingdom. Air and all fluids, as we 
 
50 Solids and Fluids. 
 
 have defined fluids, belong to the miueral 
 kingdom, in distinction to the other two 
 kindgoms, animal and vegetable. This 
 should be understood strictly as pertaining 
 to its essential atoms in the invisible fluid 
 state. We would not call a visible drop of 
 water a mineral, nor a gust of wind a 
 mineral. But we must and do class the ele- 
 ments of these things in the mineral king- 
 dom, because their essential atoms are 
 mineral and readily distinguishable from 
 organized matter in either animal or vege- 
 table. All unorganized matter is mineral. 
 
 The original creation revealed only the 
 mineral kingdom in a fluid state and of 
 atoms singly too small to be seen of men. It 
 is well to keep this in mind always in con- 
 sidering the history of the elements through 
 their many transformations before their 
 present appearance in visible things around 
 us. By the first formation of solids the 
 mineral kingdom was divided into two parts 
 as unlike each other as opposite states of 
 matter can be, and still that dividing pro- 
 
Solids and Fhu'ds. 51 
 
 cess was only the beginning of changes in 
 both parts of the kingdom. As to solids, 
 themselves, but very few if any of them can 
 now be shown to be in the exact conditions 
 of their original formation. As to the rocks, 
 they have been broken up, cast out of vol- 
 <^auoes, tumbled about and mashed in pieces 
 and ground to powder ; reformed and broken 
 up again and ground and washed and mixed, 
 made plastic and again hardened. Some 
 conglomerated, and by the mechanical 
 fotces of nature thrown into the lodgments 
 of the earth where we now find them. Some 
 in the everlasting hills, and some beneath 
 the bottom of the seas. All have been fire 
 worked and water worked, and very many 
 indeed have been life worked into the soils 
 and chemicals of the earth, and into sedi- 
 ments beneath its waters, and into vegetable 
 and animal organisms. All the mechanical 
 and all the electrical and all the life forces 
 of this world are ever active in preparing 
 matter for new conditions and uses, new 
 combination and appearances, so that crea- 
 
52 Solids and Fluids. 
 
 tion itself in its graud career of progress is a 
 (Jaily promiser of a new heaven and a new 
 earth. Geology teaches us plainly that long 
 ages before man appeared in the world life 
 was here in great power in both vetetable and 
 animal forms. There were vegetable growths 
 of marvelous dimensions and in great vari- 
 eties, and animals great and small, from the 
 megatherium and other monsters down ta 
 minute forms, living things of microscopic 
 dimensions. Fossils of many kinds, both 
 flora and fauna, are found in the earth's 
 crusts after the first. So prolific in plant 
 and tree growths was the earth long ages 
 ago, as to support the animals of that time 
 and leave a residuum sufficient for the coal 
 beds we are now mining and distributing 
 for the use of man. Also, on the animal 
 side, the mere bones and shells of past, 
 generations occupy no small place among 
 the solids of the earth, so obviously did 
 lower lives work in ages past and left the re- 
 sults of their labors in a better prepared 
 ■world for the use of man. 
 
Solids and Fluids. 5'> 
 
 Carbon was not solidified by heat alone, 
 neither by cold ; but it required life, veg- 
 etable and animal, to solidify it. And so in 
 respect to the elements of chalk-beds and 
 lime-stone and coral-reefs ; their elements 
 were operated upon by life-agencies, animal 
 life, and thus reduced to solids and removed 
 from the atmosphere in such quantities as to 
 make an atmosphere of use to higher orders 
 of beings. The fossils of the earth's crust 
 are no very small part of its solids, and 
 many of them must have been entombed 
 long before the creation of man. Let all the 
 carbon and lime now in solids as fossil re- 
 mains be turned again into a gaseous form, 
 and the air would be, the world over, unfit 
 for human beings as we are now consti- 
 tuted. The truth of the early introduction 
 of life into visible forms seems to give a 
 reason for the words following : "And the 
 spirit of God moved upon the lace of the 
 waters." (Gen. 1:2.) We notice that the 
 largest part of the earth's surface is even 
 now liquid — water. There is something^ 
 
54 Solids and Fluids. 
 
 very significant in the Bible names given to 
 the world in its different states after its cre- 
 ation, while on its way of readiness for man. 
 First, It was named broadly with its own 
 proper name : In the beginning God cre- 
 ated the " heaven and the earth." Second, 
 When it began to be objectively visible to a 
 very slight extent, its proper name is re- 
 peated and a descriptive clause subjoined : 
 "And the earth was without form and void." 
 Third, It is called the " Deep," and the de- 
 scriptive word "darkness" is subjoined : 
 "And darkness was upon the face of the 
 deep." Fourth, It is called waters, as God 
 again acted upon it : "And the spirit of 
 God moved upon the face of the waters." 
 It is evident that the author of such de- 
 scriptive words was well instructed about the 
 genesis of the world and the stages of its 
 progressive career. But it is equally evi- 
 dent that he did not intend to give any de- 
 tailed account of it. We find that every 
 word that bears upon the creation is point- 
 ing directly and with emphasis to its Cre- 
 
Solids and Fluids. 55- 
 
 ator. The object was to tell 2i>ho made the 
 world and not how He did it, any further 
 than a few brief signs would help to settle 
 the fact that God made it in its beginning 
 and all the way after it. He gives the key 
 to the study of its elements, and names the 
 appearances of its earlier transformations, 
 and then leads on with directness and force 
 to Theology and Religion. "And the spirit 
 of God moved upon the face of the waters."' 
 This implies a life-giving presence of God 
 over the elements thus described, and we 
 presume that the vegetable and animal lives 
 introduced at that time were not, any of" 
 them, to come up to observation in review 
 as a part of the instruction to be given by 
 revelation respecting the doctrines of The- 
 ology and Religion. The distinct mention 
 that God did act upon the waters and movedi 
 upon them, before the sun is mentioned as 
 having been seen from man's standpoint on; 
 the solid earth, makes it probable that He 
 supplied all the kinds of life that were suited 
 to that time, and that all the laws of life- 
 
56 Solids and Fluids. 
 
 possible at that time were duly inaugurated 
 aud continue in force, wherever matter is 
 conditioned to receive them, until this day. 
 It would be hard to show that any law of 
 nature has ever been repealed. As the tem- 
 perature and food required by certain kinds 
 of life superabounded long ages before the 
 world was ready for man's use, we have no 
 reason to doubt that a life grant was Di- 
 vinely given to all creatures, great and 
 small, capable of exercising the functions of 
 life at that time. 
 
 It is always reasonable to have regard to 
 the intentions of an author in explaining 
 the words he sets before us. Why did the 
 author of the first chapter of the Bible refer 
 to the creation of the world except to say in 
 the most positive manner that all this, in all 
 the views that can be taken of it and in all 
 that it can include, was the work of God ? 
 and to emphasize it strongly as a fact by 
 declaring that he did it in such a way as to 
 show a series of changes in its progress, 
 and to include all that can be learned by 
 
Solids and Fluids. 57 
 
 human observation now or at any time ? 
 First, God created it at the beginning. He 
 was its author when it was in material 
 atoms ; was "without form and void." Af- 
 ter that it became enveloped in darkness : 
 " Darkness was upon the face of the deep," 
 when cohesion took place and the solids 
 were made, including the waters. After the 
 waters, life was introduced in organisms,, 
 "the spirit of God moved upon the waters." 
 life was given to the visible part of the 
 world. Light came by God's command- 
 ment. He made the firmament, and night 
 and day became an established fact. He 
 appointed seas and furnished the water, and 
 the air and the land with all the varieties of 
 Life-forms that preceded the introduction of 
 man ; and in His own time he made man in 
 His own image. " Let us make man in our 
 image." "So God created man in His own 
 image, in the image of God created he him, 
 male and female created he them." 
 
 This likeness included the idea of instruct- 
 ing men by the Divine example, the en- 
 
■68 Solids and Fluids. 
 
 forcemeut of Divine precepts by Divine 
 ■examples. This one principle started in the 
 first chapter of the Bible and runs through 
 the whole book. *' Beye holy," says God to 
 us, "for I am holy." " Be ye followers of 
 •God as dear children," implying a natural 
 affection that should be a life joy in the 
 hearts of men loving God as their "Father 
 in heaven." " Put ye on the Lord Jesus." 
 I see no reason for the mention of a six days 
 which are named with such exactness of de- 
 scription : "And the evening and the morn- 
 ing were the first day," etc., but to place God 
 before us working six days and resting on 
 the seventh, and thus, by his own example, 
 made the Sabbath to follow the six days of 
 labor just as he requires us to keep it. He 
 made it to follow the sixth day of labor tons 
 as we count time, and He applied this mea- 
 sure of time to himself figuratively — the 
 only possible way of its applicaton by finite 
 minds — to bring His own example before us 
 m regard to the Sabbath day, and to show 
 that it is sanctified and holy, ordained of 
 
jSolids and Fluids. 51) 
 
 God for the use of man. The language is 
 figurative as applied to the works of God, 
 but it is literal as it stands in connection 
 with the decalogue and all other Scripture 
 teaching on the subject of the Sabbath day. 
 We should hesitate to adopt any view of 
 the six days that would take them out of 
 harmony with Bible teaching on the subject 
 of the Sabbath da3^ In this matter, on the 
 human side these days must be construed 
 literally for our instruction, to give us the 
 measure of time intended for our weekly use, 
 in work or rest ; and figuratively, to give us 
 the condescending example of God in respect 
 to His work and rest in the works of crea- 
 tion. In the second chapter of this book, 
 fourth verse, in which the Sabbath is not 
 concerned, the time of creation is designated 
 indefinitely by a mere allusion to it as a 
 fact : " In the day that the Lord God made 
 the earth and the heavens." (Gen. 2:4.) 
 This shows that " day " as we count days, is 
 not to be taken as a time measure of the act 
 of God in the creation. A moment's carefui 
 
<60 Solids and Fluids. 
 
 reflection will show us that there is no way 
 in which we can measure any work of God 
 by time measure as applied to Himself with- 
 out intermediate agencies. Divine acts are 
 not time acts in the sense of lingering 
 through space with no intermediate agen- 
 cies. God appoints the time and sea- 
 son for others, but we cannot take these 
 up and apply them to Him or to any 
 ■of His direct and literal works. We can- 
 not say that God made a mammoth Califor- 
 nia tree in one moment, or in one hour— a 
 tree that has been growing fifteen hundred 
 years ; neither can we say that he was fifteen 
 hundred years in making it. We can say 
 fifteen hundred years have passed since that 
 tree was planted, since the seed from which 
 it grew was placed in the soil. But the ques- 
 tion, " When was that tree made? " remains 
 unanswered, because we cannot discover the 
 beginning and end of a Divine act in such a 
 way as to apply any time measure to it be- 
 fore it is in the keeping, as it were, of some 
 intermediate agency put under laws dis- 
 
Solids and Fluids. 61 
 
 tinguishable from God Himself, although of 
 His own will made, appointed and deter- 
 mined. The tree has been growing in soil, 
 air, moisture and sunshine, and the seed 
 came from its parent tree. So we may fol- 
 low back through mediate causes as long as 
 •we please, and when we get to the end of 
 all answerable questions we shall have failed 
 to learn how long God took to make that 
 tree, or what to include in that act less than 
 the creating of all the world. 
 
 Probably no man living knows what to in- 
 clude in the making of the world. Let a 
 young thinker try to think just what he will 
 include in the making of the world, and if 
 he thinks clearly and closely, as he should, 
 he will find an honest answer in three short 
 words, " I don't know." There are no time 
 measures of any kind, either long or short, 
 that can be applied to it as a work of time — 
 a creation that was set in motion and started 
 on the career of successive changes, within 
 limitations, just as long as it shall endure, 
 ^r is to have any being, and still endowed 
 
()2 Solids and Fluids. 
 
 with elements that are indestructible. To 
 say. that it was made in millions of years^ 
 and finished 6,000 years ago, cannot be true^ 
 and is subject to the same denial that any 
 other literal time statement would be. The 
 world is not now what it was 6,000 years 
 ago, or 6 days ago, strictly speaking. If we 
 choose to fall back in the world's career by 
 definite measures of 6,000 years at a time, 
 we may repeat that time measure as long as 
 we can count it, and then leave the question 
 as far from answer as ever, and no man 
 able to tell what he includes in the world's 
 creation. Therefore, there is no scientific 
 or provable time, known or unknown, 
 when the work of the creation began, or 
 when it was or will be finished. Any ex- 
 pression more than the first verse of the 
 Bible contains must of necessity be figura- 
 tive. The Bible statement is positive and 
 true : " In the beginning God created the 
 heaven and the earth." That is literal. The 
 institution of the Sabbath is also a literal 
 and positive fact. Man is required to so- 
 
Solids and Fluids, 08 
 
 observe time and labor that every seventh 
 -day shall be Sabbath time. The Bible says 
 nothing about the time taken for the crea- 
 tion except in connection with the Sabbath 
 day and to show that God made that distinc- 
 tion in the use of the days, and made it 
 honorable for man to observe it in all time 
 by his own example, which was of necessity 
 a figurative illustration. In no other way is 
 the work of creation referred to as a labor 
 finished, but to emphasize the rest time that 
 God has made and keeps in reserve for His 
 people. (Heb. 4 : 4-9.) " For He spake in a 
 certain place of the seventh day on this wise* 
 And God did rest the seventh day from all 
 His work." "There remains therefore a rest 
 to the people of God." We conclude there- 
 fore that all the truths intended to be taught 
 from the first chapter of the Bible are plain 
 so far as Theology and Religion are con- 
 cerned. That the word "day" for man's 
 use is literal, but not limited to a literal 
 sense as applied to the Creator's acts in 
 making the heaven and the earth : "In the 
 day that the Lord God created them." 
 
64 Solids and Fluids. 
 
 If we consider that it is the world itself^ 
 and mainly the solid part of it, that makes 
 the days, the first day and all that have 
 followed it, it will be obvious that days are 
 used in a figurative sense when applied to 
 anything that was previously made or done. 
 The world makes days by its revolution 
 on its axis successively every twenty-four 
 hours, or it makes twenty-four hours in one 
 day. But it did not make either days or 
 hours before it had an existence or itself 
 was made in the sense of being and moving 
 in conformity to gravitation, momentum 
 and other laws. It is inconceivable to us 
 how time was measured before there was- 
 any revolving world to measure it. All 
 our time measures are known by the 
 world's daily revolution on its axis, and we 
 cannot say that the world revolved before it 
 was made. Another step in our existence 
 may take us another step in knowledge, but 
 these are our limitations now as to the time 
 of creation. 
 
 The Bible does not speak of day until it 
 
SoUch and Fluich. 65 
 
 was visibly made by the revolution of the 
 earth upon its axis: " God divided the light 
 from the darkness," (for the first day and 
 for all the days ever to be made by the revo- 
 lution of the earth on its axis ) " And God 
 called the light day and the darkness He 
 called night. And the evening and the 
 morning were the first day." Gen. i : 4, 5. 
 It is often said that the Bible was not 
 given to teach science. But there is a science 
 of Theology and Religion, and this the Bible 
 teaches. Science is simply knowledge 
 obtained by observations and experiments 
 which may be repeated by others who are 
 qualified to repeat the experiments and to 
 make correctly the observations. All truths 
 so obtained in regard to any subject consti- 
 tute the science of that subject, as the 
 science of Astronomy is what is known of 
 astronomy by agreeing observations of 
 many, and is correctly taught to others as 
 the science of astronomy. The Bible teaches 
 Theology and Religion, and it teaches that 
 subject in a strictly scientific way. It 
 
66 SoUds and Fluids. 
 
 points to facts to be considered by the 
 observations of competent men. It asserts the 
 principles and characteristics of moral and 
 spiritual character, and it points to ex- 
 periments and works done to prove the 
 truth of all its doctrines. Experiments un- 
 derlie all its requirements. There is a con- 
 stant call for men to exercise themselves in 
 experimental proofs of all the doctrines the 
 Bible sets before them as the pillars of 
 truth. Its first words teach the true doc- 
 trine of one God only, by pointing to the 
 creation of the world and all things that are 
 in it, and can be seen from it, so that noth- 
 ing exists upon which any claims of another 
 god can be placed. The great truth that one 
 being made it all and all created things 
 known to men settles the question by the 
 exclusion of all other gods, and this is a 
 scientific method, bringing before us a 
 world which we are to examine for ourselves, 
 simply noting that in its first appearance it 
 was not more than thin nebula, " without 
 form and void;" then the stages through 
 
Solids and Fluids. 67 
 
 which it passed ia preparation for the use of 
 man, a work of intelligent design, variety 
 and magnitude. This one truth of creation 
 by one present Creator, the material world, 
 as an example of His work, brought under 
 our own observation as we now see it, to- 
 gether with the views of what it has been in 
 some other stages of its career, entitles the 
 Bible to be a true text-book of the Theology 
 and Religion to be taught to men. One 
 God is the first doctrine of true theology, 
 and the Bible teaches this doctrine without 
 prejudice to the mode of His own being, or 
 to the methods of His foreordained plan of 
 human redemption by Christ, the Son of 
 God and of man. 
 
 Another true doctrine is the Divine ordi- 
 nation of the Sabbath day, coming in at the 
 close of the six days of labor and commend- 
 ed by His own example as a rest day and a 
 holy day, founded on the experimental 
 testing of God for its right. Certainly 
 such a method of teaching by example, 
 founded on experimental proof before giving 
 
68 Solids and Fluids. 
 
 to meu the precept, is truly scientific. If 
 we take up any other doctrine of the Bible, 
 we find that it presents to us, in the same 
 reasonable way, proper grounds for our in- 
 vestigation before acceptance. No book in 
 the world calls us to closer observations, 
 more careful experiments, or clearer illu- 
 strations. ** By their fruits ye shall know 
 them." " Whatsoever a man soweth, that 
 shall he reap." "If any man will do His 
 will he shall know of the doctrine whether 
 it be of God, or whether I speak of myself." 
 Nothing is more scientific than such experi- 
 mental methods — practical tests of truth as 
 these — the Divine works as an open book 
 always before us, with its testimonies for our 
 examination. And " Scripture given by in- 
 spiration of God, is open for our inspection 
 and information, as well as for reproof, for 
 correction, for instruction in righteousness, 
 that the man of God may be perfect, 
 thoroughly furnished unto all good works." 
 2 Tim. 3 : i6, 17. It is thus made plain that 
 the purpose of revelation is to help us in 
 
Solids and Fluids. (39 
 
 our observations aud experiments, so that 
 all who strive to find the truth may 
 find it. In nature we find no power 
 visible in itself, or life visible in itself. 
 When power, force or life are manifested in 
 matter they can be differentiated from it, 
 from, all visible things. Hence the out- 
 going of our faith to the infinite Omni- 
 present God is not unreasonable nor un- 
 scientific. Invisibility is a necessity of Omni- 
 presence ; hence the man of God in all ages, 
 speaking to his Father in heaven, as a pres- 
 ent person, can say with reverence and a 
 holy unction: 
 
 " Whither shall I go from Thy spirit ? 
 Or whither shall I flee from Thy presence ? 
 If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there. 
 If I make my bed in hell, behold Thou art 
 there. If I take the wings of the morning 
 and dwell in the uttermost part of the sea, 
 -even there shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy 
 right hand shall hold me. If I say surely 
 the darkness shall cover me, even the night 
 shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness 
 
70 Solids and Fluids. 
 
 hideth not from Thee, but the night shiuetb 
 as the day, the darkness and the light are 
 both alike to Thee." (Ps. 139 : 7-12 ) 
 
"And God said, Let the earth bring- 
 forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and 
 the fruit tree yielding fruit after his 
 kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the 
 
 earth ; and it was so." 
 
 —Genesis, 1:]1. 
 
LIFE AND COUNTER LIFE. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 We have considered matter in its opposite 
 states, seen and unseen, solids and fluids. 
 We believe the unseen was the condition of 
 all the materials of the world and of the 
 universe : " In the beginning when God 
 created the heaven and the earth." Out of 
 that condition the atoms required for solids 
 were taken by a force that produced a gas- 
 eous conflagration, and, of consequence, an 
 overspreading cloud of smoke in all direc- 
 tions around the formative globe-mass of co- 
 hering matter. This darkness manifested 
 the law of cohesion, and eventually there 
 came into view the solid globe now under 
 our feet. The aggregate of solids, as 
 weighed in the world balances at that stage 
 of creation, were, we presume, the same as 
 now. 
 
74 Life and Counter Life. 
 
 From that time the material world ha& 
 consisted of these two parts in exactly op- 
 posite conditions of matter, the unseen in- 
 cluding all the fluids wherever they are, and 
 the seen including all the solids wherever 
 they are. We might pause here to look at 
 the new made solids, wonderful in magni- 
 tude and in workmanship, endless in vari- 
 ety — the great floods of water, the high 
 mountains and deep valleys, the rocks,, 
 metals, earths and formative solutions of 
 mineral atoms in process of crystallization, 
 crystals and gems— but our plan requires us 
 to notice, in a general way, a phenomenon 
 that occurred in time long before many of 
 the minerals had their places and finish as 
 we now see them. There was another out- 
 come from the invisible part of the world 
 before the manufacture of the most pictur- 
 esque minerals was concluded. A new kind 
 of force comes out of the unseen world be- 
 fore us and makes itself known here in 
 varied and wonderful kinds of conduct. 
 This new comer is called life. It emerged 
 
Life and Counter Life. 75 
 
 from the unseeu world iu the quietest pos- 
 sible manner. In its own nature an invisible 
 force, it greatly surpasses all we had before 
 seen or known in matter by its own peculiar 
 way of using it. It makes atoms of matter 
 visible to us in forms and ways not revealed 
 in cohesion, or in any before known laws of 
 matter — a new phenomenon, and we pause 
 for a while to think of it. It shows itself 
 in numberless and multiplying individual- 
 ities, shaping for itself, in matter, the 
 greatest variety of forms, sizes, habitats and 
 combinations of parts and members, all 
 made of the two conditions of matter we 
 bave been considering as seen and unseen 
 — solids and fluids. 
 
 Science says that all matter is either or- 
 ganized or unorganized. Only life can organ- 
 ize matter. Until life came there was no 
 organized matter in the world, and there is 
 none now but that which the individual 
 lives here have organized for themselves. 
 It follows that the organized matter is sim- 
 ply the living bodies of all the distinct liv- 
 
76 Life and Counter Life. 
 
 ing things there are in the world at any 
 one time, including the full number of 
 vegetables and animals. 
 
 This new phenomenon of living workers 
 over all the world organizing matter into 
 material plants and animals comes to our 
 view from the unseen, as all the solids came, 
 and it shows to us another unfolded space 
 in the plan of God in the creation of the 
 world — another evolution. We see life as a 
 predetermined, foreordained organizer of so 
 much of the world's materials in fluids and 
 solids as to lift them above the low level of 
 inert matter. At this stage of world read- 
 ing we see it as a habitation for an endless 
 variety of lives of both animal and vegetable, 
 and we pause to look at the situation given 
 it to manifest itself in visible organisms, 
 the place made ready for it, life's dwelling 
 place in respect to the seen and unseen 
 things, while it exercises itself in material 
 bodies. It may be said to reside here. 
 
 Broadly speaking : Just between these 
 two parts of the world, the solids and fluids; 
 
L^fe and Counter Life. 77 
 
 at the top of the solid globe, just on the 
 shell of the world's core and at the bottom 
 of its great ocean of fluid atmosphere 
 that rises into heaven ; in this space in 
 every direction all over the world ; at the 
 top of this comparatively small globe of 
 solids, with its crust but partially concealing 
 many fiery billows below, as shown by 
 structure, earthquakes and volcanoes, hot 
 springs and geysers, with other evidences of 
 enveloped heat ; at the bottom of an at- 
 mosphere opening up above us for unknown 
 miles through the blue sky into the infinite 
 space beyond the stars in heaven ; in this 
 lowly place, as it were, the footstool of 
 heaven ; at the bottom of all that is free in 
 space in all directions, we see the place de- 
 signed for the homes and the labors, the 
 food and the enjoyments of all the living of 
 every kind, with the camps and battlefields, 
 the graves and monuments of all the dead of 
 every kind. Here are all the throbbing 
 pulses out of the living hearts of men with 
 anxious desires, hopes and fears, wrestling 
 
TS Life and Counter Life. 
 
 for changes, for higher stations, for better 
 conditions of life. On this one stage of 
 solids are the endless variety of persons and 
 characters coming into view as persons and 
 dropping out of view as persons, but sus- 
 tained in numbers and variety — a moving 
 panorama throughout all generations. True, 
 some lives, just a few, are organized to soar 
 upward at will high in the air, on wings, for 
 a little while, and some to plunge at will 
 ■deep below the billows of the sea on mere 
 occasions, but none can stay long or very 
 far from this common breathing place for 
 all the living and resting place for all the 
 dead — the place of contact between the seen 
 and the unseen, the solids and the fluids of 
 the mere dead matter of creation as we 
 know it by our senses. 
 
 But more than this : Physical life is 
 never manifested, never organizes itself by 
 use of atoms in either of these two states of 
 matter alone. The two are always joined 
 together in a wonderful manner before there 
 is any phenomenon of life in any matter 
 
Life and Counter Life. 79 
 
 whatever. The bodies of all life forms are 
 solid, and the work of life iu all its motions, 
 whatever it does, is carried on in the use of 
 fluid atoms. Every living thing keeps its 
 own body alive only by its contributions to 
 itself of fluid atoms, largely obtained at 
 times by the conversion of solids into fluid 
 atoms by digestion in its body, and when 
 this process of fluid action ceases, for any 
 reason whatever, physical life ceases in the 
 organism with which it was identified. 
 Hence we see the two states of matter are 
 essential to life itself and are represented iu 
 all the tiniest as well as the largest of this 
 world's living forms, in both the vegetable 
 and animal kingdoms. 
 
 The foods of every kind of organism'must 
 include both kinds of matter. Every living 
 organism must have some food in such form 
 that it can work ^upon it and accomplish 
 such conversion of it into fluid as its own 
 needs require ; something solid, including 
 liquids and solids, from which to extract its 
 needed fluids. Also, the ejections, wastes 
 
80 Life and Counter Life. 
 
 and exhalations of every life organism will 
 be found to include matter in both the solid 
 and fluid state. The odors of plants are fluids 
 and their shed leaves are solids ; their roots 
 draw fluid food from the surrounding soil, 
 and their leaves take in fluids from the sur- 
 rounding atmosphere. So every tree takes 
 food from above as well as from below, and 
 cannot dispense with either source of its 
 supplies. Such is the relationship of every 
 living thing to matter in its two states — 
 fluids and solids, seen and unseen. 
 
 We notice the order of the outcoming 
 things from the unseen part of the world. 
 Solids were the first thing we saw coming 
 out from thence. They came out of the 
 store-house of invisible things, which store- 
 house our Father in heaven has not yet 
 opened visibly to the eyes of men ; and now 
 comes life, the second thing that has come 
 forth from the same store-house of unseen 
 things which are kept somewhere in our 
 Heavenly Father's universal kingdom under 
 his control and not yet made visible to men. 
 
Jjlfe and Counter Life. 81 
 
 We caunot think of life as coming from the 
 solids ; it was not given with solids, did not 
 come when they came. Its hiding place is 
 in the fluids, and there is not a physical life 
 in the world that can give up its fluids and 
 not its place in matter at the same time. 
 Life comes and goes in fluid matter, distinct 
 as it is from it, for it has no material prop- 
 erties. It brings nothing to the scales as a 
 counterpoise to the small dust of the bal- 
 ance. We do not imagine that a live ele- 
 phant placed upon the scales and weighed 
 should he be then and there electrocuted, or 
 yield his life to an electric shock, would 
 weigh either less or more because of that 
 event. Ponderability is not a property of 
 life, neither has life any part in the essential 
 properties of matter as we know it. 
 
 The true science of life comes only from 
 the works of life itself. We must see what 
 it does and define it by its works ; after that 
 determine what its laws are, when we know 
 sufiSciently of its works to do so. This is all 
 that science, simply as science, knows about 
 
82 -^{/e and Counter Life. 
 
 life ; it knows it by its works. We need not 
 try to break the mystery of its being. We 
 know it as a part of the wonderful works of 
 God. We may classify it and study it boldly 
 and carefully, but as there is always in it a 
 kind of Godward mystery we should study 
 it reverently, with open minds and truth- 
 loving hearts. 
 
 Probably the word life has a greater range 
 of meanings than any other word. It be- 
 longs individually to every organized form 
 in the whole universe. The vivified speck 
 of organized matter that, with flickering 
 heart-beats, begins the battle of existence on 
 wings and expires in the contest of one day, 
 as the ephemera or May flies are said to do, 
 is individualized life, and it ranges up 
 through the whole scale of individual ex- 
 istence. Life is thus used with a universal- 
 ity not given to many, if to any other, words. 
 There is nothing else more multitudinous 
 than life organisms in the world. 
 
 Because electricity is universally present 
 and imponderable, and it is always found 
 
Life and Counter Life. 83 
 
 abundantly in all organized beings, some 
 have said that may be life. But if electricity 
 -were life it is very singular that an abund- 
 ance of it is so fatal everywhere to all life, 
 vegetable and animal. No, electricity is not 
 life auy more than heat or light or magne- 
 tism is life. Life did not come into solids as 
 electricity came, and it did not come until 
 after electricity came. Electricity came 
 with the first manifestation of solids, but 
 life came in a characteristic manner that be- 
 longs to itself alone. It came without visi- 
 ble form, to build visible forms. It came 
 without visible faculties to organize for itself 
 visible faculties. It came with no visible 
 will power and it crowned many things it 
 organized with faculties for adequately show, 
 ing the character of a free will. It came 
 with no visible eyes to see its own work, but 
 it included organs of sight in most of its ani- 
 mal productions. It came with no visible re- 
 lations to material things and it has filled the 
 world with visible forms that are related to 
 one another and yet diversified in powers, 
 
84 Life and Counter Life. 
 
 characters and works and moral attributes 
 revealed as subsisting with, and yet distinct 
 from, the materials in which they reside. No 
 building ever made a builder. No statuary 
 ever made an artist. Life came as the world 
 came, by the word of God. " God said." 
 And that is the reason solids came wuth elec- 
 tricity, and then life, not as the law of elec- 
 tricity or any other law of matter. Life is 
 an individualizing power and has character- 
 istics that do not belong to any law of mat- 
 ter. It has use for and ability to use matter^ 
 as no laws of matter can do without it. Life 
 individualizes itself in fairly reasonable pro- 
 portions in two opposite sexes, the male and 
 the female. And the increase of numbers of 
 individuals in all kinds of life, vegetable and 
 animal, is dependent on a parentage that in- 
 cludes both sexes. The foundations of reli- 
 gious marriage were started prospectively in 
 this world with the introduction of life. 
 And the higher the life the more sacred and 
 divine is that relationship of which Christ 
 and His Church is the antitype. Eph. 5: 
 
Life and Counter Life. 85- 
 
 xxxii : "This is a great mystery, but I 
 speak concerning Christ and the Church." 
 
 Again we notice that embodied life in both 
 kingdoms and of all kinds, begins its mani- 
 festation to us, its very first work, in start- 
 ing for itself a body, beginning always with 
 the making of a seed in the body of its own 
 natural parent from which it is to descend. 
 This special fact belongs in principle to all 
 animated nature without exception, life from 
 life. There has never been known in his- 
 toric times any life without parentage, nat. 
 ural descent or the body or seed of any life 
 not commenced in a living relation to a par- 
 ent of which it has a natural time limit of 
 separation. Only life can generate life, and 
 of all the kinds of life in the world no one 
 can generate either a higher or lower kind 
 than is natural to itself. Sparrows cannot 
 generate eagles, nor eagles sparrows ; apples 
 grapes, nor grapes apples. Though the seeds 
 of a tree, vast in numbers, to be counted by 
 thousands, it is still true that every one of 
 them is a separate young life commenced in 
 
86 L^f^ and Counter Life. 
 
 the tree and shows the first steps taken in 
 embryo to make another tree like the one 
 from which the seed came. And so in all 
 animals multiplying by whatever kind of 
 eggs, or spawn, or dividings, and whatever 
 their number from the same parent. The 
 spawn eggs of some kinds of fish may be 
 ■counted to a million, it is said, yet every one 
 of them contains the embryo of another ani- 
 mal in the likeness of its parent fish, as seeds 
 •do of new trees in the likeness of their par- 
 ent tree. We notice, also, that the seeds of 
 every tree and the eggs of all animals that 
 are parted from their parent before an inde- 
 pendent life is manifested have in a safe cas- 
 ing or shell a little food for the young tree 
 or the young animal to start with and to live 
 upon for a little time whenever the little life 
 germ shall be placed in circumstances to 
 start independently, or on its own account. 
 As an example we are all familiar with the 
 food in a common hen's egg that lasts three 
 weeks under the vivifying influences of incu- 
 bation, in which time the embryo grows by 
 
Life and Counter Life. 87 
 
 feeding on the repast of egg food stored up- 
 for it for that occasion, as long as it lasts. 
 Then the chick's growth and strength is such 
 that with its little bill it breaks a hole in the 
 shell which held his food for three weeks 
 and was his own little world when he began 
 life and was called au egg ; then master 
 chick comes out to see the outside world and 
 to gather food wherever he can find it, in a 
 place where he can use his numerous facul- 
 ties, eyes, ears, bill, legs, claws and wings, 
 brains and intellectual faculties. If we turn 
 now to the tiniest seed of grass, when it 
 leaves the place of its paternity, it has a 
 small well packed case of food in its tin}^ 
 almost microscopic casing, for its first use 
 whenever it shall be placed in circumstances 
 for gomg on with its enterprise of making 
 another blade of grass like that from which 
 it came, including the production of seeds 
 and casting them forth with life properties 
 and food in them like that with which it 
 started its own career. Thus in endless mul-- 
 tiplications and successions all the orders of 
 
88 -^(/e and Counter Life. 
 
 life are going on to accomplish their work- 
 We see their bodies, their growth and their 
 work while they live. They die, and their 
 bodies cease to be organized matter, they 
 cannot be used as bodies for any other lives, 
 even if used as shelter or food for them, for 
 in this respect parasites must make their 
 own bodies. That is a work the doing of 
 which cannot be shirked or delegated to an- 
 other, either bond or free, high or low, 
 great or small, each life must grow its own 
 body. 
 
 Notice also that life always extends itself 
 by individuals and in no other way. Mol- 
 lusca may increase as the sands of the sea, 
 and insects swarm as clouds, and fish may 
 shoal in masses and grass may sward the 
 lawn ; still a careful analysis will show that 
 all these aggregated numbers of each kind are 
 made up of individuals, and that each indi- 
 vidual has only such a body as it has made 
 for itself and such as form its seed or root 
 multiplication; it could have made no other 
 in substantial character. The egg is not like 
 
Life and Counter Life. 8D 
 
 the fish that spawned it, nor the seed like 
 the tree that bore it or the root that 
 branched it ; yet the law of descent will 
 keep them both within their proper lines in 
 all their future work. If we think of the 
 unnumbered classes of life forms in the 
 waters and the air and on the land, the 
 preservation of classes is indeed most won- 
 derful. But all seeds hold their secret un- 
 seen of men, they hold the plan and char- 
 acter of the material body from which they 
 came, but will not reveal it until given an 
 opportunity similar to that enjoyed by the 
 parent tree. I may hold a mustard seed and 
 a turnip seed in my hand and be unable to 
 tell by sight the one from the other, but 
 when placed in fertile soil, smiling sunshine 
 and ample moisture they will open their re- 
 spective plans with all the cautions of invis- 
 ible growth; but eventually, faithful to their 
 parentage, a true likeness of the plant that 
 gave them respectively their being comes 
 forth. 
 
 The microscope has been called into ser- 
 
DO Life and Counter Life. 
 
 vice to discover the secrets of life in its 
 starting, and all the responses it has ever 
 given are in mere samples of life's very- 
 minute and early works. Students find a 
 very small " cell " which is the first visible 
 work of every life starting to form itself a 
 body within that of its own parent, either 
 animal or vegetable. The cell itself is not 
 life, but the body of a life commenced upon 
 the same plan as its parents' life was com- 
 menced before it. The "cell" does not 
 ^iflfer much in all the various kinds of life 
 known, either animal or vegetable, great or 
 small. The earnest student with his micro- 
 scope sees the live cell, a very minute 
 structure, but the beginning of a life has 
 already passed and the microscope is con- 
 fronted with just a sample of life's work, 
 just a little cell with fluid centre rapidly 
 forming and connecting other matter by 
 cells and combinations, and growing apace 
 until the time comes for a separate existence 
 from its parent, or for some marked trans- 
 formation. For example, among winged 
 
Life and Counter Life. 91 
 
 insects that deposit their eggs where there 
 is food for a worm, the life in the egg first 
 deposited in the food begins and organizes 
 a worm body that eats of that food and 
 grows to maturity and then passes into the 
 chrysalis state where the matter in its worm 
 body is, some of it rejected and some of it 
 used as food for the same life to organize 
 and to mature a body of the insect kind 
 which being completed with wings, the in- 
 sect, it may be a butterfly, comes out in the 
 real likeness of its own true parents, and 
 ready in due time and in similar manner ta 
 deposit eggs for the starting of other ani- 
 mals, but of its own kind only. All created 
 lives have their own kind of transformations 
 from embryo or germ to final maturity, but 
 the metamorphoses of insects are so unique 
 and visible as to be best known. We think 
 of the butterfly going away with a bright 
 new body and wings to fly in the air from 
 its decayed chrysalis, aud we wonder if it. 
 knows or remembers anything about its for- 
 mer mode of life as a disgusting worm. Does 
 
"92 Life and Counter Life, 
 
 it kuow how it once crawled as a worm and 
 then slept as a chrysalis before it awoke in 
 the air on wings with all its attractive adorn- 
 ments of form and color and blithe motions ? 
 These are simple hints of the transforma- 
 tions, sleeps, torpors, and encasements 
 which show that life is capable of a con- 
 tinued existence in some organisms and in 
 some circumstances that indicate a very 
 limited degree of activity. It is said that 
 life is action; but when we take two kernels 
 of wheat from an old-time harvest and plant 
 them, if one grows and the other does not, 
 we say only one of those seeds was a live 
 seed. Still life, in its own nature as a sub- 
 stantive existence, is something distinct 
 from — I do not say separable from — all its 
 changes and all its works, however wonder- 
 ful they may be. We see it only while in 
 «ome of its works and these show it to be a 
 self-directing agent, bringing things seen 
 out of the unseen, manifesting itself in 
 either animal or vegetable forms and always 
 after the type of its own kind ; never visible 
 
Lift and Counter Life. 93 
 
 uutil it makes itself so by its own growth in 
 its own natural organisms. All seeds have 
 the stamp of their progenitors, so that every 
 kind of life started in the world has a con- 
 tinuous likeness to its original by natural 
 parentage, however much it may be in- 
 creased in numbers ; and though it does be- 
 come modified in time by its historical con- 
 ditions, climate, food, works and surround- 
 ings yet the tendency of all lives under like 
 conditions is towards the likeness of the 
 original from which they came ; organisms 
 like organisms, and character like character. 
 Natural parentage is more potent than 
 " natural selection." 
 
 Again there are many time periods of life 
 which distinguish it from the laws of matter. 
 Some lives manifest their presence in matter 
 for one day — ephemera — and some for 3,000 
 years, (the cedars of Lebanon,) and this is a 
 characteristic circumstance of life. Even 
 disease germs, microbes, are estimated to 
 have their respective periods of incubation, 
 upon the same principle of larger organisms. 
 
94 -^i/e and Counter Life. 
 
 Notice also that the laws of matter, cohe- 
 sion, gravitation, electricity, heat, magnet- 
 ism, chemical affinity, etc., all continue their 
 force in organized matter the same as in 
 unorganized ; and yet withal we see that 
 there is no life in the world so humble and 
 lowly. There is nothing known as a life 
 that does not do works with the laws of 
 matter, that these laws or forces cannot do 
 without the life force. For example, an 
 apple tree will cause to appear upon twigs 
 from its branches 500 pounds of apples in 
 five months, from May to October. With 
 the law of gravitation for the whole time in 
 persistent opposition to there being a single 
 ounce of apples up there. We see the 
 apples as solids, every atom in them is now 
 obedient to the law of cohesion, and in some 
 way has been taken by life from the law of 
 repulsion and diffusion and prepared by 
 growth to be presented visibly in fruit as we 
 now see them. These are works of life so 
 common that we scarcely stop to think of 
 them; but they are enough to show that life- 
 
Life and Counter Life. 95 
 
 works, as works, are easily distinguishable 
 from any and all the laws and works of 
 physical forces. If anyone says the laws of 
 capillary attraction fed the tree and the 
 fruit, we have only to look at a tree without 
 life and see if it feeds apples or anything 
 else. 
 
 We are all familiar with the process of 
 grafting trees, and we know that whether 
 the whole tree is grafted or only a part, the 
 graft grows in wood fiber, looks and fruit 
 of its own native kind. 
 
 The graft produces its own proper kind of 
 fruit, while the roots and body of the tree in 
 which it is placed render all needed service 
 in the fluid circulations required by the 
 graft. The graft retains its own nature 
 and does its own characteristic work in fruit 
 bearing of its own kind. By this we see that 
 the shoots, twigs and leaves of trees control 
 their roots and bodies as to what their work 
 shall be in fruit bearing, and the body and 
 roots of the tree become simply contribu- 
 "tory. This is a pleasing result, when we see 
 
90 Life and Counter Life. 
 
 a worthless tree made valuable by grafting^ 
 into it a little sciou from a good tree; and 
 in like manner a worthless sciou may be 
 grafted into a good tree ; and grafting may 
 accomplish conversion and re-conversion^ 
 but no third kind or new kind of fruit can 
 be obtained by grafting, but rather one of 
 the strongest evidences of the tendency of 
 all life to be faithful to its ancestral type. 
 Life is always dependent upon the co-opera- 
 tion of all the laws of matter, notwithstand- 
 ing its own higher character and power. 
 Whenever any matter suited to any particu- 
 lar life ceases agreeably to its own laws to 
 serve reasonably w^ell, life after a brief 
 struggle gives up the contest, leaves its own 
 organism and passes to some other state, 
 condition or place. To our limited knowl- 
 edge it disappears. Likewise its organism, 
 its body, passes in due time to some other 
 condition of matter. We can follow the de- 
 composition of the organism, every atom of 
 it, back to its former state of fluid and solid 
 elements of matter. Obedient still to alL 
 
Life and Counter Life. ^7 
 
 those laws, but free now from the law of 
 life. Probably if we could follow it we 
 should find in like manner the reversion of 
 vegetable life to its former normal condition 
 in space, or that the life of the dying reverts 
 again to a condition in space similar to what 
 it had with its kind before it 1 ecame con- 
 stituted in matter by its own organization 
 therein. Whenever matter is in a perfectly 
 prepared condition to receive life there 
 is always a kind of universal presence of it 
 to start organisms, and we can see no reason 
 why it should not come forth again and again 
 in such kind of organisms as by the laws 
 of its creation God has predetermined it. 
 There is no spontaneous generation, 
 but in the due order of nature there 
 is always some kind of life present 
 to all matter in a fit condition to receive it. 
 A plant in dying retires from its own body 
 and leaves it to the laboratory of nature to 
 be chemically and mechanically prepared 
 for reorganization, and this is constantly' 
 going on under our own observation. The 
 
98 Life and Counter Life. 
 
 bones aud shells of many animals may con- 
 tinue in some places undissolved ; but not 
 in places where the air, heat, water and life 
 are constantly acting upon them. This 
 known reversion of the elements of matter, 
 and the identical atoms of it, back and forth 
 between the seen and unseen, or the solids 
 and fluids, shows that life does not increase 
 or diminish the quantity of matter existing. 
 If life should organize all the matter of 
 the world it would not add one atom to 
 what is now existing. It would sim- 
 ply change its form aud modify or re- 
 refine its character. Neither does it seem 
 likely that the lower grades of life, as 
 plant life, for example, has not the same 
 facility of reversion back and forth between 
 matter in which it becomes organized and a 
 place and state of existence in which it is not 
 organized, as its own organism has of rever- 
 sion of all its elements to their former state 
 after life's departure from them. The ques- 
 tion is whether life is not furnished to plant 
 organisms in some way analogous to that in 
 
Life and Counter Life. 99 
 
 which matter is furnished from its unseen 
 atoms. As life is even more retired into the 
 unseen, when out of its organisms, than 
 fluid matter is when out of the same, whv 
 should not the former have a relative place 
 of existence in the unseen fluids of the in- 
 visible part of the world as well as the latter 
 in the seen things of the world and without 
 any necessity of being a material substance ? 
 Why should not life be increased to the 
 plant as it needs it, as well as invisible atoms 
 as it needs them ? The plant increases by 
 atoms of matter taken from the air every 
 day. Why not the increase of its life in a 
 similar manner ? I can see no reason for 
 thinking that any of the lower kinds of life, 
 either vegetable or animal, ever actually 
 leave this world, if we understand the world 
 to include the air space belonging to it. 
 I/ife is never manifested but where fluids are 
 in circulation in a visible organism, but its 
 presence wherever matter is ready for organi- 
 zation and a seed is rightly inserted seems to 
 be as universal as the air itself. 
 
100 Life and Counter Life. 
 
 I am the more explicit iu this matter be- 
 cause I do uot regard the highest order of 
 life as included iu this or iu auy like rever- 
 sions or system of renewals. Man's circuit 
 includes his accountability to God in this 
 life and that which is to come. Heb. 9: 
 xxvii : " It is appointed unto man once to 
 die, but after that the judgment." Man, iu 
 the image of God, has a continued identity 
 of person and character ; for him we find not 
 only that " the body returns to dust as it was 
 and the spirit to God who gave it," but that 
 God will bring every work into judgment, 
 whether it be good or evil." — Keel. 12: vii 
 and xiv. Science knows of no possible 
 way in which annihilation can take place in 
 any atom of matter whatever. Changes of 
 relative quantities and varieties of combina- 
 tions, forms and changes of place, are all 
 that matter or atoms of matter are capable of 
 showing. And so of life in its lower orders. 
 It may have changes of place and varied 
 conditions of existence, with endless variety 
 iu forms ; and this, with its works, is all we 
 
Lifa and Counter Life. 101 
 
 kuow of it. Its couception, and growth, and 
 form, and work, and death we see, while all 
 the rest of its circuit is hid from us, though 
 not without a clear hint of its reversion into 
 the fluid space from which it came. 
 
 The question as to when life first appeared 
 in our world is one of consideiable interest, 
 from a geological point of view, because the 
 structure of the earth's crust shows so much 
 work done by life organisms in produc- 
 ing the solids as we now find them, that to 
 fix the rlate of rocks and conglomerate for- 
 mations is to fix a date of life for the organ- 
 isms in those formations. Fossil remains 
 are found entombed in the rocks ; petri- 
 fied remains are found in places eight 
 miles below the earth's surface. These 
 give us the certainty of teeming 
 millions of plants and animals in each 
 successive step of the world's career. 
 From the view we have taken of the 
 transformation of a part of the world's 
 materials from a fluid into a solid 
 state by compression and cohesion, which 
 
102 -Zy//e and Counter Life. 
 
 made the earth for awhile a ball of 
 fire with an outwardly overspread dark- 
 ness of smoke, it is plain that life could 
 not have been manifested in the first period 
 of the world's cooling down process. Time 
 enough must have elapsed for a portion of 
 its vapor and smoke to have become lique- 
 fied before a habitable place was ready for 
 any kind of life, as we now see it. Ivven the 
 aquatic plants and shell-forming animals 
 required delay for the earth to cool down ; 
 but the moment that took place we can im- 
 agine the word to have gone forth and that 
 self-multiplying organisms, life organisms, 
 prevailed to the extent of the world's pre- 
 paredness for their work. At the first there 
 could have been no pure water and no pure 
 air, agreeably to our present ideas. Purifi- 
 cation required separations and rejections. 
 Not until the chemical processes of nature 
 had ceased to be violent universally, and 
 the extreme solids that could stand the high- 
 est degrees of heat and the liquid solutions- 
 that would first condense were parting from- 
 
Life and Counter Life. 103 
 
 €ach other, would there be auy place or any 
 sustenance for life ; no conditions of matter 
 in a state of readiness to receive it in the 
 places where it now exists. Doubtless our 
 Heavenly Father saw the world ready for 
 life before He spoke the word that brought 
 it here, and in just the kinds for its first in- 
 troduction . Some kinds could endure a 
 high degree of heat, some could exist in 
 liquids but poorly aerified, all had a peculiar 
 work to do in getting the world ready for 
 the higher order of beings — workers whose 
 bodies were to become so large a part of the 
 crust and soils needed for future occupants. 
 There was no reason why these should wait 
 after the conditions of the temperature and 
 sustenance admitted of their presence. The 
 wonderful life organisms in the shape of 
 mammoth plants and trees, gigantic animals, 
 megatheriums and other monsters, as well as 
 smaller crustaceans and polyps, an immense 
 throng of countless varieties, all along the 
 past ages are now presented in the crusts of 
 the earth and described in our text books ot 
 
104 Life and Counter Life. 
 
 geology. We have fossil remaius, both 
 flora and fauna, in every strata of the earth's 
 crust since the first, or certainly the second,. 
 showing that life had been in the world from 
 the earliest time, and of such kinds as it 
 could support in all its own changing condi- 
 tions. The carbon and lime that existed in 
 a gaseous state as fluids at first needed to be 
 removed from the air, and life was made the 
 appointed agency for removing it. Plants 
 and animals made their own bodies mostly 
 of these materials ; there was carbon enough 
 for all the plants and lime enough for all 
 the shells and bones and coral reefs. The 
 lives that solidified all these immense quan- 
 tities of carbon and lime have left their 
 record in the rocks and chalk formations,, 
 in the coal mines and coral reefs, witness- 
 ing of what the humblest lives once did to 
 prepare the world for the needs of men. 
 Aquatic plants and mollusca and polyps ma}- 
 have filled many waters when but little soil 
 or rock was dry — perhaps before the firma- 
 ment was a visible reality and the waters 
 
Life and Counter Life. 105 
 
 "began to be purified in the way we now see 
 it, in its circuits to the sky and through 
 gravel beds of earth to fresh springs and 
 fountains, a present delight to the children 
 •of men, a necessity to the present animal 
 kingdom. 
 
 We have seen before that all lives make 
 their own bodies and begin the same invisi- 
 bly in the living bodies from which they de- 
 scend. We now observe, that all character- 
 istics of every kind become known of what 
 kind they are only as the life and growth of 
 animals and plants reveal them. In the very 
 lowest grades of vegetables and animals both 
 are respectively so near alike that science 
 has not determined the class of all of them 
 whether animal or vegetable. A school of 
 polyps building a coral island in a southern 
 sea may strongly resemble a flower garden 
 on the land. The protozoa, among which 
 we find the sponge, are very closely allied to 
 some vegetable forms, yet from thence in the 
 upward scale, vegetable and animal begin to 
 diverge and keep on diverging until their 
 
106 Life and Counter Life. 
 
 contrasts become as immeasurable as their 
 first characters were indistinguishable. 
 There is no comparison between a blooming 
 buttercup in the meadow and an elephant 
 that tramps his foot upon it ; yet if we trace 
 them back to the germs and microscopic 
 embryo of their existence simply as germs 
 we find them not much apart in their vital- 
 ized atoms of matter. To us they start from 
 an invisible line of separation as they take 
 their respective departures out of the unseen 
 fluid. The one, by the way predetermined 
 by its vegetable parentage, to become a but- 
 ter cup in the meadow and the other by the 
 way of an animal parentage to become an 
 elephant. 
 
 One of the first things in which vege- 
 tables and animals are seen to differ is in 
 food taking for their own growth. Plants 
 take in their food at innumerable pores in 
 their roots and leaves and they do not show 
 us any visible way in which they reject or 
 eject any refuse matter. Very low animals, 
 by a kind of muscular vibration, draw in their 
 
L^fc and Counter Life. 107 
 
 food with more or less extraneous matter at 
 one or more mouths about their bodies in 
 various places, from which also they expel 
 what is rejected and either internally or ex- 
 ternally construct solids — bones, coral or 
 shells. There is not much in a miscroscopic 
 foraminifera to show the whole scale of the 
 animal kingdom, neither is there much in a 
 microscopic plant to show the magnitude of 
 the vegetable kingdom. So little does organ- 
 ized matter in its first degree dififer from the 
 unorganized of similar kind that it is diffi- 
 cult in some instances to tell whether certain 
 matter is moved by life or only by electri- 
 city, magnetism, heat or some other merely 
 physical force. We have seen before that 
 all seen things are made from unseen, and 
 that all lives make their own bodies and 
 forms and faculties in the use of invisible 
 atoms of matter. We now notice that the up- 
 ward grade of faculties and forms from one 
 kind of life to another, in both kingdoms, is 
 by steps that are invisibly small when singly 
 examined, showing us again and again that 
 
108 Life and Counter Life. 
 
 the seen is from the unseen. If we take a 
 systematic botany and start on the ascending 
 scale a tour through the vegetable kingdom 
 we shall take 100,000 steps, more or less, be- 
 fore we arrive at the highest specimen of 
 vegetable life. Or if we choose to take a 
 text book on Zoology and make the tour of 
 the animal kingdom we shall have a larger 
 number of steps, probably a million, if we be- 
 gin with microcosms, before we reach the 
 highest order of animals. But one thing we 
 shall see long before we arrive at the super- 
 lative of either of these two kinds o£ life, 
 that the vegetable is for the use of the ani- 
 mal kingdom. 
 
 The lilies and all the vegetable adorn- 
 ment'^ of the world, the cedar and all the 
 precious timber-making trees, the vine and 
 all the fruit-bearing trees of the world, the 
 golden harvests of grain and all food pro- 
 ducts of the vegetable are for the use of a 
 higher, that is, the animal kingdom— a feast 
 of fat things and a necessity to their exist- 
 ence. Yet- the vegetable kiugdom loses 
 
Jj'ife and Counter Life. 109 
 
 notliiug wheu it is used by auimals for which 
 it was made. A fair equivalent is made by 
 animals in the cultivation of the soil — worms, 
 ants, rodents numberless, and the whole 
 animal kingdom give back what the vege- 
 table needs more than it does its own fruit. 
 There are also resemblances and contrasts of 
 character all along the rising scale of both 
 kingdoms. Good and evil are always near 
 each other and in contradiction in all the 
 places in the world wherever we take our 
 observations. 
 
 Another fact of life is its labor necessity 
 and its wants. There is no physical life 
 known to us that was ever intended to live 
 without labor and food. Life comes into 
 the world with abounding wants, and the 
 higher the life the higher the wants. The 
 tiniest foraminifer, with its microscopic 
 shell, has its wants ; wants supplied, by 
 which it has alreadj^ made its own little 
 house thus far, and wants continuing, by 
 which it will enlarge its house a little aud 
 then multiply its own kind before it dies. Its 
 
110 L^f(^ (ind Counter Life. 
 
 wants were only a little liquid, but that was 
 so real that without it it could not have mul- 
 tiplied its own kind or left, in dying, a beauti- 
 ful microscopic shell as a sample of its skill to 
 surprise and instruct the wisest of men for 
 ages to come in the chalk beds of England. 
 But as we turn with upward glances toward 
 a higher and larger kind of aquatic animals 
 wants are multiplied apace. It is not a mere 
 drop of lime or saline water that a whale 
 requires ; but, with his enormous mouth 
 open, he must swim through whole schools 
 of small aquatic animals and engulf them 
 by myriads into his capacious chest and 
 there digest them and transform them into 
 flesh and oil and whalebone for the use of 
 men. 
 
 And so there is an index finger in every 
 life pointing to a transformation work to be 
 done in the attainment of a useful end in 
 the service of men. The earth itself were a 
 useless thing by itself alone, with no end to 
 serve, for all values are determined where 
 transfers are made, and until life came into 
 
Life and Counter Life. Ill 
 
 the world there was nothing to make matter 
 valuable ; but life has use for it and need of 
 it. So the only fair deduction is that God 
 made the material world for the use of the 
 living world, and hence that He purposed 
 at the first what to have in his finished work 
 at the last, and included all the requisite 
 means tor its accomplishment. The Divine 
 object and plan of creation opens Godward 
 plainer and brighter with each new day. 
 The principle of contrasts is universal in 
 matter and in life organized in matter. 
 Solids are seen in contrast with fluids, or- 
 ganized matter in contrast with unorgan- 
 ized, friendly plants and friendly lives in 
 contrast with unfriendly plants and animals, 
 good trees in contrast with briars, weeds and 
 thistles ; domestic^animals in contrast with 
 vipers and scorpions —animals not made 
 for willing service of men, but to excite their 
 watchfulness and defence against them. All 
 over the world, up and down the walks of 
 men, these contrasts are at hand striving for 
 the mastery. Unfriendly lives are all fur- 
 
112 Life and Counter Life. 
 
 nished, directly or indirectly, with offensive 
 and defensive arms and supplies of energy 
 for the conflict. It is not a true view of the 
 plan of creation to imagine that conflicts 
 among sentient beings were never intended. 
 The true view is that conflicts are the sub- 
 ject matter of a perfect law of righteousness, 
 and when these occur where they ought not 
 they are a sin against God and the forfeit of 
 His blessing. But to imagine that a man is 
 not to destroy the weeds in his garden, or the 
 wild wolf at his hen roost, is a false view of 
 the use we should make of means God has 
 provided for our education, development 
 and character, manliness and courage. Yea, 
 even our Godliness requires this. We take 
 no adequate measure of the usefulness of 
 enemies until we see that no human char- 
 acter was ever perfected without them ; the 
 duties of life are modified by them, and 
 moral government obtains its meaning from 
 their existence ; they excite us to watchful- 
 ness, and make us feel our need of Divine 
 care and guidance. If our enemies are men, 
 
Life and Counter Lift. 113 
 
 aud our obedieuce to God cau make them 
 friends, we have great joy in their recovery. 
 If they are creatures of a lower order ot be- 
 ings, injurious to men, they should be ex- 
 pelled from human abodes, if need be, by 
 the forfeit of their lives. The ravenous 
 wolf has no place in the nursery with the 
 Shepherd's tender children, neither with 
 His precious lambs in the flock. 
 
 Whoever is a friend to all the good beings 
 there are in the world must needs be an en- 
 emy to all the evil and prepared with the 
 " whole armor of God to resist it." — Eph. 
 vi : 13 . I deem it a false sentiment to think 
 of the broad universal contrasts and con- 
 flicts in this world as an oversight or an ac- 
 cident under God, who is calling us up to 
 Himself and away from these conflicts when 
 our characters are perfected by giving our 
 love and allegiance to our Heavenly Father 
 above all else. "This is our victory that 
 overcometh the world, even our faith in 
 God." — I John, v : 4. 
 
 Besides vegetable and animal life there are 
 
114 Life and Counter Life. 
 
 two other aud higher kinds that have come- 
 into the world since the first two came, and 
 they grade upward from animal life after 
 the same manner that all life grades upward 
 from unorganized matter. There are cer- 
 tain possibilities in mineral matter when 
 acted upon by electricity that give an ap- 
 pearance of forms aud motions made by 
 life. They are forms scarcely distinguish- 
 able from organized matter, although en- 
 tirely destitute of any functional capacity 
 whatever. From this low mineral base life 
 begins and grades upward, while it spreads 
 abroad in endless varieties, until the highest 
 order of vegetable and animal life is 
 reached ; then human life, coming next in 
 order, grades upward as well. It differs in 
 the lowest from the mere animal life in its 
 combinations of intellectual and moral fac- 
 ulties ; its self-government is expressed in 
 laws that mere animal life cannot compre- 
 hend — there is a moral meaning in the 
 words *' right and wrong '' which no mere 
 animal can ever know. A horse may be 
 
Life and Counter Life. 115 
 
 taught to observe the landmarks of his 
 owner's field, but not for the reason that the 
 Eighth Commandment would be violated 
 by pasturing upon another man's lot. Man 
 is capable of a greater variety of studies, and 
 of obtaining different and higher knowl- 
 edge, than can be predicated of animals ; he 
 is a more intelligent and comprehensive 
 character ; he is capable of forming ideals 
 of beauty and of improvement in character ; 
 he is capable of feeling a difference between 
 right and wrong, and of willing to do the 
 right ; he is capable of rendering obedience 
 to the laws that grade upward from the mate- 
 rial and common things of this world to the 
 highest spiritual and eternal verities of the 
 Divine Father's revealed will. Man's life 
 grades downward through all the laws of 
 matter ; his very blood has atoms of iron in 
 it ; his lungs require great volumes of air 
 ■everyday, perhaps 20,000 gallons of air everj^ 
 day for mere breathing purposes ; a great 
 user of matter is the physical man for his 
 food and drink. And now, turning up- 
 
IIG Life and Counter Life. 
 
 ward, the next order of life above the human 
 is the spiritual life. This differs from the 
 human in its conscious relations to God in 
 a higher degree than is common to human 
 life ; the spiritual relations to God as a spirit 
 are more distinctly realized and personally- 
 felt ; the spiritual life has knowledge in its 
 own experience whi-ch did not come to it by 
 the words of men or the persuasions of men 
 alone, but by the realized presence of the 
 Divine being and the assurance of a per- 
 sonal responsibility to Him. Hence the 
 spiritual is closer to God than the human 
 life, or any former state of man's experience 
 in his relations to God, so that sin appears 
 more sinful and righteousness more blessed. 
 The spiritual life desires the will of God to 
 be done on earth as it is in heaven, and it 
 rejoices in righteousness wherever it is found 
 among men ; it includes greater faith in God 
 and a more comprehensive righteousness in 
 regard to both God and men. With such, 
 and many more evidences of being born of 
 God, man's life may rise upward to its 
 
Lift and Counter Life. 1 17 
 
 crowning height of a spiritual being, with 
 spiritual faculties and sensibilities — a child 
 of God and heir to eternal life. "Called^ 
 not to be conformed to this world, but to be 
 transformed by the renewing of our minds, 
 that we may prove what is that good and 
 acceptable and perfect will of God," — Ro- 
 mans xii : 2. The experience of this life in 
 doing the will of God "is righteousness 
 and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost." The 
 work to be done is the upbuilding of char- 
 acter in the spiritual kingdom by the con- 
 version of men to Christ. Our estimate of 
 spiritual things is above all earthly values, 
 so that, by contrast, the. world is not re- 
 gretted either as it passes away or remains 
 with its disciplinary experiences in the 
 school of Christ. There is, therefore, con- 
 sistency in the plan that holds the body to 
 earth ior a time but allows the mind, by 
 faith and hope and love, to converse in 
 heaven and to strive for a greater fitness to 
 meet the glorified Lord and to see Him as 
 He is— "the Son of God and the son of man, 
 
118 Life and Counter Life. 
 
 who came that we might have life, and that 
 we might have it more abuudantly." — 
 Johu X : lo. 
 
 We should not forget that all moral char- 
 acter is formed on the human side and grows 
 by free-will acts, by acts of choice at the 
 time they were done. When moral evil is 
 found it is seen as the result of a voluntary 
 opposition to or a departure from the re- 
 vealed will of God. In the lower kingdoms 
 we find friends and enemies to men, in the 
 Avorld cf humanity we find friends and ene- 
 mies to God. The unavoidable result of our 
 personal freedom of moral action is that we 
 must gravitate to one or the other of these 
 two classes — friends or enemies to God. It 
 is not an arbitrary arrangement, but uni- 
 versally arrived at by free will from first to 
 last — hence the necessity of growth and 
 progress in a spiritual life, so as to pass be- 
 yond the condition of conflict and to obtain 
 unto righteousness, joy and peace in the 
 Father's house in heaven. The " way, the 
 truth and the life " is preached alike to all 
 
Life and Counter Life. 111> 
 
 men and always ou condition of a ruling 
 faith in our Lord and Redeemer, who will 
 save to the uttermost all who come unto 
 God by Him " who died for us and rose 
 again." — II Cor., v : 15. 
 
"For the commandment is a lamp, and 
 the law is light." — Proy. 6:23. 
 
LAWS AND COUNTER LAWS. 
 
 CHAPTKR IV. 
 
 In all scientific studies known phenom- 
 ena must be referred to known laws, and 
 newly discovered phenomena must be re- 
 ported in some way as a farther revelation 
 of laws, for in science there is nothing with- 
 out law. Hence we speak of the law of 
 gravitation, the law of the repulsion of 
 atoms and the diffusion of the same ; the 
 law of the cohesion of atoms, the law of 
 chemical affinity, the law of definite pro- 
 portions in chemical compounds ; the law 
 of momentum, the law of the reflection of 
 light and of the radiation of the same ; the 
 law of combustion and of heat, electricit}-, 
 galvanism, magnetism, polarization, crys- 
 tallization ; the laws of colors and of the 
 blending of colors ; and of numerous other 
 laws known to science in the conduct of 
 
122 Laws and Counter Laws. 
 matter and classified to facilitate farther 
 studies of the same or like subjects. To 
 kuow the laws of nature is to have the keys 
 to all its treasures, the treasures of the 
 world. The creation was by laws, and the 
 whole world is held to them ; so that we 
 <:an only know the world by its laws, and 
 ourselves by the laws of our own existence. 
 The doors to knowledge are hung on laws 
 and opened and closed by them ; so, as fast 
 as we know the laws of nature, they are for 
 our use, security, enjoyment and well being; 
 -an inheritance for all the human race and 
 for all time to come . So far as we have 
 any means of knowing all laws are eternal, 
 and more and more beneficent in proportion 
 as they are respected and obeyed and their 
 Author loved and glorified. 
 
 We need clear views of what we under- 
 stand by the word law, when we apply it 
 to the conduct of unconscious matter. 
 "When we use the word in relation to men 
 with intelligence, freedom of will and power 
 to act as they will, we mean by Lazu some 
 
Laws and Counter Laws. 123 
 definite rule or rules of conduct to be per- 
 formed by subjects owing obedience to the 
 government or ruler by whom they are 
 governed, and by whom the law was de- 
 creed and enjoined. The word implies a 
 government with a constitution or system 
 of rules for its subjects to obey. Five things 
 are manifest. The government, the laws, 
 the subjects, the obedience due and the 
 manner of enforcing it with the rewards and 
 penalties. 
 
 So in like manner in the conduct of 
 matter. Any rule to which it is always found 
 to conform in all its changes of state and 
 condition, just as if obligated to do so by 
 some eflScient cause governing it, is properly 
 called a law. And there is no better word 
 in science and none better understood, ex- 
 cept as to the reason why matter does act 
 so in conformity to rules. Why does every 
 atom of matter and cluster of atoms, known 
 to men, go and come always in all its 
 changes in conformity to rules with a 
 promptness and certainty that commands. 
 
124 Laws and Counter Laws. 
 our admiration and confidence in spite of 
 all its wonderful mysteriousness to our com- 
 prehension ? We see unconscious matter 
 obeying laws and revealing the same to us 
 for our use and guidance. What a pheuom- 
 -enon is this ! Where can we find the ade- 
 quate cause for this conduct of unconscious 
 matter ? We ma}^ listen for an answer from 
 the earth, and many are seeking and wait- 
 ing for au answer to come from matter it- 
 self just where it is manifested. But we 
 must not confound the phenomenon and its 
 cause, or make them both one and indis- 
 tinguishable. Of course we see the con- 
 duct of matter in itself ; there is nowhere 
 else to see it. But to say that unconscious 
 matter acts in itself because it acts so of it- 
 self is not scientific, and not as ingenuous 
 as to confess ignorance. Better by far to 
 refer it at once to the Infinite One above us, 
 the Creator of all things, "in whom we live 
 and move and have our being." 
 
 Let us, therefore, answer reverently that 
 all we know of the cause of conformitv to 
 
Lairs and Counter Lavs. 125 
 laws as we see it iu unconscious matter is 
 that God has obviously made it so, and pre- 
 determined all such matter to obey laws by 
 a necessity of its own nature. This facility 
 of matter to obey laws, this responsiveness 
 to definite rules and the same atom of mat- 
 ter so endowed as to obey a very great va- 
 riety of laws, is of God; and is like all direct 
 acts of Hi«, graud in its manifestations and 
 comprehensiveness. We recognize its un- 
 speakable value, caanot imagine how the 
 world could abide for a moment without it, 
 and still we feel that the way of it is incom- 
 prehensible to our finite minds. 
 
 Any act of God is all powerful within the 
 limits He gave it to the end of time. So of 
 this endowment of unconscious matter with 
 ability to conform to law ; its Author had a 
 way by which He made it so to do. We do 
 not know how He did it. We account for 
 many things by referring them to the wills 
 and ability of the actors ; but here in un- 
 -sconscious matter there is no will, and yet 
 
126 Laws and Counter Laics. 
 
 we see it fulfilling the requirements of law 
 
 more strictly than su-bjects that have will. 
 
 If we trace the evidences of free will from 
 man downward all along down the 
 lower grades of life to its vanishing 
 point in unconscious matter, where 
 »o law can receive an obedience 
 from any free will, instinct or tendency 
 of freedom, we find in matter itself an ab- 
 solute necessity of obedience to law pure 
 and simple ; and that necessity of obedience 
 not to one law alone, but to all the laws of 
 matter as in turn it becomes qualified to 
 serve one after another in all the pro- 
 cesses and changes of nature. Is not 
 this ot God ? And possiblj' no harder 
 for Him than to make man with 
 free will, and after that, by placing him 
 under a necessity for some self government 
 in the use of that gift and to show him 
 that he has it, to hold him as a subject of 
 both necessity and free will, combined and 
 harmonized in the highest perfection of 
 faith. That is, the whole man and all his. 
 
Laics and Counter Lavs. 127 
 Tace as a true subject of all his laws and yet 
 as his children of free will. The one need 
 not surprise us more than the other. Both 
 are unspeakably surprisiuj^ and undeniably 
 true. 
 
 All the laws of nature are acts of God, and 
 because they are His acts they continue for- 
 ever without any possibility of pause or 
 change, except in the will of the Creator. 
 He alone can repeal what He, Himself, has 
 decreed. When a rule is given by an act or 
 word of His, all atoms of matter within the 
 limits of that rule must be subject to His 
 government and obey forever and every- 
 where that rule, simply because the effi- 
 <;iency of an act of God has no limitations 
 but in His own will. God said, " Let there 
 Idc light," and that act of God was a law to 
 -all atoms of matter of every kind concerned 
 in light being, to be subject to that rule for 
 all time to come. 
 
 All acts of God are eternal if He wills 
 them so. Man throws a stone and, whether 
 lie wills it or not, it falls to the ground 
 
128 Lairs and Counter Lavs. 
 within a limited time. God throws the 
 whole world and it goes on its orbit to the 
 end of time, because gravitation is an act of 
 God. He turns the world on its axis and it 
 has never ceased to turn, for the obvious 
 reason that He has not stopped it and there 
 is no one else that can stop it. 
 
 A law of nature is a strict rule of action,, 
 to which the same kind of matter, under 
 the same circumstances, will always con- 
 form. It is more than a tendency in matter 
 so to act. We can and do trust our lives 
 upon it and feel there is a certainty that it 
 will do again and again just what it did be- 
 fore, with all the conditions preci£ely the 
 same, and we dare not trust them for any- 
 thing else, however much we may desire a 
 deviation on special occasions. We see the 
 laws through the extreme accuracy with 
 which they are kept, and we ascribe them 
 to God the same as \se do the creation of 
 the world itself; all these are His acts and 
 the world creation includes them. Howbeit, 
 the omnipresent God must be imminent in 
 
Lcncs and Covnte?' Lairs. 129 
 all His laws aud yet distinct from them. 
 *' In Him we live aud move and have our 
 being," yet we are distinct from Him. 
 "God is a Spirit." 
 
 Our view of lav7 relations to matter is 
 that all things are at all times under all the 
 laws of matter, and that any given atom, or 
 mass of atoms, may at one time be more 
 prominently and manifestly under one law, 
 and at another time prominently under an- 
 other law ; but that all things are law sub- 
 jects and constantly within the scope of all 
 the laws of matter aud of nature, from which 
 no atom ever has had, or ever can have, any 
 freedom of nature to escape. All the laws 
 of nature are constant and unchangeable, 
 but all the matter in the world is inconstant 
 and changeable, subject to new conditions, 
 combinations and transformations and re- 
 combinations. What may be the higher or 
 manifest law to any given matter in one 
 point of time may not be so in the next, for 
 there is always a higher law present, when- 
 ever there is any matter ready to re- 
 
130 Laws and Counter Laws. 
 ceive it. Matter may change rapidly 
 from oue law to another, as it becomes 
 fitted for such changes of manifestation, 
 for it is a law of all the laws to take matter 
 that is fitted to respond obediently in ser- 
 vice to its rule and no other. The changes 
 by which matter passes from one law to an- 
 other must always take place in itself and 
 not in the laws. All the mechanisms of 
 nature, with all the forces of the same, are 
 working on in their respective spheres in 
 the preparation of matter, in the getting it 
 ready to pass from one higher law to an- 
 other in its rounds of services in nature. 
 Fire, water, life, sunlight and darkness, 
 air and chemical forces of endless variety 
 and power, with electricty, are working in 
 and with matter to get it in condition and 
 ready to obey other higher laws, just as fast 
 as its finished work, under present laws, 
 will permit it so to do. 
 
 In all these processes with matter we see 
 the law of rejection, as well as the law of ac- 
 ceptance, manifested all the waj' down to 
 
Laics and Counter Laics. 131 
 the lowest conditions of matter ; only a 
 part of any divided mass ever goes at once 
 to the same law. Purification of matter im- 
 plies dividing and separating the pure from 
 the impure, yet neither part, in such a case, 
 escapes in the least from law, for there is 
 no atom of any kind of matter that does not 
 reveal in itself the evidence of conformity 
 to one or more laws. When we see a snow- 
 flake we recognize at once five or more laws 
 of matter revealed in it: ist.— Cohesion, or 
 we could not see it. 2nd. — Congelation, or 
 it would be a liquid drop and not a snow- 
 flake. 3rd. — Crystallization, or its charm- 
 ing mathematical forms of angles would not 
 appear. 4th. — The reflection of light, or its 
 radiant beauty would be wanting. 5th. — 
 Gravitation, or it would not descend. Grav- 
 itation brings it down. Heat melts it and 
 turns it into water. More heat evaporates 
 it into mist ; then still finer mist, even fluid, 
 and now it obeys the law of repulsion and 
 difi"usion and so passes away in the opposite 
 direction from what gravitation would take 
 
132 Laws and Counter Laws. 
 it, aud of course by a law that is opposite to 
 gravitation. Gravitation is seen in matter 
 moving or tending to move toward the 
 centre of the earth, and our snow-flake, 
 aided by heat, is now free from thatlaw,and 
 having gone farther from mist to real fluid, 
 and passing as fluid into the service of the 
 law of repulsion, is now in millions of atoms, 
 a numerous fleet, sailing upward through the 
 air towards the firmament above, and the fact 
 that we do not see it going up is our witness 
 that it is free from cohesion in very deed, 
 free from congelation, free from crystalliza- 
 tion, free from reflecting light aud free 
 from gravitation — though it may soon come 
 again under these or some of these laws, 
 unless it is caught in a fog, or joius its 
 forces in some descending rain drops, or is 
 drawn off" into some work of vegetation, or is 
 quaff'ed by some animal in breathing, or is 
 yet driven of the winds on some long ex- 
 cursion. No laws are more opposite than 
 repulsion and cohesion, yet enormous quan- 
 tities of matter are passing and re-passing 
 
Laice and Counter Laws. 133 
 every moment from one state to the other, 
 not by their own conflicts alone ; heat and 
 cold and life are very prominent agencies. 
 All the forces of nature have their due part 
 in all such changes. If the atoms in any 
 solid form are to be made ready to serve re- 
 pulsion they must be reduced by heat, or, 
 in some way, be pulverized to an impalpable 
 dust till its atoms are freed from cohesion. 
 I repeat, matter is never taken by a law it 
 is not fitted to manifest and serve. Its fit- 
 ness of condition, its preparedness to obey, 
 is the ground of its election to any new 
 service or higher law. 
 
 All matter goes at once from one law to 
 another as fast as it is made ready so to do. 
 What is trampled under foot of men to-day 
 may in due time appear in the tints of a rose 
 or in the happy, bright eyes of a young 
 philosopher ; for there is in the world vast 
 opportunities for fluid matter to keep up a 
 circuit of changes ; that is to say, to new 
 services under laws. There is no dignity in 
 matter itself, except in the laws it reveals 
 
134 Laws and Counter Laws. 
 and honors. Environments changes matter 
 but not laws. We may take a diamond from 
 a king's crown and place it in oxygen gas 
 and touch it with a match and it will flame 
 up at once and all will become carbonic 
 acid gas, yet no law in the world has changed 
 a particle. I take in my hand a lump of 
 anthracite. Here are atoms of carbon man- 
 ifestly subject to the law of cohesion in this 
 lump of coal, and they obey the law of 
 gravitation by falling from my hand down 
 upon the fire on the grate, where, submit- 
 ting to the law of combustion, they are ex- 
 pelled by heat force up the chimney into the- 
 air and serve obediently under the law of re- 
 pulsion of heat and cold and air currents un- 
 til they arrive at a living tree, when the law 
 of vegetable life gives to them a fit place in 
 the leaves of the tree, to serve the laws of 
 life and of cohesion and of color and of 
 gravitation and of the winds that blow up- 
 on it, first one way and then another, until 
 a camel comes along and browses the leaf 
 and it then submits to the law of mastica- 
 
Laws and Counter Laics. 135 
 tion and digestion, the law of liquids and of 
 veinous and arterial circulation, the law of 
 assimilation and other laws of animal life, 
 until the law of ejectments gets it in the 
 breath or perspiration or some other of the 
 animal's refuses, when it may pass under 
 some chemical law of combination and so- 
 lution to the root or leaves of a rose bush 
 and serve the law of life then a while and 
 finally appear in some beautiful tints of the 
 full-blown rose, perhaps to be gathered and 
 passed to the compounder of attar of roses, 
 and then to become choice perfumery for 
 some lady's toilet. All I wish or aim to say 
 now is that material atoms are always sub- 
 ject to any law they are prepared for, and 
 they never do serve, or continue to serve, 
 any law they are not prepared for and put 
 in condition to serve and obey. The atoms 
 of 'carbon in a lump of coal cannot be sub- 
 ject to any law of life until they are set free 
 from the law of cohesion. No law of life 
 ever appropriates atoms finally until they 
 are reduced to a fluid state. I do not say 
 
136 Laics and Counter Laws. 
 that auimal organisms are uot provided 
 with means of reducing solids to fluids, but 
 we have before seen that all things that are 
 made, or grow, are made in the use of atoms, 
 pre- existing in a fluid state ; that the fluid 
 state is maintained by the law of repulsion, 
 and the solid state by the law of cohesion. 
 Separate from these two laws, exactly oppo- 
 site to each other, there is no life organism, 
 and hence no law of lite manifested to us 
 where either of these laws are absent. 
 There are swarms of life organisms so small 
 as to be scarcely visible in their individual- 
 ity, and not one of these could live in one 
 state of matter alone. Fluid alone cannot 
 constitute an organism, and a solid alone 
 cannot nourish one and keep it alive. 
 
 There runs through nature a co-operation 
 of laws notwithstanding their opposiles, 
 and there is nothing known to us that does 
 not manifest obedience to two or more laws 
 of nature, however rapidly it may pass from 
 one to another. The law of cohesion of 
 matter is the most manifest in things visible 
 
Laws and Counter Laws. 137 
 as they now are ; and the holding of atoms 
 together makes it possible for them to obey 
 the law of gravitation. The withdrawal of 
 <:ohe«ion would leave the whole visible 
 world, including our own bodies, to fall 
 back again into invisible atoms, "without 
 form and void." All the variety and beauty 
 there is in the world would vanish in a 
 moment. There could be no such thing as 
 form, or color, without cohesion. Light, it- 
 self, can have no color until it touches some 
 surface where cohesion exists. All this is 
 but one thing in the value of one of the 
 laws by which the Creator governs the ma- 
 terial universe. We can think of laws 
 separately, but it is vain to imagine that 
 they have ever existed separately since 
 the beginning of the creation. 
 
 We notice that laws of nature are uniform 
 wherever we may go. That is, anything 
 that is subject to any given law is subject to 
 the same law under the same conditions 
 everywhere. A body that is subject to the 
 law of gravitation on the land is subject to 
 
138 Laws and Counter Laics. 
 the same law on the sea, and in the air, and 
 to the farthest of globes yet seen by the 
 telescope. There is not a new law or a dif- 
 ferent law of gravitation in one place from 
 another, but the law is one and always the 
 same, under the same conditions of matter 
 to obey it. And so of the law of repulsion 
 and of cohesion. As far as any telescope can 
 enable us to observe, there is the same law 
 of repulsion that ministers to our world, 
 serving all worlds throughout the universe, 
 and the same law of cohesion that makes 
 the solids of our earth what they are— makes 
 all existing solids wherever they are. It is 
 not one law here that makes atoms free in 
 space and another law at the stars, and it is 
 not one law here that holds atoms together,, 
 and makes solids capable of gravitation^ 
 and another law at the moon that 
 makes that capable of gravitation. And so 
 of the laws of light, and of darkness, and 
 ofheat, audof cold. They have no local 
 limitations as laws. They arc not local to 
 the world as laws, have no power in one 
 
Laics and Counter Laws. 139 
 place that they have not in all places, under 
 the same circumstances, with the same 
 matter with which they have to do. Upon 
 the retina of our eyes the light falls as 
 readily from the distant Sirius as from the 
 near Venus. To know the laws of light in 
 one world is probably to know them in all 
 worlds under like conditions. That the gov- 
 ernment of all the material worlds, under the 
 same Creator, are by the same laws we have 
 no reason to doubt. 
 
 Whatever is to be the subject of any given 
 law, at any given place, must be made 
 ready for it, be exactly conditioned and 
 prepared for it. Every law of nature knows 
 its own subjects on the instant. If the law 
 of gravitation finds a boy on the limb of a 
 tree too weak to hold him, it claims the 
 right to take that boy a quick and direct 
 passage towards the centre of the earth to the 
 next station, and we have never felt any 
 surprise that it does the same thing with an 
 apple in the same circumstances, when its 
 stem is insufficient to hold it. We see pre- 
 
140 Laus and Counter Laws. 
 cisely the same rule iu all the other laws of 
 nature ; uoue takes but that which is in con- 
 dition to obey it. If sunlight finds a sensa- 
 tive plate all ready for a photograph, the 
 camera and plate all ready iu their due 
 places, and a boy presents his face in due 
 manner, an outline of the boy's face will be 
 made on the glass. Thus are the laws of 
 nature for the use of men on condition of 
 co-operation in preparing for them. Give 
 the sunlight an opportunity and it will show 
 its willingness to serve men. Prof. Henry 
 remarked in his day — " A man might spend 
 a lifetime in the study of one ray of light 
 and do good service for men." 
 
 If we look at laws in their contrasts, and 
 classify them by contrasts, we can always- 
 put with any given law of nature another 
 law that is exactly contrary to the first in all 
 their manifestations in the material world. 
 For example, take repulsion and cohesion. 
 Cohesion holds atoms of matter together and 
 keeps them solid, (its distinctive work is al- 
 ways in that direction and no other,) while 
 
Laws and Counter Laws. 141 
 repulsion drives atoms apart aud keeps 
 them fluid, (that is its distinctive work al- 
 ways aud everywhere.) 
 
 And so of all other laws of matter. There 
 are those, when considered aloue, that tend 
 to final results of extremest unlikeuess. At 
 the exact poiut of starting, the two are to- 
 gether, and the difference iu work is least, if 
 perceptible ; then moviug from the neutral, 
 their opposites become immeasurable. 
 Let cohesion begin to manifest itself in 
 cooling steam, turning it into mist, a very 
 thin fog, then a de»nser fog, and then into 
 water, then ice and the hardest possible ice ; 
 while in the opposite direction from the 
 place of starting, the beginning of repulsion is 
 seen in changing the fog to a lighter density 
 and then to invisibility in the clear atmos- 
 phere, higher and higher up, becoming more 
 and more attenuated as the lav/ works farther 
 and farther away towards its own supremacy 
 of power in the repulsion of atoms, far from 
 oue another in the thin ether beyond the 
 skies. Such opposite works are common to 
 
1-42 Laics and Counter Laics. 
 all the laws of uature wheu considered iu 
 this way by their distinctive contrasts. No 
 solid can be more solid than the law of 
 cohesion prescribes, and no fluid can be 
 more fluid than the law of repulsion pre- 
 scribes. The solid rock may be an example 
 on the one side of cohesion, and the lightest 
 ether above the skies for the extreme repul- 
 sion of atoms ; while betw^een these opposite 
 extremes of work, done conformably to the 
 two opposite laws , all other matter in the 
 world must be classified iu respect to its 
 hardness or fluidity by degrees of subjection 
 to either one or the other of these two laws. 
 A solid may be so near fluid that we cannot 
 place it, and a fluid may be so near solid 
 that its true state is uncertain. 
 
 Let us bear iu mind that this difference is 
 not because one has mineral atoms and the 
 other has not, for both have that. And it is 
 not because oue law is stronger than the 
 other, for both are infinite in the matter pre- 
 pared for them. And it is not because they 
 do not start out from one and the same 
 
Laics and Counter Laics. 143 
 place, or from one common, invisible and 
 neutral point, but it is because their out- 
 going is in opposite directions. If we grade 
 solids up towards the fluids, and fluids down 
 towards the solids, we shall come to matter 
 so neutral that science does not know which 
 law it is obe3'ing, and still we feel that no 
 atom of matter can conform manifestly 
 to these two opposite laws at one and the 
 same time. Every atom of matter in the 
 universe belongs, at each moment of time, 
 to either a fluid or a solid state, and not to 
 both at the same time. 
 
 In some instances outgoing forces in mat- 
 ter are simultaneous in opposite directions. 
 They are ascribed to one law, and the op- 
 posites in its action are said to be, the one 
 positive and the other negative ; as when we 
 say of the magnet — the end that attracts is 
 positive, and the end that repels is negative. 
 " lyike poles repel and unlike poles attract." 
 So of electricity — there are two kinds always 
 present ; the one kind is said to be positive 
 and the other negative, and all substances 
 
144 Laws and Gounfer Laws. 
 mauifestiug electricity are said to be electro- 
 positive or electro negative, in relation to 
 each, other, according to the electricity they 
 contain at the time of the experiment. Here, 
 again, is the same law ; unlike electricity 
 attracts and like electricity repels. However 
 this simultaneousness of opposite actions in 
 the same manner is not commonly mani- 
 fested precisely in that way, neither do we 
 know positively that there are not as many 
 laws in electricity and magnetism as these 
 contrary actions. The visible material in 
 which they act is not altered. Commonly 
 opposite laws in matter are known by ac- 
 tions and changes that do alter its form and 
 condition, and therefore cannot both be 
 manifested as working supremely in a small 
 particle of it at the same time and place, as 
 magnetism and electricity do. We can find 
 no magnet so small as not to have its two 
 poles and two kinds of action. The mag- 
 net's two states are always in its own little 
 self, as well as in the two poles of the world. 
 Heat and cold are not simultaneous and 
 
Laws and Counter Laws. 145 
 co-preseut in the same sense and maauer. 
 They do not touch each other everywhere in 
 the same degree all the time in the same 
 atoms of matter. They are not both in the 
 one place at the same time in equal force. 
 Heat aud cold, as opposites to each other, 
 are present in the same matter only in the 
 relative degrees of force. The two are in a 
 state of resistance everywhere, pushing each 
 other as contending forces through all the 
 seasons of the year, and in all the elements 
 of nature. When we wish to help the cold 
 in the pitcher of water on the table we 
 douse a piece of ice into the water, and that 
 reinforces the cold. Again, if we desire 
 more warmth of air in our study, we increase 
 the furnace fire and that reinforces the heat. 
 Atoms in some way act in obedience to 
 the law of heat, or the law of cold, so that 
 only one shall occupy the same atom of 
 matter supremely at the same time and 
 place, though both forces are present in 
 relative degrees. In this, as in all other 
 contrasts, there is somewhere an initial 
 
146 Laws and Counter Laws. 
 point, a neutrality from which both heat and 
 cold started, and from which heat goes off 
 in one direction and cold in the other, in 
 exact conformity to all known laws in mat- 
 ter to their extremest unlikeuess. Heat 
 reaches somewhere in one direction its 
 highest degree of temperature in matter, 
 and cold in the opposite direction reaches 
 somewhere its lowest degree of temperature 
 in matter. And all the way between these 
 extremes must be graded whatever else in 
 the world is subject to heat or cold. 
 
 See another example in light and dark- 
 ness. They are in exact contrast. Their 
 work goes out from one initial point, but in 
 opposite directions. The supremacy of the 
 one is a triumph over the other. They can- 
 not both be supremely manifested in the 
 same place at the same time, and there is 
 somewhere the highest created light ; and,, 
 somewhere at the extreme opposite of this, 
 the deepest existing darkness ; and, there is 
 always, somewhere, a seemingly neutral 
 point, where we cannot tell which is for the 
 
Laws and Counter Laics. 147 
 time prevailiug over the other ; but when 
 their extremes are reached we know that 
 between the two all other degrees of light 
 or darkness must be discovered. For we 
 know that light, as a force in nature, tends 
 to make things visible ; and darkness, its 
 opposite force in nature, tends to make 
 things invisible. 
 
 There is no evidence that the law princi- 
 ples that are always producing opposite re- 
 sults in matter according to its preparedness 
 for opposite laws. There is no evidence 
 that this principle which extends all the 
 way through the science of matter does not 
 extend also beyond and above matter. We 
 see in morals the same rule of opposites and 
 contrasts. All uulikenesses have their ex- 
 tremes apart, and their up and down grades 
 to and from each other in morals in a man- 
 ner similar to what we always see in matter. 
 
 Truth and lying are exact opposites that 
 run apart in works and character to the 
 farthest extremes of conduct and character. 
 Truth makes knowledge possible to us and 
 
148 Laics and Counter Laics. 
 faith reasonable, while lying, the exact op- 
 posite of truth, makes knowledge impossible 
 to us and faith unreasonable. To believe 
 known lies, if it were possible, would be sui- 
 cide to reason and confusion to all our men- 
 tal faculties. Lies are the negatives of truth, 
 and need the negatives of our faith. To finite 
 minds there is a neutral ground where a de- 
 viation from the truth may be so slight and 
 unintentional as to leave a doubt of its real 
 place and character, but when the art and 
 habit of lying has taken a moral agent down 
 to the lowest depths of falsity, so that its op- 
 posite to truth can go no farther, there is a 
 long space between them fi.lled all the way 
 with agents ranged and graded as to degrees 
 of truthfulness or untruthfulness as the op- 
 posites recede from the neutral line at which 
 both started. 
 
 So of love and hate— they are exact oppo- 
 sites in the hearts of men. L/Ove makes 
 mutual gladness possible for one and the same 
 event for all who have the same love. Its^ 
 contrast is hate, which makes mutual glad- 
 
Laics and Counter Laics. 141> 
 ness impossible for one and the same event 
 among those who hate one another. The 
 tendencies of the two laws are to the ex- 
 treme opposites of each other. Yet there is, 
 to finite minds, a neutral ground somewhere, 
 in which a person may not know to which 
 of the two opposites he yields his own heart 
 as a loyal subject ; yet no one can be on both 
 sides at one and the same time. The Saviour 
 seems to have used the word hate with this 
 exactness to law when He used it to iuclude 
 whoever may be in nearest proximity to the 
 law of love to Him, but not under it or obe- 
 dient to it. Luke 14-26. Mat. 6-24. *' No 
 man can serve two masters ; for either he 
 will hate the one and love the other, or else 
 he will hold to the one and despise the other. 
 Ye cannot serve God and Mammon." Love 
 and hate are opposite laws going out in op- 
 posite directions towards opposite ends 
 from the one human heart and mind, and no 
 person can follow both of these laws in re- 
 spect to the same object at the same time. 
 While this is self evident, it is not always 
 
150 Lav:^ and Counter Laws. 
 recognized by persons who do not feel any 
 hatred toward the object considered, and 
 probably will not until a trial or temptation 
 is presented to the mind so as to move it to 
 assert its real affection either for or against 
 the object or person considered. 
 
 If we examine other laws of the heart and 
 mind in the same manner regarding their 
 opposite?, a uniformity of principle will ap- 
 pear among them all. All have their oppo- 
 sites. The law of faith has its opposite in 
 unbelief — in no faith. No person can re- 
 spond to both these laws in respect to the 
 same object at the same time. The one law 
 is fulfilled in the reliance of the mind upon 
 propositions considered as true, and the 
 other rejects the same propositions as false ; 
 so that any person not conscious of either 
 faith or unbelief, or of either accepting or 
 rejecting as true any of the propositions con- 
 sidered, may not know to which law he is re- 
 sponding, until the temptation or trial of his 
 faith is made, and whatever conduct follows 
 the trial will show whether he is of faith or 
 
Lmcs and Counter Laics. 151 
 of unbelief in respect to the proposition con- 
 sidered. 
 
 Faith is such an important law of our 
 hearts and minds that it is always worth 
 while to know exactly what we mean by the 
 word, or what the law is we keep when we 
 have faith. It has been said, and well said, 
 that—'* Faith is a dependence on the ve- 
 racity of another." But what is it that the 
 soul does to place itself in a state of depend- 
 ence upon another? How can the soul 
 know it has faith ? What is faith to the be- 
 liever himself? To this question we answer 
 — Faith is an act of the whole mind as a unit. 
 It is not an act of the will nor of the under- 
 standing, nor an act of the judgment, nor of 
 the affections, nor of the conscience, nor an 
 act of the perceptive faculties, nor an act of 
 the memory, nor an act of refined taste and 
 sentiment ; but it is the agreement of the 
 whole mind in the absolute veracity and 
 trustworthiness of the author of its own con- 
 victions. All the faculties of the mind have 
 their preliminary work in leading up to this 
 
152 Laics and Counter Laics. 
 supreme agreement of itself in all its acts of 
 true faith. The will helps the miud to seek 
 patiently for the truth ; it wills the mind to 
 be impartial and thorough in obtaining tes- 
 timony, and reason makes fair and true dis- 
 crimination in the same. The judgment de- 
 cides the weight of evidence, and faith comes 
 from the agreement of all these. It is a 
 simple and distinct act of the whole heart 
 and mind, as one act by one mind reposing 
 its trust upon some other mind or reality as 
 true, and therefore of complete trustworthi- 
 ness. The immediate object of faith before 
 the miud is perfect truth, even when it is ap- 
 prehended as a personal subject. If I be- 
 lieve in God, it is because my whole soul re- 
 poses upon Him as a true, personal and trust- 
 worthy being. Let faith be an act of the 
 whole mind and not a part of it ; and the 
 immediate object of faith be truth, which 
 may be in a person who has convinced us of 
 his perfect veracity and trustworthiness, so 
 that we can and do reply upon that veracity 
 without fear of its failure. Nothing but a 
 
Laws and Counter Laics. 153 
 false faith can come from eflforts at willing 
 the mind to believe evidences that are not 
 clear and conclusive, and of force to carry 
 conviction to the whole mind in its perfect 
 and entire integrity. It is not reason to try 
 and use our faith as we do our eyes to look 
 where we please. Our faith should go with 
 the truths proven to us and never from such 
 truths and proofs. Religion is never honored 
 by a chaffy faith that floats in "every 
 wind of doctrine," nor by a medical pre- 
 scription faith that is peddled about town 
 for money and taken as a panacea for phys- 
 ical diseases, nor by any wonders of faith 
 that would see some mysterious relic of the 
 past — the bones of reputed saints performing 
 miracles. But actual, genuine faith, resting 
 in the whole truth, has the support of all the 
 intelligent faculties of our minds, acting in 
 harmonious agreement. It leads the whole 
 soul to all its truly hopeful efforts. When 
 its object is our Divine I^ord, it raises the 
 human to the divine will, and establishes 
 the fact of "righteousness and peace and 
 
15-i Laws and Counter Laws. 
 joy in the Holy Ghost." Without faith the 
 mind is without an intelligent self-leader- 
 ship, and can decide upon no reasonable 
 plan of efifort ; neither can it have any reason- 
 able plan for any effort, to do it knows 
 not and believes not what. Man was not 
 made to project his way through this world 
 without faith, and it does matter what men 
 believe. " Buy the truth and sell it not." 
 — Prov. 23-23. 
 
 All the laws of nature are practically om- 
 nipresent ; that is, we know of no place 
 where they are not. If we take the law of 
 gravitation and start out to find some place 
 where it is not, our search will be in vain. 
 There is no such place. The whole science 
 of Astronomy is based on the universality of 
 the law of gravitation. The planetary worlds 
 and the sidereal heavens, all suns and moons 
 and stars, wherever we see them in the uni- 
 verse, give prompt and exact obedience to 
 the law of gravitation. They are all subjects 
 of that law. All eclipses of planets and stars 
 are calculated and predicted for thousands 
 
Laics and Counter Laics. 155 
 of years to come on that law. But gravita- 
 tion is a dependent law, and never moves 
 any matter that is not prepared for its hold 
 upon it and kept in order so to continlie. It 
 never acts alone. The law of cohesion is 
 always manifested in holding the atoms to- 
 gether in solids for gravitation to take on 
 their circuits through space. So these two 
 laws are never manifested separately. 
 Neither is any other law of nature manifest- 
 ed alone. The presence of repulsion is im- 
 plied wherever cohesion is seen, and cohesion 
 must hold together whatever gravitation is 
 carrying along through space. So there are 
 interdependeucies of many kinds all 
 through the laws of nature, and a fair 
 deduction will concede the omnipres- 
 ence of the whole system of the laws 
 of nature, and of each one in particular. 
 There is no place where the law is not, and 
 its manifestations are to be expected where- 
 ever there is any matter to receive it— made 
 ready to receive it. 
 
 The presence of a law and its mauifesta- 
 
156 Laics and Counter Laws. 
 tious are two distinct things, not to be con- 
 founded. A law against stealing may ex- 
 tend all the time over the whole State, but 
 its presence is manifested when a thief is 
 punished for his crime, in whatever part of 
 the State he may have been caught, for he 
 could not steal in the State but where the 
 law forbade it. And so the law of gravita- 
 tion extends throughout the universe, and 
 is manifested wherever there is any object 
 or matter made ready to receive it. Take 
 matter prepared for it to any place in the 
 universe, and you will find the law there as 
 certainly as it is here. Whenever a new 
 world is rightly conditioned in any part of 
 space, for any given law of nature, as the 
 law of gravitation, that law is present and 
 takes its new burden upon just the same 
 terms as all other previously made worlds 
 have been taken, and with infinitely exact 
 adjustments. 
 
 The laws of nature regarded as acts of God, 
 permeating all space and all atoms of mat- 
 ter throughout the universe, teach us that 
 
Laws and Counter Laws. 157 
 our Heavenly Father's plan for the conduct 
 of this and all other worlds is a plan of gov- 
 ■ernment by laws ; and we cannot find an 
 atom of matter anywhere that is not under 
 infinite and omnipresent laws, even in the 
 conditions upon which atoms of matter pass 
 from one law to another. 
 
 In all departments of divine government 
 whatever is prepared for a higher law has it. 
 The most obvious thing in the material 
 world is that matter always goes at once 
 ■where it is made ready to go, and it goes 
 "there under the infinite force that enforces 
 law. When you would fall a tree to the 
 north you chop it on the north side, and 
 ■when to the south on the south side, and 
 the law of gravitation is present there, and 
 the unseen in nature obeys it and brings 
 down the tree on the side you prepared it to 
 fall ; if to the north to the north it is, and 
 if to the south to the south it falls. There 
 is no fitful, uncertain, partial and unreliable 
 law in all the divine system of laws revealed 
 
158 Laws and Counter Laws. 
 
 to meu. They perform what they promise 
 
 without respect of persous. 
 
 Yet, with all this, a special providence aud 
 answers to prayers are both reasonable and 
 natural. Yea, more reasonable than they 
 could be if we had found the laws of nature 
 in material atoms variable, and given to ha- 
 bitual discriminations. For now our prayer 
 goes not to the laws, but to " our Father 
 which art in Heaven," who made this world 
 with all its faithful laws for our use and can 
 make another if there is any need of it. We 
 have these laws plus God, Himself ! One of 
 the Divine methods of answering prayer is 
 by a gracious work in our own hearts, by 
 which we are fitted for a higher law of trust 
 in Him, and thus made free from many 
 anxieties about things beyond our control. 
 Our faith and love cast out fear. We offer 
 no dictation to Him, but try to render a 
 prompt aud faithful performance of what we 
 believe to be our duties. God may influ- 
 ence us or some other person and leave even 
 an enemy disinclined to do us harm. This 
 
Laics and Counter Laics. 159 
 we know, that the Creator and Author of 
 such just laws must be able and willing to 
 answer all filial prayer that goes up to Him 
 in trust of His word and love, and from 
 hearts hungering and thirsting to know and 
 to do His own Holy Will. Let us offer all 
 the prayers that are exactly in the line of 
 ■obedience to God and good will to men : 
 " To do good and to communicate, for with 
 ^uch sacrifices God is well pleased."— Heb. 
 13-16. 
 
 The world is always busy with the prayers 
 of men from one to another ; and the idea 
 that He, who made the world, cannot an- 
 swer a reasonable prayer is inconsistent with 
 perfection of character. 
 
 There is a manifest law of prayer between 
 -God and men, and whenever we are con- 
 ditioned and made entirely ready for any 
 ^iven prayer, it will be heard and answered 
 as is best for us. "Prayer tests," proposed 
 to the praying believers in God by people 
 who do not pray themselves, if seriously at- 
 tempted, would be profane. We do not owe 
 
160 Laics and Counter Laws. 
 any experiments with God for the entertain- 
 ment of unbelievers. Our religion should 
 go more reverently to God, and our good 
 will to men will be better shown by a man- 
 lier dignity of character toward them, while 
 we are walking humbly with God. All 
 Christians have evidence of answers to their 
 prayers, or they would still be without hope 
 in Christ ; yet Christians are second to none 
 in their belief of the universality and per- 
 manency of all the Divine Laws. 
 
 True science justly claims to be always in 
 accord with all the laws of nature, but true 
 religion claims much more— not only per- 
 fect accord with all the laws of nature, but 
 with all the laws of Divine revelation also. 
 " To the law and the testimony, if they 
 speak not according to this word, it is be- 
 cause there is no light in them." — Is. 8-20. 
 
 No finite mind may be able to tell pre- 
 cisely what degree of moral freedom he en- 
 joys, or what is possible to be done by his own 
 self-agency. We all know, however, that the 
 Divine government in both nature and reve- 
 
Laws and Counter Laics. 161 
 lation is calling all moral beings more and 
 more earnestly to use their freedom in resist- 
 ing evil and striving more earnestly for the 
 attainment of the highest good. At every 
 advanced step of knowledge new fields are 
 opened, with fresh motives to righteousness 
 and it rewards even in this life. But the 
 strongest appeals are made finally to the 
 freedom of individuals to accept the redemp- 
 tion provided in Christ. Men are covenanted 
 with as free persons, able to value and de- 
 sire eternal life as an act of their own choice, 
 and no provision is made for moving heav- 
 enward unwillingly, no call for bond ser- 
 vice. Christianity makes the redeemed the 
 Friends of their Lord and the Children of 
 God. It is freedom of will as well as right- 
 eousness of life that grades believers up- 
 ward towards the perfect will of God in 
 Christ Jesus. Freedom and righteousness 
 are inseparable at the throne of the universe 
 in our Father's House. The opposite law is 
 not only away from God, but it is bondage 
 and sin, increasingly great on the down 
 
162 Laws and Counter Laws. 
 grade. The contrast is unavoidable in the 
 processes of law; progressive opposites are 
 towards extreme opposites. The opposite to 
 harmony, freedom and righteousness with 
 God is bondage to sin, and somewhere be- 
 tween these extremes, ranged along the op- 
 posite ways, are all the self-acting moral 
 agents in the world, either opposite to the 
 love of God and receding from Him, or in 
 the love of God and advancing toward Him. 
 Whoever is self-preparing for lower laws of 
 morals and religion is moving toward sin 
 and bondage in the chains of evil habits. 
 And whoever is getting ready for higher 
 laws by repentance, faith and love to God is 
 moving towards freedom and righteousness 
 and joy in the Holy Ghost, being more and 
 more constrained by the love of God. 
 
 Thus far are the calls and warnings that 
 come from the laws of nature in material 
 things. Science is based on their permanency, 
 sees no way for their ending; hence they will 
 never be changed, and whatever is moving 
 at all is moving towards one or the other 
 
Latvs and Counter Laws. 163 
 opposite extreme. The finalities of all 
 things are in two opposites only, and be- 
 tween them there is a great gulf fixed. Luke 
 16-26. If man will rise higher than he now is, 
 he must change and be changed so as to con- 
 form to the higher laws to which he aspires, 
 and to which God in Christ is calling him 
 with loving entreaties. " Blessed are they 
 which do hunger and thirst after righteous- 
 ness, for they shall be filled."— Mat. 5-6. It 
 belongs to the science of theology and relig- 
 ion to place the subject of the higher laws — 
 the Gospel Laws— before men, and to help 
 them to the requisite knowledge of the way 
 of salvation, the way of repentance toward 
 God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Let 
 men redeemed from sin by our Divine Re- 
 deemer thenceforth move along on the up- 
 ward grade of life's laws, by divine helping, 
 up to the throne of the Father's House of 
 Many Mansions.— John 14-2. 
 
 One thing is plain, the upward way is not 
 closed to any except those who will not pre- 
 pare for it. Helping to keep the truth 
 
164 Laws and Counter Laws. 
 brighter in living examples is a work iu 
 which all the good in the world may be en- 
 listed iu Holy Enterprise. Let simple, hon- 
 est, universal truth be the rallying call to 
 Christ who is "The way and the truth and 
 the life."— John 14-6. And whoever 
 reaches it first will be first in the glorious 
 presence of the everlasting throne of God, 
 being there by conformity to the truth of 
 God in Christ Jesus, and led by the presence 
 and power of the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, 
 in His mission of leading us iuto all truth. — 
 John 16-13. 
 
 There are all along the upward way of 
 freedom, truth and righteousness agencies 
 in the form of personal experiences, repent- 
 ance and spiritual awakenings, as well as 
 the example and fellowship of many in like 
 relationship to Christ. They are all work- 
 ing to assist and encourage every child of 
 faith in God in preparing for higher 
 laws, which are always present as 
 fast as subjects are ready to obey them ; 
 and to subjects thus moving upward all 
 
Laics and Counter Laics. 1G5 
 knowledge, experience, joys and sorrows, 
 all disappointments and trials, are favorable 
 to them as members of the body of Christ. 
 "All things work together for good to them 
 that love God, to them who are the called 
 according to his purpose," Rom. 8 28. Then 
 said I, **IvO, I come, in the volume of the 
 book it is written of me, I delight to do thy 
 will, O my God ; yea, thy law is within my 
 heart," Ps. 40 7, 8. "For Christ is the end 
 of the law for righteous^ness to every one 
 that believeth," Rom. 104. "Thanks be 
 unto God for his unspeakable gift," 2nd Cor. 
 
 915- 
 
 Let us all have "repentance toward God 
 and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ." — 
 Acts 20 21. 
 
''And Adam called his wife's name 
 Eve." —Genesis, 3:20. 
 
BIBLE OUTIylNES. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Bible outlines of the first man^s life xmtilhe 
 was married. 
 
 If we could find a man who had never 
 been a child, we might be able to imagine 
 that the first man was never a child ; but our 
 imaginings would all be wrong, and the 
 Bible outlines decidedly against us. " The 
 first man, Adam, was made a living soul ; 
 the last Adam was made a quickening 
 spirit."— I Cor. 15:45. 
 
 Yet, the last Adam was a babe, born in a 
 manger in Bethlehem of Judea. — Luke, 2:7. 
 
 No living thing is known, or has ever been 
 known, to come to the stature of a plant, or 
 of an animal, or of a man, without growth* 
 To every living thing God made, He gave 
 food and suitable conditions and opportu 
 
168 Growth and Education, 
 
 nity for growing, and the making of each 
 pair of all living things antedated their grow- 
 ing. Hence, we are told that the ** waters 
 brought forth," and God said: "Let the 
 earth bring forth the living creature after 
 his kind, and cattle and creeping thing and 
 beasts of the earth after his kind, and it 
 was so." — Gen. 1:24. 
 
 And to prevent misinterpretation, and that 
 no one should imagine that God made plants 
 and trees, and fowls and beasts, all grown 
 up, we are told, respecting them, that God 
 made them " before they were in the earth 
 and before they grew.'''' — Gen. 2:4-5. 
 
 And man was not an exception, but was 
 
 made (male and female) antecedent to his 
 growth, and to his education, and to his re- 
 ceiving the breath of God and becoming a 
 "IvivingSoul."— Gen. 2:7. 
 
 In point of time man was made after all 
 other creatures of earth, and yet not so 
 remote as to be furnished with food different 
 from theirs, for either male or female. And 
 God said : " Behold I have given you every 
 
Growth and Education. 169 
 herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of 
 all the earth, and every tree, in the which is 
 the fruit of a tree yielding seed, to you it 
 shall be for meat ; and to every beast of the 
 earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to 
 every thing that creepeth upon the earth, 
 wherein there is life. I have given every 
 green herb for meat, and it was so." — Gen. 
 1:29-30. 
 
 Plainly, therefore, man's food was earthly, 
 and. by growing on such food he was formed 
 out of the earth, as all the animals are de- 
 clared to have been. — Gen. 1-24 and 2-19. 
 "And out of the ground the Lord God 
 formed every beast of the field and every 
 fowl of the air, and brought them unto 
 Adam (not before they were grown) to see 
 what he would call them ; and whatsoever 
 Adam called every living creature, that was 
 the name thereof." — Gen. 2:19. 
 
 Thus it is easy to see that any living body 
 that is growing on earthly food is being 
 formed out of the earth and out of the "dust 
 of the earth." 
 
170 Growth and Education. 
 
 But growing is always a process requiring 
 time. Man (male and female) was not made 
 and grown to childhood, and school days, 
 and graduation, and capacity for law, and 
 readiness for business and marriage, and the 
 law of marriage all at once. And there is 
 nothing of that kind implied in the out- 
 lines of the first man's life. But the outline 
 does show that the act of God, by which 
 man was made a "living soul," was subse- 
 quent to his creation. 
 
 It seems to have been in the part of his 
 life in which he was nearing to manhood. 
 The act of God following it in the narrative 
 was the planting of a garden eastward in 
 Eden, where he put the mam whom he had 
 formed.— Gen. 2:8. 
 
 Thus far from the beginning of Genesis to 
 the i6th verse of this 2ud chapter, we have 
 the acts and words of God independent of 
 auy acts and words of man, even implied. 
 But now and henceforth the acts and words 
 of God and the acts and words of man, 
 spoken or implied, are so intermingled as 
 
Settlement and Marriage. 171 
 to require careful discrimination to see upon 
 whom the responsibility of anything said or 
 done rests. Also whenever in Genesis two 
 acts of God are connected by the conjunc- 
 tion "and," there is a time space allow- 
 able of greater or less length ; often of very 
 great length, so that it does not follow that 
 God formed man of the dust of the ground 
 "and" "breathed into his nostrils the 
 breath of life, and man became a living 
 soul ;" that this was all synchronized. The 
 act of God that made man a " living soul " 
 was subsequent to his creation as man. 
 Gen. I : 27. In due time Adam had become 
 master of a copious and versatile language 
 and the time had come for him to assume 
 all the responsibilities of manhood and of 
 obedience to his Maker. He was placed in 
 Kden in a home surpassing the gooduess of 
 any other retreat for beauty, comfort and 
 abundance. God made ready for him to re- 
 ceive the knowledge of "an helpmeet" 
 which hitherto He had kept from him, ex- 
 cept by promise; " I will make him an help- 
 
172 Settlement and Marriage. 
 meet." i8 v. The female had been brought 
 up separately from the male but not less 
 liberally or suitably educated. Adam was 
 qualified to give original and appropriate 
 names to all animals and to other things as 
 well, demonstrating the excellency of his 
 natural and acquired abilities. And the 
 female was not less of an exalted nature and 
 accomplished for the very highest earthly 
 companionship to which she had been ap- 
 pointed of God, and was "made" manifest 
 indue time and God "brought h^r to the 
 man." Gen. 2 122. 
 
 We must not forget or omit to see now 
 and henceforth that the words and acts of 
 man are so intermingled with the words and 
 acts of God as to give a divided responsibility 
 for the narrative before us considered as a 
 whole. 
 
 Adam's contribution must be carefully 
 considered. Adam said, " This is now bone 
 of my bone, and flesh of my flesh." This 
 implies that he takes upon himself the 
 responsibility or adoption of what immedi- 
 
Settlement and 3Iarria(je. 173 
 ately precedes his own speech. We fiad 
 good evidence that God did uot bring the 
 woman to Adam until he had provided 
 suitably for them both in Eden, aud was 
 ready to see them married aud to bestow His 
 blessing. Adam had desired a helpmeet. 
 And if we suppose the exuberance of the 
 human imagination in its pristine state and 
 in the joy of receiving "an helpmeet." 
 
 So unexpectedly and suddenly and of such 
 surpassing fitness to himself could enable 
 him to account for the Ivord's bringing a 
 mate to him by the way of such a unique 
 process of manufacture more readily than 
 by any other way. Then this hard part of 
 the narrative, this metaphor, this rib story, 
 is all accounted for, and Adam is responsible 
 for sending down to us this enigmatical 
 account of the origin of woman. Perhaps he 
 did not imagine it would ever be interpret- 
 ed literally. No Bible writer ever recog- 
 nized it. Our Saviour wholly disregarded 
 it, and referred directly to the identical 
 persons, male and female, that God first 
 
174: Law of Marriage. 
 
 made as the actual couple that are now 
 united in marriage. If there was any 
 mystery, he has brushed it aside and 
 made the occasion of that first marriage 
 God's time of giving to man the true law of 
 marriage for all men and for all time. "And 
 He answered and said unto them, ' Have ye 
 not read that He which made them at the 
 beginning made them male and female. 
 And said, for this cause shall a man leave 
 father and mother and shall cleave to his 
 wife : and they twain shall be one flesh I 
 Wherefore they are no more twain but one 
 flesh. What therefore God hath joined to- 
 gether let not man put asunder.' " Matt^ 
 19 : 4-6. 
 
«* BIBLE VIEWS OF CREATION." 
 
 A Response to Criticisms of the Last 
 
 Chapter of That Work by its 
 
 Author . 
 
 REV. GEORGE R. MOORE. 
 (NO. I.) 
 
 Prof. Wm, Henry Green^, D. D., of 
 Princeton, has said that the second chapter 
 of Genesis is a sequel to the first. This is 
 evidently true if sequel is allowed to mean 
 the same discourse continued in the direct 
 line of saying the things which the writer 
 had to say prior to reporting the fall of 
 man, which carried him forward in his 
 discourse into the third chapter. The 
 second is an indispensable connective of 
 the first and third chapters of Genesis. 
 The first chapter treats mainly of the cre- 
 ations of God which are or may be known 
 of men, and the second has some explana- 
 tory clauses relating to the first, and some 
 also relating to the second, but its main 
 intent forward in the line of the writer's 
 gi-at purpose was to show the favor of 
 God to man (Adam), how he blessed and 
 exalted him, settled him in Eden and mar- 
 ried him there, and conversed with him; 
 and the third chapter treats mainly of 
 man's condition iQ Eden, and of his con- 
 duct when tried, and of his fall and con- 
 demnation at which time the writer gives 
 
the initial words of the plan of salvation 
 which revelation was increased from time 
 to time until finally completed by the com- 
 ing of the Messiah. 
 
 No logical theology Can spare the sec- 
 ond chapter of Genesis, or in any way re- 
 arrange it so as to make it less emphatic 
 than it now is respecting man's abilities 
 and spiritual elevation prior to the very 
 day of their sin against God. 
 
 To understand the first part of Genesis 
 we must keep clearly in mind that the con- 
 junction "and" (Heb. vav) determines 
 nothing whatever concerning the actual or 
 relative time of the independent events 
 which it grammatically unites. It is as if 
 one should say, '* Our Lord was born in 
 Bethlehem, * and ' was baptized by John 
 the Baptist." This "and" does not 
 synchronize his baptism and birth, which 
 we know were about thirty years apart. 
 Neither does the word " and " in Gen. 2:7 
 synchronize the coming of man from 
 the dust of the ground "and" breathing 
 into his nostrils the breath of life. There 
 is nothing in this language to exclude a 
 period cf time quite sufficient for God to 
 make the man's body mediately by its grow- 
 ing on earthly food. Again, in the 19th 
 verse of this chapter we are told, "And 
 out of the ground the Lord God formed 
 every beast of the field, and every fowl of 
 the air, 'and' brought them to Adam to 
 see what he would call them." There is 
 nothing in this language to show that the 
 bodies of all those animals were not made 
 
out of the ground mediately , "and" brought 
 to Adam when they were suitably grown 
 up for such a purpose. 
 
 The second chapter of Genesis does not 
 relate the original creation of a single life 
 of any kind whatever. God's direct and 
 immediate creations of life, as far as the 
 writer of Genesis intended to enumerate 
 them at that time, are all specified in the 
 first chapter, and this specification includes 
 man (Adam), both male and female, and 
 tells them the dominion they should have 
 in the animal kingdom, and enjoins the 
 obligation of increase and of replenishing 
 and subduing the earth, and of receiving 
 their food in common with animals from 
 things growing and bearing fruit upon 
 the earth, and thus in a mediate way, by 
 the food they lived upon, their bodies were 
 made of earth and of the dust of the ground 
 by the food they lived upon, given them of 
 God by His daily providence. God cre- 
 ated originally all Jives of every kind, each 
 individual life with a capacity to make its 
 own body of the food His providence gave 
 to it for that purpose. There is not an 
 organized body in the world of any kind, 
 plant, animal or man, that has any other 
 body than its own life has made for it. 
 
 God made lives with power to work. 
 All lives start in the midst of food, and the 
 
 ! first work of lives is to make their own 
 bodies out of the food around them aided 
 only by their Maker's providence. Medi- 
 ately all the bodies in the world are made 
 
 i of God out of the earth, but immediately^ 
 
 J 
 
not one. No body has any visible exist- 
 ence, or is commenced until its own life ' 
 commences it in what is almost, if not 
 quite, an invisible cell to which other cells 
 are drawn and growth commences, and 
 body building thus commenced goes on i 
 under favorable conditions to complete 
 the body God intended each life to have. 
 Some lives bring their own bodies to ma- 
 turity in one day, and some others not in 
 a thousand years. Man's maturity of 
 body may be reached in about twenty 
 years, during the greater part of which 
 time he has ©pportunities for growing in 
 wisdom by experience, as well as in stature 
 by food. 
 
 If the first human pair had no experi- 
 ence of growth in wisdom and stature, they 
 must have looked upon their first-born 
 children as an unnatural progeny, with 
 lives and bodies coming along together 
 growing, though their parents bodies were 
 
 made full size and *'did not grow, nor were 
 they made by any process of development." 
 Looking upon their children they might 
 ask, " If the plan of making the body full 
 size first, and breathing life into it after- 
 wards was the best way, why was it 
 abandoned ? " If it was not the best way, 
 why did God stultify the lives of the first 
 human pair by withholding from them the 
 opportunity of growing their own bodies ? 
 Of growing ** in wisdom and stature" 
 when He had given it to all other lives, and 
 determined it for all ages to come, and to 
 
every atom of organized matter in thg 
 world? Why this one exception? I do 
 not find such an exception in the Bible, 
 and, I confess, the picture of a statue-made 
 man and woman as parents with little 
 children growing up around them and 
 prattling their little observations and ex- 
 periences to them as parents surpasses my 
 comprehension . How could a clay statue 
 be in the image of God ? 
 
 But I read the seventh verse of the sec- 
 ond chapter of Genesis with no such 
 thoughts in my mind. The word man 
 may be slightly misleading because in the 
 original it is Adam, the only Adam there 
 was, and of course the Adam named in the 
 first chapter. 
 
 We see in the first chapter that when- 
 ever God spoke of any new order of ani- 
 mals He made lives capable of making 
 their own bodies. If He wanted fowls He 
 Jl made suitable lives for them, and if He 
 wanted cattle He made suitable lives for 
 cattle. 
 
 It is not the modern works on anatomy 
 that show us the primal cause of the 
 many orders of the world's animals, but 
 the first chapter of Genesis. Our Lord 
 received little children ("Infants," Luke 
 18:15) and blessed them lovingly, and 
 exalted them for our imitation in some 
 important respects. And we cannot think 
 the originals of our nature were any less 
 lovingly treated by him in whose image 
 they were made. The Divine love to 
 them of the Son of God may have ex- 
 
eluded the ostensible ministry of angels, 
 but could not have excluded any of the 
 
 j rights of their own human nature, includ- 
 ing all the experiences and growth of 
 
 I childhood and youth. Childhood and 
 youth were not excluded from the Messiah 
 in taking our nature, neither were they ex- 
 cluded from the originals of the human 
 race, innocent and beloved of Him who 
 has become our Redeemer. 
 
 I (no. ii.) 
 
 I know that God is making 7nediately all 
 human bodies of the earth, and the bodies 
 of all other lives of the earth as well, and 
 
 1 think of the first human pair as afford- 
 ing no exception to this plan of mediate 
 creation of all bodies. Immediately God 
 made the lives of Adam, male and female, 
 and mediately he made their bodies of earth 
 as they grew by nourishment from earthly 
 food. Paul speaks of our "earthly house," 
 
 2 Cor. 5:1. Paul's earthly house was one 
 which his own life had built by growing 
 on earthly food 
 
 The Bible regards all the bodies of men 
 as of the " dust of the earth " just as much 
 as it does the body of Adam. Eccl. 3*.20, 
 " All are of the dust." 
 
 Josephus says that Adam was formed 
 out of " red earth compounded together, 
 for of that kind is virgin and true earth." 
 
(Antiq. book i, Chap, i, Sec. 2.) 
 
 Such knowledge is wonderful. " Virgin 
 earth!" What is it ? Who can tell ? I 
 am glad Josephus did not write the Bible. 
 It would then have been vulnerable to 
 science as it is not now. 
 
 It is obvious from the opening chapters 
 of the Bible that the writer intended to pass 
 from the creation of all former things to 
 the creation of man in the image of God, 
 and then to close the records of the original 
 creations, and from thence to pass on to 
 the exaltation of man by bestowment of 
 grace and Divine companionship and 
 guidance up to the time of his marriage 
 and afterwards, and as briefly as pos- 
 sible to come up to the history of man's 
 trial and fall and condemnation, and the« 
 to the initiatory words of the revelation of 
 the plan of redemption, a revelation to be 
 enlarged little by little from time to time, 
 and to be fulfilled, in the predetermined 
 time, by the coming of the Messiah. 
 
 He evidently intended to lay special 
 emphasis upon the institution of the Sab- 
 bath day, also to make the marriage of the 
 first human pair a notable historical and 
 religious event, and the fit time for the 
 Divine proclamation of the law of mar- 
 riage for all men and for all time. 
 
 Let us consider now in our Lord's re- 
 port of the creation of the first, couple and 
 of their marriage, how He places His seal 
 upon the oneness of the authorship of the 
 first and second chapters of Genesis. 
 
Note carefully his words, Matt. 191.4, 
 "Have ye not read, that He which mac'*^ 
 them at the beginning made them male 
 and female" (found only in the first chap- 
 ter) and said, " For this cause shall a man 
 leave father and mother, and shall cleave 
 to his wife, and they twain shall be one 
 flesh." (Found only in the second chap- 
 ter.) 
 
 Hence, whoever would pull apart the 
 first and second chapters of Genesis must 
 invalidate Christ's own seal by which they 
 are now united, and the Elohim and the 
 Jehovah Elohim are only varied names of 
 God which for some reason the author of 
 these chapters introduced after he had fin 
 ishedthe recital of ail the original cre- 
 ations and was about to introduce Adam 
 in a manner more special and close in his 
 relations to God, the " Lord God." 
 
 Let us now return to Gen. 2:7, where 
 we have the record of a special act of 
 Divine grace bestowed upon Adam. " And 
 the Lord God * * * breathed into his 
 nortrils the breath of life and Adam became 
 a living soul." When our Lord breathed 
 upon His disciples, and said, " Receive ye 
 the Holy Ghost," John 20:22 ; they were ' 
 men and not statues. The question now 
 is, "What was Adam before he became a 
 living soul?" And the text itself gives 
 the right answer. " He was Adam, not a 
 dead form of clay, but a man capable of 
 being advanced, of becoming a living soul 
 in some sense more exalted than he was 1-°- 
 
fore, filled with more spiritual life and 
 raised to a higher responsibility, ' man ' 
 became a living soul," Was advanced to 
 a higher and better life, spiritualized and 
 raised to such a degree of moral and re- 
 ligious responsibility, and sympathy and 
 love to God^ that it was possible 
 
 for him to sin against God by unbelief, as 
 the highest and noblest of animals with 
 all their fullness of life, animal life, could 
 not do. 
 
 We have already seen how Adam's body 
 was formed out of the dust of the ground, 
 but the question is repeated, " What was 
 it that became a living soul?" And I 
 answer again, it vjas not Adam's body. 
 His body never became a living soul. Our 
 text says it was man (Adam), and " Adam 
 became a living soul." This is one ot the 
 specifications in the line of proofs of God's 
 exaltation of the first Adam (male and fe- 
 male), but we must take all that is said of 
 him and of them in the first chapter of 
 Genesis. There they are told what their 
 place is in the animal kingdom. They 
 were blessed of God and told to be fruitful. 
 By that act of God this first couple were 
 affianced to each other, for both received 
 the commandment. And in due time the 
 Lord God presented this woman to this 
 man and married them in Eden, and there 
 proclaimed the laws of marriage. An- 
 othei specification of the way the Lord* 
 God exalted the first man was by personal 
 interviews. That He gave him all the care 
 
desirable is shown by the conversation's 
 reported, and duties and exercises assigned 
 to him. God brought the animals to him 
 to see what he would call them. He pro- 
 vided Eden for him, and put him in it to 
 keep it and to dress it. There seems to 
 have been nothing withheld from the exalted 
 couple, most happy in their lives, but the 
 fruit of one tree as- a test of their obedi- 
 ence. They enjoyed the Lord's social in- 
 terviews in their beautiful home until the 
 very day of their disobedience to Him. 
 By Divine grace and favor, and personal 
 influence and sympathy they had become ex 
 alted far above their created state. By crea- 
 tion alone they were human, but they could 
 be human without the highly intelligent, 
 moral and spiritual elevation God graci- 
 ously bestowed upon them after their cre- 
 ation, and it is mainly of this grace and 
 favor to man that the second chapter of 
 Genesis is concerned in showing. 
 
 The writer of Genesis relates the creation 
 of man in the first chapter. His exaltation 
 and marriage in >he second, and his fall 
 and condemnation in the third. And he 
 shows plainly that man's fall was down- 
 ward, and not as some are telling us in 
 our days, that the " fall of man was up- 
 wards." The fall related in Genesis was 
 downward, and from such a condition the 
 beginning of the revelation of the plan of 
 salvation has respect. Let us not now by 
 unbelief fail of this completed fulfillment 
 of the plan of redemption by our Lord and 
 Saviour Jesus Christ. 
 
 /o