is not true, its inspiration can hardly be | established. As a matter of a fact, the truth does not need to be inspired. Nothing needs inspiration except a falsehood or a mistake. Where truth ends, where probability stops, inspiration begins. A fact never went into partnership with a miracle. Truth does not need the assistance of miracle. A fact will fit every other fact in the universe, because it is the product of all other facts. A lie will fit nothing except another lie made for the express purpose of fitting it. After a while the man gets tired of lying, and then the last lie will not fit the next fact, and then there is an opportunity to use a miracle. Just at that point it is necessary to have a little inspiration.

It seems to me that reason is the highest attribute of man, and that, if there can be any communication from God to man, it must be addressed to his reason. It does not seem possible that in order to understand a message from God it is absolutely essential to throw our reason away. How could God make known his will to any being destitute of reason? How can any man accept as a revelation from God that which is unreasonable to him? God cannot make a revelation to another man for He must make it to me, and until he convinces my reason that it is true I cannot receive it.

me.

The statement that in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth I cannot accept. It is contrary to my reason, and I cannot believe it. It appears reasonable to me that force has existed from eternity. Force cannot, as it appears to me, exist apart from matter. Force, in its nature, is for ever active, and without matter it could not act; and so I think matter must have existed for ever. To conceive of matter without force, or of force without matter, or of a time when neither existed, or of a being who existed for an eternity without either, and who out of nothing created both, is to me utterly impossible. I may be damned on this account, but I cannot

help it. In my judgment, Moses was mistaken.

It will not do to say that Moses merely intended to tell what God did in making the heavens and the earth out of matter then in existence. He distinctly says that in the beginning God created them. If this account is true, we must believe that God, existing in infinite space surrounded by eternal nothing, naught and void, created, produced, called into being, willed into existence, this universe of countless stars.

The next thing we are told by this inspired gentleman is that God created light, and proceeded to divide it from the darkness. Certainly the person who

wrote this believed that darkness was a thing, an entity, a material that could get mixed and tangled up with light, and that these entities, light and darkness, had to be separated. In his imagination he probably saw God throwing pieces and chunks of darkness on one side and rays and beams of light on the other. It. is hard for a man who has been born® but once to understand these things. For my part, I cannot understand how light can be separated from darkness. I had always supposed that darkness was simply the absence of light, and that under no circumstances could it be necessary to take the darkness away from the light. It is certain, however, that Moses believed darkness to be a form of matter, because I find that in another place he speaks of a darkness that could : be felt. They used to have on exhibition at Rome a bottle of the darkness that overspread Egypt.

You cannot divide light from darkness, any more than you can divide heat from cold. Cold is an absence of heat, and darkness is an absence of light. I suppose that we have no conception of absolute cold. We know only degrees of heat. Twenty degrees below zero is just twenty degrees warmer than forty degrees below zero. Neither cold nor darkness is an entity, and the two words express simply either the absolute or partial absence of heat or light. I

cannot conceive how light can be divided from darkness, but I can conceive how a barbarian several thousand years ago, writing upon a subject about which he knew nothing, could make a mistake. The creator of light could not have written in this way. If such a being exists, he must have known the nature of that "mode of motion" that paints the earth on every eye, and clothes in garments seven-hued this universe of worlds.

VII. TUESDAY.

We are next informed by Moses that "God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters "; and that "God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament."

What did the writer mean by the word "firmament"? Theologians now tell us that he meant an "expanse.' This will not do. How could an expanse divide the waters from the waters, so that the waters above the expanse would not fall into and mingle with the waters below the expanse? The truth is that Moses regarded the firmament as a solid affair. It was where God lived, and where water was kept. It was for this reason that they used to pray for rain. They supposed that some angel could with a lever raise a gate and let out the quantity of moisture desired. It was with the water from this firmament that the world was drowned when the windows of heaven were opened. It was in this firmament that the sons of God lived the sons who "saw the daughters of men that they were fair, and took them wives of all which they chose." The issue of such marriages were giants, and the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown."

Nothing is clearer than that Moses regarded the firmament as a vast material division that separated the waters of the world, and upon whose floor God lived, surrounded by his sons.

In no

other way could he account for rain.

Where did the water come from? He knew nothing about the laws of evapora tion. He did not know that the sun wooed with amorous kisses the waves of the sea, and that they, clad in glorified mist rising to meet their lover, were, by disappointment, changed to tears, and fell as rain.

The idea that the firmament was the abode of the Deity must have been in the mind of Moses when he related the dream of Jacob. "And he dreamed. and behold, a ladder set up on the earth. and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. And, behold, the Lord stood above it and said, I am the Lord God."

So, when the people were building the tower of Babel, "the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do; and now nothing will be restrained from them which they imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech."

The man who wrote that absurd account must have believed that God lived above the earth, in the firmament. The same idea was in the mind of the Psalmist when he said that God "bowed the heavens and came down."

Of course, God could easily remove any person bodily to heaven, as it was but a little way above the earth. "Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him." The accounts in the Bible of the ascension of Elijah, Christ, and St. Paul were born of the belief that the firmament was the dwelling-place of God. It probably never occurred to these writers that, if the firmament was seventy or eighty miles away, Enoch and the rest would have been frozen perfectly stiff long before the journey could have been completed. Possibly Elijah might have made the voyage, as he was carried to heaven in a chariot of fire "by a whirlwind."

VIII.-WEDNESDAY.

We are next informed by the historian of creation that after God had finished making the firmament, and had succeeded in dividing the waters by means of an "expanse," he proceeded to gather the waters on the earth together in seas so that the dry land might appear.

Certainly the writer of this did not have any conception of the real form of the earth. He could not have known anything of the attraction of gravitation. He must have regarded the earth as flat, and supposed that it required considerable force and power to induce the water to leave the mountains and collect in the valleys. Just as soon as the water was forced to run down hill, the dry land appeared, and the grass began to grow and the mountains of green were thrown over the shoulders of the hills, and the trees laughed into bud and blossom, and the branches were laden with fruit. And all this happened before a ray had left the quiver of the sun, before a glittering beam had thrilled the bosom of a flower, and before the Dawn with trembling hands had drawn aside the curtains of the East and welcomed to her arms the eager god of Day.

It does not seem to me that grass and trees could grow and ripen into seed and fruit without the sun. According to the account, this all happened on the third day. Now, if, as the Christians say, Moses did not mean by the word "day" a period of twenty-four hours, but an immense and almost measureless space of time, and as God did not, according

Moses says that God said on the third day, "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. And the earth brought forth grass and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit whose seed was in itself after his kind; and God saw that it was good, and the evening and the morning were the third day."

There was nothing to eat this fruit; not an insect with painted wings sought the honey of the flowers; not a single living breathing thing upon the earth. Plenty of grass, a great variety of herbs, an abundance of fruit, but not a mouth in all the world. If Moses is right, this state of things lasted only two days; but if the modern theologians are correct, it continued for millions of ages.

"It is now well known that the organic history of the earth can be properly divided into five epochs-the Primordial, Primary, Secondary, Tertiary, and Quaternary. Each of these epochs is characterised by animal and vegetable life peculiar to itself. In the FIRST will be found Algæ and skull-less Vertebrates; in the SECOND, Ferns and Fishes; in the THIRD, Pine Forests and Reptiles; in the FOURTH, Foliaceous Forests and Mammals; and in the FIFTH, Man.”

How much more reasonable this is than the idea that the earth was covered with grass and herbs and trees loaded with fruit for millions of years before an animal existed.

There is, in Nature, an even balance for ever kept between the total amounts of animal and vegetable life. "In her wonderful economy she must form and bountifully nourish her vegetable progeny -twin-brother life to her with that of animals. The perfect balance between plant existences and animal existences must always be maintained while matter

courses through the internal circle, becoming each in turn. If an animal be resolved into its ultimate constituents in a period according to the surrounding circumstances, say, of four hours, of four months, of four years, or even of four thousand years-for it is impossible to deny that there may be instances of all these periods during which the process has continued-those elements which assume the gaseous form mingle at once with the atmosphere, and are taken up from it without delay by the ever-open mouths of vegetable life. By a thousand pores in every leaf the carbonic acid which renders the atmosphere unfit for animal life is absorbed, the carbon being separated and assimilated to form the vegetable fibre, which, as wood, makes and furnishes our houses and ships, is burned for our warmth, or is stored up under pressure for coal. All this carbon has played its part, and many a part in its time, as animal existences from monad up to man. Our mahogany of to-day has been many negroes in its turn, and before the African existed was integral portions of many a generation of extinct species."

It seems reasonable to suppose that certain kinds of vegetation and certain kinds of animals should exist together, and that, as the character of the vegetation changed, a corresponding change would take place in the animal world. It may be that I am led to these conclusions by "total depravity," or that I lack the necessary humility of spirit to satisfactorily harmonise Haeckel and Moses; or that I am carried away by pride, blinded by reason, given over to hardness of heart that I might be damned; but I never can believe that the earth was covered with leaves, and buds, and flowers, and fruits, before the sun with glittering spear had driven back the hosts of night.

IX.-THURSDAY.

After the world was covered with vegetation it occurred to Moses that it was about time to make a sun and moon;

and so we are told that on the fourth day God said, "Let there be light in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years; and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth; and it was so. And God made two great lights-the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night; he made the stars also."

Can we believe that the inspired writer had any idea of the size of the sun? Draw a circle five inches in diameter, and by its side thrust a pin through the paper. The hole made by the pin will sustain about the same relation to the circle that the earth does to the sun. Did he know that the sun was eight hundred and sixty thousand miles in diameter; that it was enveloped in an ocean of fire thousands of miles in depth, hotter even than the Christian's hell, over which sweep tempests of flame moving at the rate of one hundred miles a

second, compared with which the wildest storm that ever wrecked the forests of this world was but a calm? Did he know that the sun, every moment of time, throws out as much heat as could be generated by the combustion of eleven thousand millions of tons of coal? Did he know that the volume of the earth is less than one-millionth of that of the sun? Did he know of the one hundred and four planets belonging to our solar system, all children of the sun? Did he know of Jupiter, eighty-five thousand miles in diameter, hundreds of times as large as our earth, turning on his axis at the rate of twenty-five thousand miles an hour, accompanied by four moons, making the tour of his orbit in fifty years, at a distance of three thousand million miles? Did he know anything about Saturn, his rings and his eight moons? Did he have the faintest idea that all these planets were once a part of the sun; that the vast luminary was once thousands of millions of miles in diameter; that Neptune, Uranus, Saturn,

Jupiter, and Mars were all born before our earth; and that by no possibility could this world have existed three days, nor three periods, nor three 'good whiles," before its source, the sun?

Moses supposed the sun to be about three or four feet in diameter, and the moon about half that size. Compared with the earth, they were but simple specks. This idea seems to have been shared by all the "inspired" men. We find in the book of Joshua that the sun stood still, and the moon stayed until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. "So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day."

We are told that the sacred writer wrote in common speech, as we do when we talk about the rising and the setting of the sun, and that all he intended to say was that the earth ceased to turn on its axis "for about a whole day."

My own opinion is that General Joshua knew no more about the motions of the earth than he did about mercy and justice. If he had known that the earth turned upon its axis at the rate of a thousand miles an hour, and swept in its course about the sun at the rate of sixty-eight thousand miles an hour, he would have doubled the hailstones, spoken of in the same chapter, that the Lord cast down from heaven, and allowed the sun and moon to rise and set in the usual way.

It is impossible to conceive of a more absurd story than this about the stopping of the sun and moon, and yet nothing so excites the malice of the orthodox preacher as to call its truth in question. Some endeavour to account for the phenomenon by natural causes, while others attempt to show that God could by the refraction of light have made the sun visible although actually shining on the opposite side of the earth. The last hypothesis has been seriously urged by ministers within the last few months. The Rev. Henry M. Morey, of South Reud, Indiana, says "that the phenomenon was simply optical. The rotary

motion of the earth was not disturbed, but the light of the sun was prolonged by the same laws of refraction and reflection by which the sun now appears to be above the horizon when it is really below. The medium through which the sun's rays passed may have been miraculously influenced so as to have caused the sun to linger above the horizon long after its usual time for disappearance."

This is the latest and ripest product of Christian scholarship upon this question, no doubt; but still it is not entirely satisfactory to me. According to the sacred account, the sun did not linger merely above the horizon, but "stood still in the midst of heaven" for "about a whole day "--that is to say, for about twelve hours. If the air was miraculously changed so that it would refract the rays of the sun while the earth turned over as usual for about a whole day," then at the end of that time the sun must have been visible in the east—that is, it must by that time have been the next morning. According to this, that most wonderful day must have been at least thirty-six hours in length. We have, first, the twelve hours of natural light, then twelve hours of "refracted and reflected" light. By that time it would again be morning, and the sun would shine for twelve hours more in the natural way, making thirty-six hours in all.

If the Rev. Morey would depend a little less on "refraction" and a little more on "reflection," he would conclude that the whole story is simply a barbaric myth and fable.

It hardly seems reasonable that God, if there is one, would either stop the globe, or change the constitution of the atmosphere or the nature of light, simply to afford Joshua an opportunity to kill people on that day, when he could just as easily have waited until the next morning. It certainly cannot be very gratifying to God for us to believe such childish things.

It has been demonstrated that force is eternal, that it is for ever active, and