New Theories in Astronomy

In the first period the heavens and the earth were created, but the earth was without form and void, inanis et vacuus, according to The Vulgate—(does that mean empty and hollow?)—and darkness was upon the face of the deep; but light was let shine upon the earth to alternate with darkness, and between the two to establish day and night. It is therefore evident that after the earth was created it had to be reduced to something like its present form, a globe of some kind, and to rotate on an axis, otherwise there could have been no alternations of light and darkness, of day and night. Where did the light come from? Some people seem to think that Moses should have included a treatise on the creation and evolution of the universe, in his account of the work done in the first period of creation. For all that can be truly said to the contrary, he seems to have been quite as able to do so as any scientist of the present day; but it is evident he thought it best to limit himself to writing only of the earth, as being of most interest to its inhabitants, and enough for them as a first lesson. The literature of science, however, of the present day, will tell them that long ages after the earth was evolved into a globe, it must have been in a molten, liquid state, surrounded by an atmosphere of vapours of some of the chemical elements so dense that no light from without could shine through it, and could only be penetrated by light after the cooling of the earth had dispelled a sufficient portion of that dense atmosphere. With this explanation, which they had at hand for the looking for, they might have been so far satisfied, and have left Moses to tell his story in his own way.