PROOF THAT ORIGINAL MATTER CONSISTED OF GASES, ORIGINALLY MOTIONLESS. CONDENSATION, THE CREATIVE PROCESS. ITS ALLEGED OPERATION UNDER THE NEBULAR THEORY. THE PLANETESIMAL OR CAPTURE THEORY. THE EXPLOSION THEORY FOR PLANETS, MOONS, ETC.

HAVING with the foregoing ended our discussion of Creation as a product, we now come to our discussion of Creation as a process. On this we have very little to say as a matter of faith or Biblical teaching; for the Bible does not explain clearly the process of God's creative work. Apart from a logical inference derived from one of its statements, it does not even hint that the original materials out of which creation as a product has been made were gases. Ps. 148:4, 5 tells us that God created the heavens, and the waters. From the fact that water is made by compounding hydrogen and oxygen, in weight 1 part of the former to 7.94 parts of the latter, and in volume two parts of the former to one part of the latter, the creation of water as mentioned in Ps. 148:4, 5 is proven to have been done by combining two gases in the above-indicated proportion. Hence, in this passage the thought of God's creating the waters, means that out of gases God brought water into existence. Hence, since the word created in this sentence has, as subject, the word heavens as well as waters, by analogy the thought of God's creating the heavens seems to imply that God out of gases brought the stars, planets, etc., into existence. We can not say more than that this seems to be the implication of this passage; for we note the fact that these things are not directly stated in the passage; they only seem to be logically implied therein. Hence only by logical inference from a Bible statement, and not from an express

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statement thereof, do we say that the Bible teaches that creation as a product was brought into existence out of gases. We also infer from the Hebrew word bara, and from the Greek word ktizo (Chapter I), as they are used in the Bible, that they mean to make something new out of previously existing materials. Thus the Bible directly teaches that the heavens and earth were made as new things out of previously existing substances, and by a logical inference that these substances were gases. So far the Biblical proof.

To this Biblical proof of the creation of all things from gases, which it must be admitted is scant and not wholly cogent, we add as corroborative evidence the fact that all of earth's chemical elements of matter can be reduced in our chemical laboratories to gases, and that these can in turn all be made from gases. This as a factual as distinct from a Biblical proof seems to demonstrate that the materials of which our earth consists originally were gases. And so far as reasoning from analogy can carry us, it seems to be a reasonable inference to hold the same as true of the chemical elements of the stars, planets, etc., which elements, so far as we can tell, are the same as are in our earth. Moreover, even before, and especially since the hundred-inch lens reflecting telescope had been installed in the observatory on Mt. Wilson, Calif., long-time-exposure photographs have been made of various funnel-shaped nebulae outside of our universe, which photographs show what seems to be the process of forming new suns out of immensely more attenuated materials than those constituting the resultant suns. Of course these attenuated materials are denser than gases, which no telescope could make visible at such great distances; but as parts of the funnel-shaped nebulae they appear like clouds in the parts away from their basal centers. That these clouds are much denser than gases is evident, we repeat it, from the fact that gases could not

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be made visible by the largest telescopes at so great distances, distances that take light traveling 186,000 miles a second hundreds of thousands of years to reach our earth. We suggest that the reader study the pictures of these funnel-shaped nebulae opposite pp. 488 and 492 of the Encyclopedia Britannica, 14th edition, for a visual idea of what has just been said. While the point just adduced does not prove that the universes have been made of gases, it is in harmony with that fact; since if it is a fact, in condensing it could and would likely form funnel-shaped nebulae. In further corroboration we might add that the ablest mathematicians have worked out mathematical formulas that require the existence of gases as the material out of which new suns and solar systems seem to be in process of creation. It is thus upon Biblical inferences and scientific facts that the proposition seems to be proven true that creation was originally made out of gases.

This being so, these gases before the creative processes started must have been quiescent; because had they been in motion by virtue of their own innate powers, our universe would be almost immeasurably older than it is; for on the assumption of materialists that matter in gaseous form was without a beginning, which assumption may be true, our universe would necessarily have existed almost from eternity, if their other assumption were true, that these gases were from eternity in motion. This assumption of eternally moving gases they make to evade the conclusion that an external self-conscious and purposeful Agent— God—started motion in the gases and thereby made to operate on and in these gases certain previously non- operative natural laws. But their second assumption— eternal motion in the gases—produces as necessary conclusions several palpable errors—(1) the almost eternal existence of the universe, whereas every pertinent fact goes to prove its comparative recency; and (2) that unintelligent and unpurposeful matter created itself

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into the universe that is everywhere permeated by design and intelligence. Moreover, their assumption contradicts the observed photographed fact that new suns are seemingly constantly in process of creation in universes outside of our universe. Hence, whether these original gases were eternal or had a beginning, it is certain that they were once quiescent, i.e., the laws of nature underlying their being neutralized the activity of one another and thus kept them in a quiescent state. This being true, there must have been a self-conscious purposeful Creator who so manipulated these gases as to have set them into motion, i.e., who put them into such conditions and relations as made their underlying laws cease to make one another quiescent, and who then kept on manipulating these laws in ways to produce changes in these gases, i.e., condensing them.

We just stated that this Creator changed these gases by condensing them into more solid masses. In stating the thought of condensing gases into more solid masses we have described the creative process; for the whole ordering of creation, so far as the inanimate creation is concerned, has been by means of condensing matter from more attenuated to less attenuated forms. How do we know this? By noting the materials—gases—out of which creation originally began and the condition in which inanimate creation now is. Now it is mainly solids, whereas at first nothing but gases existed. Thus, so far as inanimate creation is concerned, the creative process was undoubtedly one of condensation of matter in certain orderly forms and for certain orderly ends. The order of the first four creative days as described in Gen. 1 proves this: First after considerable condensing had taken place there was chaos, then matter condensed to leave space for light to appear, then the heavy vapors condensed enough to allow our atmosphere to come into existence, then the compression of earth substances set in to permit the waters that covered the entire earth to drain off into oceans,

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seas, etc., and then the atmosphere increased in height, which implies that things above it condensed and dropped to the earth's surface, until first the sun and then the moon and stars shone through to the earth on the fourth day. These condensations were connected with the earth and its immediate surroundings. Accordingly, we find both from facts and from Scriptural inference that a condensing process was the one through which creation passed. Thus we have found the process along the lines of which the Creator worked in bringing the heavens and earth into existence and into their present state, a process that can be almost seen in operation in the production of what seem to be new suns.

At this point we desire to quote from a letter written in 1692 by Sir Isaac Newton, who of all of Adam's fallen race had perhaps the ablest intellect and whose discovery of the law of gravitation was perhaps the greatest scientific discovery of all times. In this letter, among other things, he said the following on the possible influence of gravitation in the formation of worlds: "It seems to me that if the matter of our sun and planets, and all the matter of the universe, were evenly scattered throughout all the heavens, and every particle had an innate gravity towards all the rest, and the whole space throughout which this matter was scattered was finite, the matter on the outside of this space would, by its gravity, tend towards all the matter on the inside, and by consequence fall down into the middle of the whole space, and there compose one great spherical mass. But if the matter were evenly disposed throughout an infinite space, it could never convene into one mass, but some of it would convene into one mass and some into another, so as to make an infinite number of great masses, scattered great distances from one another throughout all that infinite space. And thus might the sun and fixed stars be

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formed, supposing the matter were of lucid (gaseous) nature." According to this the law of gravitation had a part in the condensing process, as photographic proofs show.

In order to show the main chemical changes that this condensing process wrought in the mass that became our earth, we will quote from the abstract of an address that Dr. Sterry Hunt delivered before the Royal Institution of London. We quote it, because it puts the matter much better than we can do: "This hypothesis of the nature of the sun and of the luminous process going on at its surface is the one lately put forward by Faye, and, although it has met with opposition, appears to be that which accords best with our present knowledge of the chemical and physical conditions of matter, such as we must suppose it to exist in the condensing gaseous mass which, according to the nebular hypothesis, should form the center of our solar system. Taking this, as we have already done, for granted, it matters little whether we imagine the different planets to have been successively detached as rings during the rotation of the primal mass, as is generally conceived, or whether we admit with Chacornac a process of aggregation or concretion, operating within the primal nebular mass, resulting in the production of sun and planets. In either case we come to the conclusion that our earth must at one time have been in an intensely heated gaseous condition, such as the sun now presents, self-luminous, and with a process of condensation going on at first at the surface only, until by cooling it must have reached the point where the gaseous center was exchanged for one of combined and liquefied matter.

"Here commences the chemistry of the earth, to the discussion of which the foregoing considerations have been only preliminary. So long as the gaseous condition of the earth lasted, we may suppose the whole mass to have been homogeneous; but when the temperature

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became so reduced that the existence of chemical compounds at the center became possible, those which were most stable at the elevated temperature then prevailing would be first formed. Thus, for example, while compounds of oxygen with mercury or even with hydrogen could not exist, oxides of silicon, aluminum, calcium, magnesium and iron might be formed and condense in a liquid form at the center of the globe. By progressive cooling, still other elements would be removed from the gaseous mass, which would form the atmosphere of the non-gaseous nucleus. We may suppose an arrangement of the condensed matters at the center according to their respective specific gravities, and thus the fact that the density of the earth as a whole is about twice the mean density of the matters which form its solid surface may be explained. Metallic or metalloidal compounds of elements, grouped differently from any compounds known to us, and far more dense, may exist in the center of the earth.

"The process of combination (condensation) and cooling having gone on until those elements which are not volatile in the heat of our ordinary furnaces were condensed into a liquid form, we may here inquire what would be the result, upon the mass, of a further reduction of temperature. It is generally assumed that in the cooling of a liquid globe of mineral matter, congelation would commence at the surface, as in the case of water; but water offers an exception to most other liquids, inasmuch as it is denser in the liquid than in the solid form. Hence ice floats on water, and freezing water becomes covered with a layer of ice, which protects the liquid below. With most other matters, however, and notably with the various mineral and earthly compounds analogous to those which may be supposed to have formed the fiery-fluid earth, numerous and careful experiments show that the products of solidification would have commenced at the center,

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whose temperature would thus be the congealing point of these liquid compounds. The important researches of Hopkins and Fairbairn on the influence of pressure in augmenting the melting-point of such compounds as contract in solidifying are to be considered in this connection.

"It is with the superficial portions of the fused mineral mass of the globe that we have now to do; since there is no good reason for supposing that the deeply seated portions have intervened in any direct manner in the production of the rocks which form the superficial crust. This, at the time of its first solidification, presented probably an irregular, diversified surface from the result of contraction of the congealing mass, which at last formed a liquid bath of no great depth surrounding the solid nucleus. It is to the composition of this crust that we must direct our attention, since therein would be found all the elements (with the exception of such as were still in the gaseous form) now met with in the known rocks of the earth. This crust is now everywhere buried beneath its own ruins, and we can only from chemical considerations attempt to reconstruct it. If we consider the conditions through which it has passed, and the chemical affinities which must have come into play, we shall see that these are just what would now result if the solid land, sea, and air were made to react upon each other under the influence of intense heat. To the chemist it is at once evident that from this would result the conversion of all carbonates, chlorides, and sulfates into silicates, and the separation of the carbon, chlorine, and sulphur in the form of acid gases, which, with nitrogen, watery vapor, and a probable excess of oxygen, would form the dense primeval atmosphere. The resulting fused mass would contain all the bases as silicates, and must have much resembled in composition certain furnace-slags or volcanic glasses. The atmosphere, charged with acid gases, which surround this primitive rock

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must have been of immense density. Under the pressure of such a high barometric column, condensation would take place at a temperature much above the present boiling-point of water, and the depressed portions of the half-cooled crust would be flooded with a highly heated solution of hydrochloric acid, whose action in decomposing the silicates is easily intelligible to the chemist. The formation of chlorides of the various bases, and the separation of silica, would go on until the affinities of the acid were satisfied, and there would be a separation of silica, taking the form of quartz, and the production of a sea-water holding in solution, besides the chlorides of sodium, calcium, and magnesium, salts of aluminum and other metallic bases. The atmosphere, being thus deprived of its volatile chlorine and sulphur compounds, would approximate to that of our own time, but differ in its greater amount of carbonic acid.

"We next enter into the second phase in the action of the atmosphere upon the earth's crust. This, unlike the first, which was subaqueous, or operative only on the portion covered with the precipitated water, is subaerial, and consists in the decomposition of the exposed parts of the primitive crust under the influence of the carbonic acid and moisture of the air, which convert the complex silicates of the crust into a silicate of alumina, or clay, while the separated lime, magnesia, and alkalies, being converted into carbonates, are carried down into the sea in a state of solution.

"The first effect of these dissolved carbonates would be to precipitate the dissolved alumina and the heavy metals, after which would result a decomposition of the chloride of calcium of the sea-water, resulting in the production of carbonate of lime or limestone, chloride of sodium or common salt. This process is one still going on at the earth's surface, slowly breaking down and destroying the hardest rocks, and, aided by mechanical processes, transforming them into clays;

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although the action, from the comparative rarity of carbonic acid in the atmosphere, is less energetic than in earlier times, when the abundance of this gas, and a higher temperature, favored the chemical decomposition of the rocks. But now, as then, every clod of clay formed from the decay of a crystalline rock corresponded to an equivalent of carbonic acid abstracted from the atmosphere, and equivalents of carbonate of lime and common salt formed from the chloride of calcium of the sea-water."

So far this abstract, explaining some of the changes which through the condensation of the creative process our earth went as it progressed from its original gaseous to its present mainly solid state. We are now ready to describe some of the theories that have been advanced to explain just how this creative process of condensation has operated.

Above we pointed out that the creative process was one of condensation, but we did not point out how that condensation process worked. This we will now do. It must, first of all, be clearly understood that the Bible nowhere either explains how this process worked, nor, so far as we know, conveys even a hint on the subject. Accordingly, we should not be dogmatic thereon. Why then discuss the subject at all? We reply, first, to refute atheistic errors on the subject, and, secondly, to call attention to what photographic facts reveal to us. If observed facts of nature, as distinct from speculation and guessage, reveal some hints as to how the condensation process of creation operated, by showing us how it is now operating, it would be proper for us to discuss this matter in a book that bases its presentations primarily on Scripture, and secondarily on accordant reasoning and facts. Usually scientific theories on how the creative process worked have been propounded from the desire to eliminate entirely the idea of an intelligent and purposeful Creator from the problem. Of course such a theory is forced

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to make creation create itself. It is forced not only to assume unprovable things and unreasonable things, but to ascribe intelligent and purposeful effects to non-intelligent and non-purposeful causes—matter. It is forced to assume the eternity of matter and its being eternally in motion or making itself move after a while. That dead matter could have formed itself into all created things is one of the greatest absurdities ever presented to the mind of man. Hence, the Bible designates him a fool who so believes: for this belief is inherent in the belief that there is no God.

One of the hypotheses developed from the intent to explain creation as coming, not from an intelligent Creator, but from the blind and unpurposeful forces of nature operating on and in alleged eternal matter, is the nebular hypothesis, which for nearly a century, until the last 40 or 50 years, dominated scientific thought on how our solar system and the rest of the universe came into existence. Happily, the theory is now repudiated by the scientific world. While having forerunners contributing something to the theory, its real inventor was a French Academician, Laplace, an exceedingly able mathematician, whose preeminence and reputation as a mathematician added greatly to the acceptance and spread of his hypothesis. His view, popularly worded, was the following: The gases in space were fairly evenly distributed. By gravitation and attraction of their various atoms, roughly in spheres of space of, say 20,000,000,000,000 miles in all directions from their centers, these gases set themselves in motion rotarily and revolvingly condensing toward the center of this space, the motion increasing in rotating and revolving rapidity as the mass condensed. The rotary motion first caused the matter to become increasingly spherical, and then later as a consequence made more of the matter collect toward the equator of this sphere until at its equator it became quite oblate, instead of being a perfect sphere. This

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disproportionate amount of matter, collected toward the body's equator, was by centrifugal forces cast off in the form of rings, which rotated themselves into smaller spheres. By and by, the theory claimed, more matter collected at the parent body's equator, as before, which in turn was, again, cast off as a ring. This in due time became a rotating body spherical in form.

Again and again the same process was allegedly passed through by the parent body until it became solid enough to cast off no more of such accumulated matter at its equator, since in such conditions not enough extra matter accumulated at its equator to be cast off as rings. These parent bodies thus became the suns of the solar systems, while the spheres developed from their cast-off rings of matter became the planets of such systems. To account for the moons of various planets, these planets were said to have accumulated at their equators redundant matter which was cast off as rings. These in turn developed into the moon or moons of the planetary bodies. The theory claimed that it thus accounted for all the planets and their moons being in their orbits on practically the same plane with their suns, and for their axial and orbital motions being in the same direction as that of the sun. The theory is called the nebular hypothesis, because it claims that all solar systems in their materials sprang from the original nebula, which they call matter in a less attenuated condition than pure gases. Men like Spencer, Helmholz, Lyell, etc., claimed for the nebular hypothesis the dignity of a demonstrated truth. Laplace, however, claimed no more for it than that it was a speculation that should be received with such distrust as any theory not demonstrated by observation or mathematics should be received. This theory held the field as true for nearly 100 years. But first from the sixties to the eighties of the last century and then later onward facts were accumulated by scientific research, especially with the aid of the telescope, that

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eventually proved the impossibility of the theory. And it is now consigned to the scientific waste basket.

We will present some of the considerations that have overthrown the nebular hypothesis: (1) While assuming the eternity of matter, it evades the question as to how the gases, whose natural laws must have neutralized one another, and as a result produced a motionless condition in these gases, were finally set into motion. That the original gases, if eternal, must have for untold ages been motionless is evident, e.g., from the fact that our solar system is of recent origin. Even those extremists whose unbridled imagination claims a 2,000,000,000-yeared age for our solar system do not overcome the difficulty; for an eternal motion in those original gases would have produced, e.g., our solar system almost beginninglessly before those 2,000,000,000 years set in. This fact proves that an outside Agent set those gases into motion by the manipulation of certain laws and forces to that end. If matter in the form of gases was not eternal, its creation by a competent cause is a necessary deduction of pure reason. Thus either view of matter requires an outside Agent to manipulate it  creatively. And such manipulation and a concordant supervision must have acted directingly up to and beyond the condition of nebula. Nebular hypothesists cannot be permitted naively to assume as the point of departure for their theory the nebular condition of matter. They must be confronted with the question, How did matter come into that condition from the original gases? And how came those gases to get motion whereby they were gradually condensed into nebulae? It is needless to say that they have always been reduced to speechlessness by such questions.

(2) Another thing that cannot be harmonized with the nebular hypothesis is the fact that three of Jupiter's nine moons and three of Saturn's nine moons travel on their axes and orbits in the direction opposite to that

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of the other six moons of their respective planets. If all these moons had been thrown off as surplus matter accumulated about the equators of these two planets, they would all move on their axes and orbits in the same direction. The fact that a third of the moons of these planets moves in a different direction from that of their other two- thirds contradicts Laplace's theory of the origin of our sun, its planets and their moons.

(3) Another fact contradicts it, viz., the absence of moons as satellites of Mercury and Venus. If moons were developed by surplus matter collecting at the equators of some of the planets being in due time cast off as rings and becoming spherical by rotating on their axes, why did not the same thing happen in the cases of Mercury and Venus? If it is answered that Mercury is rather small and dense and, therefore, did not have enough matter to dispose of that way, we would say that if that theory were true, Mercury would have thrown off a proportionately smaller amount of matter, say to make a small moon, like the asteroids or planetoids, the largest of which is 400 miles in diameter. Such a moon would be much smaller in proportion to Mercury than our moon is to our earth. Hence, according to the nebular theory, Mercury should have thrown off at least one moon, and that larger than the largest planetoid. But Venus is nearly as large as our earth; hence according to the theory Venus should have thrown off at least one moon, and that about the size of earth's moon; but facts show that she did not so do, while Mars, smaller than our earth, has two moons.

(4) If this theory were true the size of the planets to be successively thrown off would decrease with each such successive throwing off, whereas no such phenomena show themselves, Jupiter, the middle planet, being by far the largest. Again, the principle underlying this fact, the larger accumulation of such detachable matter occurring in each case earlier, would require the number of moons of each latter formed planet to be

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less than those of its predecessors, which is not the case, Neptune having only one, Uranus three, while Saturn and Jupiter successively next in order having nine each. Since the theory requires that the more the sun has condensed, the more rapid has its axial motion become, and since, according to the theory, Mercury was the last planet (if we except Vulcan) to be cast off from the sun, its axial motion should be the most rapid of the planets, while its axial motion is actually the slowest of all the planets. Pluto's axial speed not yet being determined, it is not included in this comparison. But the fact that the same side of Mercury always faces the sun proves that it rotates on its axis only as often as it revolves on its orbit, i.e., once every 88 days.

(5) Another fact that is very telling against Laplace's nebular hypothesis is that it contradicts the gravitational expansion of the sun's heat, with which it must be made to operate. On this point we will quote from Prof. Doolittle, the late head of the astronomical department of the University of Pennsylvania, whose eminence as an astronomer led to his appointment to the editorship of all the astronomical features in the 1922 edition of the Encyclopedia Americana, it and the Britannica being considered the ablest encyclopedias in the English language. The quotation follows: "As [according to the nebular hypothesis] the solar system was held to have resulted from the condensation of a globular or planetary nebula, the subject of the nebular hypothesis is closely connected historically with the gravitational theory of the sun's heat. For a long time it was assumed by investigators that the sun was originally expanded into a nebula filling the planetary orbits, and rotating in equilibrium under the hydrostatic pressure and attraction of its parts. In order to keep this figure of equilibrium, the temperature would have had to be enormous, and such a temperature could not be maintained, owing to the extreme

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tenuity of the hypothetical [supposed] nebula. For when the nebula is extended to Neptune's orbit, its average density would be 260,000,000 times less than that of the atmospheric air at sea-level; and such a tenuous medium could exert no hydrostatic pressure from the center outward for detaching the planets by increase of centrifugal force under accelerating rotation, as imagined by Laplace. This criticism against Laplace's theory was urged by Kirkland and Pierce over 40 years ago [1880] and such an objection is valid and convincing."

When Mr. Doolittle wrote the above (1922), Pluto had not yet been discovered, its discovery occurring in 1930. According to Laplace's theory, the sun in a nebular condition had to be expanded to the orbit of Pluto, which is about a billion miles farther out from the sun than that of Neptune. This would have made the involved nebula millions of millions times rarer than Prof. Doolittle gives for its rarity, compared with atmospheric air at sea-level, as extended to Neptune's orbit. And if there are some of our sun's planets still farther out in space than Pluto, the results would be still more disastrous to the theory under review, from the standpoint of the gravitational expansion of the sun's heat. Hence from this standpoint Laplace's nebular theory for the origin of the suns, etc., is untenable.

(6) In 1861 a French scientist, Babinet by name, pointed out a fatal weakness in the theory under review. His argument against the theory is called, Babinet's criterion.  Its basis is a principle of the branch of mathematics called mechanics—the conservation of areas, which Newton discovered—the constancy of areas encircled by a system of particles contracting and accelerating its rotation under central forces. This principle implies that whatever changes occur in the system, its whole quantity of rotation must remain constant, i.e., "if the mass of each particle of the

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system is multiplied by the square of its distance from the central axis of rotation and also by its angular velocity, and if the products thus obtained for the particles are added together, the sum will remain forever constant. Since the mass of the sun and all its planets, their distances from the sun's axis and their angular velocities are all known, one can get this sum. This quantity being found, it can be used to test Laplace's theory in many ways, some of which lead to unbelievable, and others to impossible results." To illustrate one of these impossibilities we will quote again from Prof. Doolittle: "We may readily determine the period of rotation of the solar nebula, when it is extended outward to each of the planets successively; by so doing we obtain the results given in the following table:

"Table showing the application of Babinet's criterion to the planets and satellites, when the sun and planets are expanded to fill the orbits of the bodies revolving about them:

‍

‍

"It will at once be noticed how greatly the numbers of the third column exceed those of the second. Should we suppose that Neptune, for example, could have been formed in this way [according to Laplace's theory], it  would be necessary to assume that the period of its ring [orbit] was diminished from nearly 3,000,000 years to but 165 years, notwithstanding that we can find no imaginable cause which could produce this diminution."

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According to the principle of the conservation of areas the quantity of rotation should remain the same, but these figures prove that it does not, if the demands of the theory under review are taken into account. Prof. Doolittle wrote the above before Pluto was discovered; hence its data are not included in the above; but if they were, they would show up all the more the erroneousness of the view under study.

(7) Several other points against Laplace's theory are made from the standpoint of Babinet's criterion, some of them more conclusive than the one just made against the planets having been formed from rings that the condensing nebulae's matter on the way to becoming suns threw off; but, involving various points of higher mathematics, they are too abstruse to be presented here, and will therefore be passed by without further comment. We will offer several other simpler ones: Even if it were granted that such rings had been cast off by the developing suns, the pull of the latter, as exemplified in our moon's raising our ocean tides, would be so great as to have scattered into fragments these rings, which thus could not even start to develop into planets. This fact also has been demonstrated by higher mathematics. Furthermore, it has been demonstrated mathematically that if the greater part of the ring could be gathered into a single planet, it would be impossible for this mass to attract to itself the other fragments of the ring. The above reasons have convinced the astronomical world that Laplace's nebular theory was conceived in imagination and brought forth in error. It is only another "one of the assured findings of science" that has by more accurate science been killed, and then was buried in the vast cemetery of science falsely so called.

If, then, Laplace's nebular theory has failed to explain how the condensing process that produced our and other solar systems was worked, how was this process operated? We reply: God first so manipulated

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pertinent natural laws and forces as to operate upon the original gases to put them into motion. Secondly, by these and other laws He condensed them into nebulae. By a nebula we understand matter to be meant which is in a state composed partly of gases and partly of fluids, i.e., matter that is in the process of being changed from gases into liquids. So far, apart from God's manipulating the laws and forces of nature thereto, this manner of operating the condensing process is a matter of inference; for the rest of the operation we combine inference and observation as a guide as to how the process operated, and we permeate both ways of reasoning with the proposition that God operated the entire process through the application of pertinent natural laws and forces. Thus at no stage of the creative work do we leave the creative process and the manner of its operation to the unmanipulated operation of unconscious natural laws and forces; for these were nothing more than the tools of creation. They were not the Creator Himself, as materialism assumes. The 100-inch telescope at Mt. Wilson and others still smaller at an earlier date have brought to our attention through long-exposure photographs the fact that new universes are in process of formation out of immense spirals of nebulae; for they have given us photographs of immense spirals thousands of light years wide at their lower ends (a light year is the distance that light travels in a year—approximately 6,000,000,000,000 miles) and millions of light years long. Some of these spirals are single and some of them are compound, consisting of a number of branches. The spirals are in motion somewhat after the manner of a whirlwind on the land or a waterspout on the sea. At the lower ends of these spirals a great number of new suns, averaging about 20,000,000,000,000 to 40,000,000,000,000 miles apart,  are

seen appearing, in these pictures about the size of a pea. These are doubtless accompanied by planets, which, however, at such great distances are not photographed

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even by the immense power of the 100-inch reflecting telescope on Mt. Wilson, which is not powerful enough to bring out even the planets in the solar systems other than our own in our own universe. Perhaps this will be done by the 200-inch lens telescope now in the making, but we very much doubt that even it will bring out the planets of the suns in the newly forming universes.

It will be noted that these newly forming suns do not appear at the upper, but do appear at the lower ends of  these immense spirals, and that not in the centers but in the edges of these. Please see the photographs of these lower spiral ends in the Encyclopedia Britannica, 14th Edition, Vol. 6, pages 488, 492. These spirals are seen to be in motion revolving around immense sweeps of space. From the fact that no suns are seen at the upper ends of these spirals, nor throughout their lengths, until we come to their extreme bottom ends, it is reasonably inferred that the nebulae at their top ends are much rarer and thus much more expanded than at their bottom ends. But according to the photographs the above-mentioned rotary motion extends throughout the entire length of these spirals. From these facts the reasonable inference is drawn that the condensing process increasingly advances the farther down from the top the nebula descends. Of course the tendency  of this ever condensing matter is to fall downward within these spirals. But these spirals being matter, they are in themselves a resisting medium. Hence as parts of this condensing matter continually rotate and revolve, which motions slacken its rate of speed in falling, they will continually come in contact with other parts of rotating and revolving matter within that spiral, which means that by attraction and gravitation these contacting materials will unite, ever forming larger bodies until by the time they reach the bottom of the spiral they have grown into suns, planets and moons, which by gravitation and attraction will

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form solar systems more or less like ours; for the laws of physics, as well as experiments prove that such matter rotating and revolving in a resisting medium captures to itself neighboring matter as they come in contact, i.e., the larger bodies capture the smaller ones.

From the fact that matter, in rotation is denser in the center than at the circumference, it is inferred that the denser matter in the center of these spirals falls more rapidly than that in the circumference; but as it does so, by suction it draws down after it the matter in the circumference above it, so that the top of the spiral is ever falling into the spiral itself. From this it follows that the spiral passes out of existence when its last substance has been absorbed into the last body of the last solar system formed from that spiral. Thus our universe was once a vast single or compound spiral, which gradually was transubstantiated into our universe, and which, as this transubstantiation advanced, diminished in size until it passed out of existence altogether, when this transubstantiation was completed. This theory does not only account for the origin of the suns, planets and moons, but also for the retrograde motions of Jupiter's three and Saturn's three moons, as follows: Just as near the shores of large and deep streams the current near the shores frequently runs in the direction opposite to that of the current as a whole, so near the circumference of these spirals it is assumed that this is done with the condensing matter which becomes moons rotating and revolving in the direction opposite to that of the other moons that the pertinent planets have attracted to themselves. We have already called attention to the fact that, the sun revolving about its orbit, and carrying its retinue of planets, moons, etc., with it, the whole system operates spirally. This fact is in line with the spiral motions in the spirals from which the theory claims the various solar systems came. This is another of the principles

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given as a proof for the planetesimal or capture theory, which are the names given to the theory just explained.

The theory that we have just explained is as a whole nowhere taught in the Bible. Parts of it are Biblical, parts of it are based on logical inferences based on the Bible, and those parts of it that begin with the nebula already gathered into spirals are partly based on observed facts and partly on the deductions of the science of astronomy as it is at  present developed. Because it explains the origin of the planets, as well as the suns, from ever enlarging small particles, those parts of our explanation connected with the nebulae as already existing as spirals is called by some scientists the planetesimal theory. Because parts of the condensing matter in these spirals ever capture and hold to themselves smaller parts of the spirals' condensing, rotating and revolving matter, this theory is by other scientists called the capture theory. It will be noted that scientists begin their theory with the nebular spirals already formed. This is due to the fact that they do not desire to build their theory on faith in any sense. Hence they begin their theory on observation of analogies. But they fail to account for how the original gases developed into the original nebula, and then how that nebula took the form of spirals. How much better is our viewpoint, which accepts every observed fact, God's statement on what is beyond our observation, and also the thought that this all-wise and powerful God as a great builder manipulated by the Logos and other angels the laws and forces of nature from start to finish! Such a faith, in the absence of a Divine explanation of how the creative process was accomplished, can say of the planetesimal or capture theory, It was very likely true. It seems very reasonably to fit the case so far as the facts and principles applicable to the case are known to us. Still such a faith, in the absence of a Divine explanation as to how the creative process worked, will not positively advocate the planetesimal or capture theory as

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demonstrable truth, since it knows that this theory as a product of human reason, working in part on facts and in part on certain principles, is not infallible and therefore may in the light of later discovered facts be proven erroneous or insufficient, even as the once seemingly impregnable Laplacean theory has been demonstrated to be erroneous. Hence our explanation of the matter of spirals being changed into universes, i.e., our explanation of the planetesimal or capture theory, is not to be understood as setting it forth as Divine Truth, but as a human theory that seems to be well based on observed facts and the proper application of known principles to those facts.

There are some very prominent scientists who accept the capture theory in so far as it applies to the creation of suns, but deny it as applicable to the planets and their moons. They claim, by what they call the tidal theory, that the planets and moons were torn out of the various suns by some other sun or suns coming near enough to the involved suns to accomplish this by gravitation. They illustrate this by the moon's raising tides on the earth's waters. But this theory has no observed facts to substantiate it. It assumes what cannot in any way be proven, and what is contrary to all analogy known to us, i.e., that suns have gone very greatly out of their known orbits in such an alleged approach to other suns and to such tearing out of them the materials out of which the planets and moons were developed. Knowing that they cannot prove such immense orbital aberrations in the suns, they assume that this occurred, e.g., thousands of millions of years ago. But they utterly lack proof that the various suns stepped so widely out of the orbits that they assumed, as a result of the orbital motion imparted to them when they were completed at the ends of their pertinent spirals. Nor are they any more fortunate in their alleged proof that the earth is thousands of millions of years old. Their suggested proof that it would take

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radium that long to become lead is no proof at all, for several reasons: (1) They cannot prove that our lead has come from radium decaying by radio-activity, as they claim, though it is possible that it may by chemical experiment be reduced to lead, which, if true, would not prove that lead as a substance originated thus. (2) The rate of radium now disintegrating is no criterion as to the rate of its deterioration under former conditions, e.g., when there were so many decay-producing gases and acids in earth's atmosphere, and similar gases and acids in the earth itself, which would have caused it to disintegrate almost as rapidly as a chemical experiment would. Their fallacy on this point reminds one of the fallacy of those who claimed thousand of years as the difference in time of two bricks of the same make falling in the Nile, alleging that their different depths under the mud proved the contention, also of that Mississippi raft constructed about 100 years ago which was supposed by scientists to have been buried under Mississippi's mud many centuries ago according to their assumptions as to how long so much mud would have been accumulated at a certain annual rate above the raft. They seek to apply this tidal theory in the case of those suns that revolve about one another, some of them almost touching one another. Beside the objections offered to the tidal theory foregoing as applicable to these inter-revolving suns, we might say that it is much more reasonable to consider that such suns were developed side by side with one another in the nebular spirals, as explained above.

Above we set forth the planetesimal hypothesis as seemingly a reasonable and factual explanation of how nebulae, already formed into spirals, were condensed into suns, planets, moons, asteroids, comets and meteors. The Bible being silent on how the condensing process operated into the production of these bodies, we expressly refrained from giving more than a qualified endorsement of this theory, acknowledging that

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much of it is based on inferences which later knowledge may prove erroneous. Hence what we said on the planetesimal theory is not to be regarded as binding as a matter of faith in a Divinely revealed teaching on the subject; but as seemingly the best explanation now available that human reason judging from some known principles, some observed facts and some inferences has been able to give. But the possibility that those principles were set aside by the operation of others and that those observed facts by relation to facts not known to us are insufficient to furnish the basis for full and final inferences on how the condensing process operated must be conceded by all who from the history of scientific hypotheses know that thousands of them that for long times were regarded as true were by fuller knowledge set aside as false. The Laplacean, Darwinian, etc., hypotheses are examples of this fact. To one who heartily accepts the Bible as the sole source and rule of faith and practice, as the Author does, such a position toward the planetesimal theory or any other purely human theory that would explain God's creative acts must be maintained. We deem this remark necessary lest any of our readers understand our exposition of that hypothesis as implying that it is necessarily the true explanation of God's manner of operating the condensing process of creation.

We should make another remark on the matter of the suns, planets, etc., emerging as separate bodies in solar systems from the bottom of their respective spirals; for without further explanation the thought might be taken from our explanation as we left it that all these solar systems are left in space rotating and revolving on the same plane. That they do not so do is evident from the fact that our earth is in the midst of untold billions of solar systems visible all around the earth, some to the south, others to the north, some to the east, some to the west and some in all angles of

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direction between these cardinal points of the compass. If one should take his stand at the south pole the bulk of those north of the celestial equator would be invisible to him. If he should take his stand at the north pole the bulk of those south of the celestial equator would be invisible. East and west of course one can see only those within the celestial hemisphere at night, though of course our sun is visible and the moon often is so during the day. These facts prove that these solar systems were not left revolving and rotating on the same plane with one another in space.

Their being distributed then in varying heights and depths, lengths and breadths of space could be brought about in a variety of ways, though we are not certain in which of these it was done. They, especially the smaller suns and their satellites, may have broken entirely through the nebular spirals long before they reached the bottom of these spirals. None of our photographs, however, show this; and this may not be true, though these spirals being in some cases millions of light years long, and the bottoms of them being much larger in circumference than their parts above, such a phenomenon could take place and be hidden by the lower parts of the spirals. Again, these spirals, while throwing their materials downward within themselves, may as a whole have an upward and downward movement in space, which of course would result, if the new solar systems always leave the bottom of the spirals, in these solar systems being distributed at varying heights and depths, while their leaving the spirals' bottoms at various places along those wide-flung bottoms would in part account for the length and breadth of the solar systems' distribution. The rest of this distribution could be accounted for by a lateral spiral motion accompanying the up and down motions of these spirals. In favor of this is the fact that in our universe just such an up and down motion is accompanied by a spiral motion not only within each solar

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system but in all of them in their mutual relations. Of course we concede that God could have done it in another way. Hence we must not be dogmatic on, this point. This thought is thrown out only as a reasonable and probable suggestion.

Of late several able astronomers have offered a modification of one of the features of the planetesimal theory. Holding to its view of solar developments, they claim that the planets, planetoids and their satellites are not developed in the spirals, but after the suns leave their spirals, by great explosions in the suns, whereby immense quantities of gases are cast off from the suns as novae, i.e., new stars that suddenly appear as faint stars, then wax very bright, then gradually decrease in size until they disappear supposedly as planetary, etc., members of solar systems. One of these scientists, Prof. Frost, formerly of the Yerkes Observatory, now blind, reports that while he yet enjoyed his sight, he witnessed over 40 such explosions occur. The moons, according to this theory, originate by explosions from such developing planets in a manner similar to that in which the planets; according to this view, originated from their suns. The retrograde movements in three of Jupiter's and Saturn's moons and in all of Uranus' moons, this theory explains as arising from the explosions' propelling the cast- off gas in the direction opposite that of the rotating and revolving direction of the pertinent planets. This theory may be true for all planets and their satellites, or it may be true for some solar systems, and the full view of the planetesimal theory may be true for other solar systems. Without expressing a judgment on this matter, to which we have given too little study to justify us in having an opinion thereon, we present it as such to our readers for their information. It is a reasonable solution for the hitherto unexplainable novae. While this book was passing through the press the discovery of the companion star of Epsilon Aurigae was reported by the

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Yerkes Observatory. This is the largest of all stars so far discovered. If its center were placed where our sun's center is, it would enclose the entire solar system, except Neptune and Pluto, its diameter being 3000 times that of our sun! It thus displaces Betelgeuse as the largest known star. With these remarks we bring to a close our brief discussion of the creative process and with it finish our lengthy discussion of Gen. 1:1.

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