It is curious, we say, to think that everything now on the earth or composing its substance was present, though in far different form, at the beginning,—­that the Almighty gathered together in this part of the universe all the materials out of which to create all the forms of things which it was his pleasure to evolve here through all time,—­that in that nebulous mass were revolving, not only the gases which were at last to combine in various manners and proportions to form the rocky crust and the watery investment of the earth, but that in that dense and noisome cloud floated also the elements of all the beautiful objects that furnish the daily enchantments of life.  Flowers and trees, birds and fishes, locusts and mastodons, all things, from the tiniest animalcule to man, were there, unmodelled, not even in embryo,—­their separate existences then only in the mind of God.  There, Christian and Saracen, Jew and Gentile, Caucasian and Negro, Hindoo and Pariah, all the now heterogeneous natures which are as oil and water, were blended in one common vapor.

Finally the condensation of all the gaseous elements began, and the aeriform masses became liquid, and the waters,—­what mineral waters they were, when they were saturated with granite and marble, diamonds, rubies, arsenic, and iron!—­thus deposited by the vapor, left a gas above them light enough to bear some faint resemblance to our air.  Still this atmosphere was surcharged with vapors which no lungs could tolerate, whether of man or reptile; and other steps must be taken to clear it of its unwholesome properties.  Then did the Almighty will introduce, one after another, the germs of plants,—­first of all, the lower orders, the ferns, which seek the shade, and the lichens, which grow in damp and dark recesses, mosses, which cling to bare rocks, living almost on air and water alone,—­everything which needed not bright sunlight to invigorate it nor soil to cling to.  Year by year and age by age did these humble plants extract their nourishment from the murky vapors that shrouded the earth, and, after fashioning those gases into a living tissue of stems and leaves, year after year did they die and lay their remains upon the rocks, accumulating by slow steps a soil which would in time be capable of giving holding-ground to mightier plants.  The trees came,—­and gigantic they must have been; and every species of tree, shrub, and herb now upon the earth, and of all animals that walk, fly, or swim, was introduced before the creation of man.

It was as if the elements were too gross for the constitution of man, when they were first collected from the nebulous mass,—­as if they needed to go through the intermediate forms of plants and animals, passing in succession from one to another, before they could be permitted to enter into the bodies of those beings who were to be in God’s likeness.  But, in very truth, the elements were unaltered by their many transmigrations.  It was the divine act of