not press the water up any higher; but the hand of persecution was upon him, and he was afraid to say the air had weight. Now, had he looked to the science of the Bible, he would have discovered that the "perfect man of Uz," moved by inspiration, had proclaimed the fact thousands of years before—"He maketh weight for the wind," Job is very learned, and his speeches abound in scientific lore. The persecutors of the old astronomers would also have been wiser and far more just had they paid more attention to this wonderful book, for there they would have learned that He "stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing."
Here is another proof that Job was familiar with the laws of gravitation, for he knew how the world was held in its place; and as for "the empty place" in the sky. Sir John Herschel has been sounding the heavens with his powerful telescope, and gauging the stars; and where do you think he found the most barren part—"the empty places" of the sky? In the north, precisely where Job told Bildad, the Shuhite, the empty place was stretched out. It is there where comets most delight to roam and hide themselves in emptiness.
I pass by the history of creation as it is written on the tablets of the rocks and in the Book of Revelation, because the question has been discussed so much and so often, that you, no doubt, are familiar with the whole subject. In both the order of creation is the same. First, the plants to afford subsistence, and then the animals, the chief point of apparent difference being as to the duration of the period between "the evening and the morning." "A thousand years are in His sight as one day," and the Mosaic account affords evidence itself that the term "day," as there used, is not that which comprehends our twenty-four hours. It was a day that had its "evening and morning" before the sun was made.
I will, however, before proceeding further, ask pardon for mentioning a rule of conduct which I have adopted in order to make progress with these physical researches, which have occupied so much of my time and so many of my thoughts. The rule is, never to forget who is the^ Author of the great volume which Nature spreads out before us, and always
