ade out
of nothing" appears to be "caused to come into existence," with the
implication that nothing of the same kind previously existed. It is
further usually assumed that "the heaven and the earth" means the
material substance of the universe. Hence the "Mosaic writer" is taken
to imply that where nothing of a material nature previously existed,
this substance appeared. That is perfectly conceivable, and therefore
no one can deny that it may have happened. But there are other very
authoritative critics who say that the ancient Israelite [6] who
wrote the passage was not likely to have been capable of such abstract
thinking; and that, as a matter of philology, _bara_ is commonly used
to signify the "fashioning," or "forming," of that which already
exists. Now it appears to me that the scientific investigator is
wholly incompetent to say anything at all about the first origin of the
material universe. The whole power of his organon vanishes when he has
to step beyond the chain of natural causes and effects. No form of the
nebular hypothesis, that I know of, is necessarily connected with any
view of the origination of the nebular substance. Kant's form of it
expressly supposes that the nebular material from which one stellar
system starts may be nothing but the disintegrated substance of a
stellar and planetary system which has just come to an end. Therefore,
so far as I can see, one who believes that matter has existed from all
eternity has just as much right to hold the nebular hypothesis as one
who believes that matter came into existence at a specified epoch. In
other words, the nebular hypothesis and the creation hypothesis, up to
this point, neither confirm nor oppose one another.

Next, we read in the revisers' version, in which I suppose the ultimate
results of critical scholarship to be embodied: "And the earth was waste
['without form,' in the Authorised Version] and void." Most people seem
to think that this phraseology intends to imply that the matter out of
which the world was to be formed was a veritable "chaos," devoid of law
and order. If this interpretation is correct, the nebular hypothesis
can have nothing to say to it. The scientific thinker cannot admit the
absence of law and order; anywhere or anywhen, in nature. Sometimes law
and order are patent and visible to our limited vision; sometimes
they are hidden. But every particle of the matter of the most
fantastic-looking nebula in the heavens is a re