former occupations, spent forty years in contemplating nature; Moses, in fine, who when eighty years old beheld God, as far as man is privileged to behold Him, or rather as it had been granted to no man before that time to behold Him, according to the testimony of God Himself, "If there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will make Myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream. My servant Moses is not so, who is faithful in all My house. With him will I speak mouth to mouth, even apparently and not in dark speeches." It was this man, who was deemed worthy to behold God face to face like the holy angels, who imparts to us what he has heard from God. Let us hearken then to these words of truth, spoken not with "the enticing words of man's wisdom," but at the dictation of the Spirit of God; words whose aim is not the applause of those who hear them, but the salvation of those who learn of them.

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." Wonder at the thought causes me to pause in my discourse. What shall I say first? From what point shall I begin my narrative ? Shall I expose the vanity of the Gentiles? Shall I magnify the truth of our faith? The philosophers of Greece have greatly busied themselves about nature, but not one of their systems has continued steadfast and immovable, each being

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roms. molecules, and indivisible bodies constime me more of usikre mags: that these atoms, ind separating, produce births and un tur the hardest bodies owe their Consistente" merev to the strength of adhesion Those who write such things hore woven 1 entable spider's web in ascribing to even and earth and sea such weak and fragile For they did not know how to say, “In the berming Cod created the heaven and the Wherefore, because of the ignorance of the Divine inherent in themselves, they fell into this error, of believing that the universe was withbut a governor and director, but subject merely to the whims of chance. To keep us from this mistake, the writer on the creation, in the very first words, illumines our minds with the name of God: "In the beginning God created." What a beautiful collocation of words! First he asserts a beginning of things, so that none may think that

the world had no beginning. Then he adds created," to show that what was created was only the least part of the power of the Creator. Like as the potter who has fashioned with the same skill numberless vessels has lessened neither his skill nor his power, so the Author of the universe possesses power not circumscribed by one world, but infinite in its range, which needed merely the impulse of His will to call into being the immensities of the universe. Hence, if the world had a beginning, and has been made, inquire who it is that gave it its beginning and is its Creator. Or rather, for fear that human inquiries might lead one far away from the truth, Moses has anticipåted inquiry by this document, and has engraved on our hearts, as a seal and an amulet, the awful name of God: "In the beginning God created." It is He, beneficent Nature, unbounded Goodness, most rational Object of Love, Beauty most to be desired, Source of all that exists, Fountain of Life, Light of the soul, inscrutable Wisdom He it is who "in the beginning created heaven and earth."

Imagine not then, O man, that the visible world. is without a beginning; and because the celestial bodies circle about, and it is not possible for our finite minds to determine the point where the circle begins, do not therefore fancy that bodies moving in a circular orbit are, from their nature, without a beginning. Doubtless the circle-I

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