(Scripture Reading Exercise.)

PREPARATION OF THE EARTH FOR THE ABODE OF MAN.

[Footnote A: This is to be but a glimpse of a very great subject, which some day may be expanded by the author of this Year Book into a treatise on the "Mormon Doctrine of Creation."]

NOTES.

1. Matter: That of which the sensible universe and all existent bodies are composed; anything which has extension, occupies space, or is perceptible by the senses; body, substance. Matter is usually divided by philosophical writers into three kinds or classes; solid, liquid, and aeriform. Solid substances are those whose parts firmly cohere and resist impression, as wood or stone. Liquids have free motion among their parts, and easily yield to impression, as water and wine. Aeriform substances are elastic fluids, called vapors and gases, as air and oxygen gas. (Webster's International Dictionary.)

2. Matter in Itself: "What matter is, in itself and by itself, is quite hopeless of answer and concerns only metaphysicians. The "Ding an sich" * * * is forever outside the province of science. If all men stopped to quarrel over the inner inwardness of things, progress, of course, would cease. Science is naive; she takes things as they come, and rests content with some such practical definition as will serve to differentiate matter from all other forms of non-matter. This may be done strictly provisionally in this place, by defining matter as that which occupies space and possesses weight. Using these two properties it is readily possible to sift out matter from all the heterogeneous phenomena that present themselves to the senses, and that, in this place, is what we want. Thus, wood, water, copper, oil and air are forms of matter for they evidently possess weight and fill space. But light, heat, electricity and magnetism we cannot consider to fill so many quarts or weigh so many pounds. [Light, heat, electricity—are properties of matter.] They are, therefore, forms of non-matter. In like manner, things such as grace, mercy, justice and truth, while they are existing entities as much as matter, are unquestionably non-matter" [Grace, mercy, etc., are qualities of spirit, which itself is doubtless matter, but of finer quality than that which is recognized by the senses.] ("The New Knowledge," R. K. Duncan, p. 2.)

3. Indestructibility of Matter: "The gradual accumulation of experiences, has tended slowly to reverse this conviction [i. e. that matter may be annihilated]; until now, the doctrine that matter is indestructible has become a commonplace. All the apparent proofs that something can come out of nothing, a wider knowledge has one by one cancelled. The comet that is suddenly discovered in the heavens and nightly waxes larger, is proved not to be a newly-created body, but a body that was until lately beyond the range of vision. The cloud which in the course of a few minutes forms in the sky, consists not of substance that has just begun to be, but of substance that previously existed in a more diffused and transparent form. And similarly with a crystal or precipitate in relation to the fluid depositing it. Conversely, the seeming annihilations of matter turn out, on close observation, to be only changes of state. It is found that the evaporated water, though it has become invisible, may be brought by condensation to its original shape. The discharged fowling-piece gives evidence that though the gunpowder has disappeared, there have appeared in place of it certain gases, which in assuming a larger volume, have caused the explosion." "First Principles," (Herbert Spencer), p. 177, Appleton Edition, 1896.

4. Uncreatability of Matter: "Conceive the space before you to be cleared of all bodies save one. Now imagine the remaining one not to be removed from its place, but to lapse into nothing while standing in that place. You fail. The space which was solid you cannot conceive becoming empty, save by transfer of that which made it solid. * * * However small the bulk to which we conceive a piece of matter reduced, it is impossible to conceive it reduced into nothing. While we can represent to ourselves the parts of the matter as approximated, we cannot represent to ourselves the quantity of matter as made less. To do this would be to imagine some of the constituent parts compressed into nothing; which is no more possible than to imagine compression of the whole into nothing. Our inability to conceive matter becoming non-existent, is immediately consequent on the nature of thought. Thought consists in the establishment of relations. There can be no relation established, and therefore no thought framed, when one of the related terms is absent from consciousness. Hence it is impossible to think of something becoming nothing, for the same reason that it is impossible to think of nothing becoming something—the reason, namely, that nothing cannot become an object of consciousness. The annihilation of matter is unthinkable for the same reason that the creation of matter is unthinkable."—First Principles, p. 181.

5. Conservation of Mass: "This law, known as the law of the conservation of mass, states that no particle of matter, however small, may be created or destroyed. All the king's horses and all the king's men cannot destroy a pin's head. We may smash that pin's head, dissolve it in acid, burn it in the electric furnace, employ, in a word, every annihilating agency, and yet that pin's head persists in being. Again, it is as uncreatable as it is indestructible. In other words, we cannot create something out of nothing. The material must be furnished for every existent article. The sum of matter in the universe is 'X' pounds,—and, while it may be carried through a myriad forms, when all is said and done, it is just-'X' pounds." (The New Knowledge, R. K. Duncan, p. 3, 1905.)

6. Extension of Matter Through Infinite Space: "Through all eternity the infinite universe has been, and is, subject to the law of substance. * * * The extent of the universe is infinite and unbounded; it is empty in no part, but everywhere filled with substance. The duration of the world (i. e. universe) is equally infinite and unbounded; it has no beginning and no end: it is eternity. Substance is everywhere and always in uninterrupted movement and transformation: nowhere is there perfect repose and rigidity; yet the infinite quantity of matter and of eternally changing force remains constant." (The Riddle of the Universe, Erast Haeckel, p. 242.)

Compare the foregoing note with the Book of Moses (P. G. P., chap, i; also chap, vii:30,31; also Book of Abraham chap, iii:1-19.)

7. The Prophet Joseph Smith's Views of Creation: "There is no such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes. We cannot see it; but when our bodies are purified, we shall see that it is all matter. (Doc. & Cov. Sec. cxxxi.) * * * You ask the learned doctors why they say the world was made out of nothing, and they will answer, "Don't the Bible say He created the world?" And they infer from that word 'create' that it must be made out of nothing. Now the word create came from the word baurau, which does not mean to create out of nothing; it means to organize, the same as man would organize material and build a ship. Hence we infer that God had materials to organize the world out of—chaos—chaotic matter, which is element and in which dwells all the glory. Elements had an existence from the time He [God] had. The pure principles of elements can never be destroyed, they may be organized and reorganized, but not destroyed. They had no beginning, and can have no end." (Mill. Star, vol. 23, p. 248.)

"The world and earth are not synonymous terms. The world is the human family. The earth was organized or formed out of other planets which were broken up and remodeled and made into the one on which we live. The elements are eternal. * * * In the translation 'without form and void' [Gen. i:2] it should read, 'empty and desolate.' The word 'created' should be 'formed,' or 'organized.'" (Richards & Little's "Compendium," p. 287—"Gems,")

"Professor Luther T. Townsend of Boston University in a new book entitled Adam and Eve, in which he discusses the question as to whether the first chapters of Genesis are history or myth, dealing with the second verse of the first chapter of Genesis—'And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep—' he claims that the literal rendering of it is this: 'And the earth had become (past perfect tense) 'tohu' a wreck and 'lohu' without inhabitant. This desolate and tenantless condition agrees perfectly with what science reports of the general epoch; and there can be little doubt on scientific grounds," continues Prof. Townsend, "that during the break up of the ice age a darkness denser than that of the densest London fogs was upon the face of the floods." (Press Comment, Prof. Townsend's book.)

This sustains the position of the Prophet Joseph stated above.

8. New Theory of Earth Structure:—"In recent years theories of mountain formation have changed like everything else scientific. * * * The new theories hark back to the original formation of the earth. The conception of a hot drop of a world swinging in space, gradually cooling and forming a shell as smooth as a billiard ball, has been partly abandoned. The nebular hypothesis has been modified, the so-called meteoritic hypothesis has been found inadequate; and the more plausible planetesimal theory of Professors Chamberlin and Salisbury has been put forth.

"The latest theory argues the formation of the world by gradual accretions from planetary bodies. It assumes the origin of our solar system in a common spiral nebula—the nebula being in a thin solid or liquid state, as suggested by the spectrum analysis of it. The knots or portions of the nebula showing the most concentration, are the nuclei of future planets, and the thinner haze the portions from which the knots are formed. All these knots move about the central mass (the sun) in elliptical orbits of considerable eccentricity. The planetesimals are gathered in, and through accretions from such a world as ours, by the crossing of the elliptical orbits in the course of their inevitable shiftings." ("The High Alps," by John C. Van Dyke, Scribner's Magazine, June, 1908.)

9. Worlds Organized on Pre-Arranged Plan: "The organization of the spiritual and heavenly worlds, and of spiritual and heavenly beings, was agreeable to the most perfect order and harmony: their limits and bounds were fixed irrevocably, and involuntarily subscribed to in their heavenly estate by themselves, and were by our first parents subscribed to upon the earth. Hence the importance of embracing and subscribing to principles of eternal truth by all men upon the earth that expect eternal life." (Joseph Smith, Conference at Nauvoo, Oct. 8, 1843, Millennial Star, vol. XXII, p. 231.)

10. Our Revelations Local: That is, our revelations in the Scriptures—all four books—pertain to our earth, and its heavens; to those intelligencies, spirits, men, angels, arch-angels, God, and Gods, pertaining to that order of existences to which we belong. I call attention to the fact for the reason that I believe the principle indicated is very important, not only in the discussion in hand, but it has an important bearing upon the whole phraseology and meaning of our scriptures. When God's word says, for instance, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth," etc.; and "thus the heavens and the earth were finished and all the hosts of them," he has reference not to any absolute "beginning" or absolute "finishing," but only the "beginning" and "finishing" as pertaining to our earth and the order of creation with which it is connected; and the "hosts" that pertain to our order of existence, not absolutely to all existences. The revelations we have received of God, let it be said again, are local, they relate to us and our order of existence; they may not at all, except in the most casual and general way, refer to that order of worlds connected with and governed by the Pleiades, or of Orion, much less to the further removed constellations and their systems of worlds.

We learn from the Pearl of Great Price that when the Lord gave those revelations to Moses by which the prophet was enabled to write the creation story of our earth, the local character of those revelations was expressly stated: "Worlds without number," said the Lord to Moses, "have I created—but only an account of this earth and the inhabitants thereof give I unto you—Behold, I reveal unto you concerning this heaven, and this earth; write the words which I speak. * * * In the beginning I created the heavens and the earth on which thou standest." The subject is too important for treatment in a mere note, but in passing I desired to call attention to the important bearing it has upon the subject in hand, as also upon our whole system of thought and exposition of the scriptures.