Chapter XI: “the Impregnable Rock”

“He hath made the earth by His power, He hath established the
world by His wisdom, and hath stretched out the heavens by His
discretion.”
(+Jeremiah.+)

Godfrey was a kind of gentleman visitor, free to work or not as he chose. His work had been done in being the means of providing the net, and he was enjoying a well-earned repose after the assiduous toil of the past two years. At the same time he could not be idle and had insisted on taking his share of work, to which he devoted himself with all his energies, and after some hours of close application he found himself with a little time to spare and was strolling about promiscuously, glancing at anything and everything, when he came upon the chief geologist, Raymond Sorrel, who was looking out of a window intently watching the ‘flames’ which were shooting past them with a terrific roar and, knowing he was always ready to talk on his pet subject, and was never so happy as when he had a good listener who would not interrupt, Godfrey thought he could not do better than spend an hour or so with the great man whose knowledge was so profound, and obtain some information on certain subjects about which he had thought very little, so he sauntered up and casually remarked, “I fear most of my bacilli would get frizzled in that furnace, Sorrel.”

“Without doubt, Spenser!” responded Sorrel, smiling. “I do not suppose you ever thought to rear fire-proof-spinning insects, any more than I imagined it would ever be my good fortune to come to the sun—even now I can scarcely realise it!”

“I am ashamed to say I am almost ignorant of astronomical matters and everything else except my grubs and electricity—my _métier_ is _really_ electricity, but fate placed me amongst grubs, so I suppose I shall be with them as long as I live, and they’ll be with me after, unless we get cremated here—and until I made my first voyage for the Jovian bug with my friends, I scarcely knew one star from another.”

“We cannot be everything,” replied Sorrel, laughing. “I knew little about natural history till you explained to me the habits of those most interesting creatures to which we owe our presence here and our safety from that!” and he pointed outside.

“What an awful sight it is!” said Godfrey. “It makes one realise what a wonderful and holy thing creation is.”

“Indeed it does! and the Bible, despite the attacks made on it, still stands true in its references to science.”

“Really!” responded Godfrey; “it seems to be a growing belief that the Bible story of creation is merely fanciful; very poetic, but untenable when faced with scientific research.”

“You mean that science and theology are at variance?”

“Certainly!” replied Godfrey; “such is the acknowledged belief nowadays.”

“Then don’t you believe it, Spenser. Poetical the story may be, with apparent slight contradictions in places, which are mostly different writers’ ideas of things, but the broad teaching and general truths are actually proved by scientific fact to be founded on a rock, and impregnable. Science confirms the truth of the Bible, and in like manner the Bible proves scientific facts to be facts.”

“But take the story of creation, for instance,” persisted Godfrey; “science cannot surely support the Bible-sequence of the events in the creation.”

“Why not? To me it does.”

“Because if the story is to be believed, the earth had light and darkness, day and night, long before the sun and moon were created, and yet we depend on both for light.”

“Certainly, but what about the luminiferous ether, which can both convey and absorb healthy light, the _ignis fatuus_, and other well-known chemical phenomena which could give a form of light (though not healthy to us, but man was not then created), for ages before the formation of the sun, and the sun was certainly created long after our Earth because it is younger, being yet in its infancy, notwithstanding the old belief which is held even now by many eminent scientists, that the sun is the parent of the whole of the solar system. Besides, Spenser, if you give this matter but a moment’s thought, you will see how untenable is the argument that light emanates _only_ from the sun, for there are seen certain stars which are not suns and, so far as we can see, these have no ruling suns; if they had, our lenses would show them; but granted they have, the suns, to be out of reach of our glasses, must be so far away that their light could not reach these particular stars visible to us, which ought, therefore, to be dark and invisible. And if it had reached them and illumined them, the chances are the time is so long past that these suns do not now exist, and we see but the light of a bygone time, which no doubt in many instances is the case.

“Again, to bring the argument nearer home, to our own system, Mercury is nearest the sun, at a distance of but 36 million miles, or thereabouts, and in order of distance follow Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, etc., the most distant measured being Neptune at 2794 million miles away—there are many others of equal bulk further off still, but these will answer my purpose;—now if the planets, and the stars that are not suns _cannot_ give their own light, what lights them? And again, if these members of our system are _entirely_ dependent on this governing sun for every particle of their light, it would naturally follow that Mercury, being nearest the sun, would be brightest, and then the others in proportion to their distance; but we have the second star, Venus, as the brightest star in the whole system; the next brightest is not Earth, as we should expect (for we saw in coming that Mars, who is distant from the sun over half as far again as is Earth, was considerably brighter than Earth), but Jupiter, the _fifth_ in point of distance; yet Jupiter, from a scientific and theoretical point of view, can only receive about twenty-five or twenty-six times _less_ light from the sun than do we on Earth; Saturn over eighty times less, Uranus a shade over a three hundred and sixtieth part, and Neptune barely a one-thousandth part of Earth-light and -heat!

“Many theories have been propounded to account for this, the most popular being that the differences in lighting are merely those of atmosphere. That, however, will not bear argument, because modern science has proved positively what has been for ages asserted—that we can live on Mars and Venus, and so far as atmosphere goes we could live on Mercury; yet if the argument is to stand we should be burnt up on Venus and roasted alive on Mercury, which is so near the great heat of the sun that it should itself be a star, a subsidiary red-hot sun. To carry the same argument further, we ought not to be able to see Neptune at all, considering his great distance and the little light he receives from our sun, for if he depended on that alone, he would be quite invisible to us. And to take it still further, to the planets discovered far beyond the orbit of Neptune and yet undoubtedly belonging to our system: how did they get there? and why were they not noticed, as belonging to our system, before the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries. If flung from our sun ages before, they would have wrecked the whole system, being great masses of energising matter, and at their enormous distances they cannot possibly receive any appreciable light from the sun, which will be but a star to them. Yet we can see them plainly, when by the very argument brought forward, of the sun being sole light-giver, they should be black and altogether invisible. No, Spenser, they must have been attracted and are now kept within the sun’s mighty influence by his power, but receive not his light.

“Many other theories, besides those relating to the atmosphere, have been brought forward to account for various degrees of illumination of our own planets and of other heavenly bodies, but none are satisfactory except the one admitting that each world, star, planet, comet, or other heavenly body is, to a great extent, self-luminous; be it solid, hot or cold, watery, vaporous, molten, or of any other substance.

“Now, to prove to you how true is the story of creation as related in the Bible, let us take the version step by step and see how it harmonises with, or refutes, known scientific facts, for I want to convince you that the Bible, in its scientific statements, will repel any attacks on its veracity.”

“Well, I have an open mind on the subject, Sorrel,” replied Godfrey; “it seems to me that it is not irrelevant to discuss these most interesting matters under the present circumstances.”

Sorrel then resumed,—

“At the first chapter in the Bible we have ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,’ at a period in the dim past, some millions of years ago, when perhaps, from a primary ‘something’ there was formed a world which gradually solidified, and there came a time when the azoic rocks were established; this was, roughly speaking, about 49,600 feet below the present surface of the Earth, and in these, as the name implies, exists no trace of organic life. At this time ‘the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters,’ causing to spring into being molluscs without sight, and very low forms of phytozoa and radiata, the fossils of which are found in the next bed above these azoic rocks, the bed being about 16,600 feet thick, or about 33,000 feet below the present surface. Of these shells, limestone and other substances necessary to later periods were made, and during the countless ages that passed whilst this great deposit, designated the Cambrian Period, was being formed, darkness brooded over the waters, as the Spirit of God caused these low forms of life to spring into existence and to die, in order that their remains might prepare the Earth for further races. Then ‘God said, Let there be light: and there was light,’ and in the waters there came a new race of beings with eyes—which had not been necessary previously—trilobites, and many other strange and wonderful creatures.

“Then the Bible goes on to say ‘And God saw the light, that it was good,’ and so it was, for it was life-giving, and was also accomplishing His purpose. ‘And God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day and the darkness he called Night’—and for the first time there was ‘evening and morning.’ As yet there was no mention of a sun; the earth _itself_ had become light-giving, and day dawned and faded into night without any solar aid, for over all the earth there were thick and impenetrable mists which excluded all exterior light, if any existed, and precluded all life save that which was capable of existing in water, and necessarily of the most lowly form. Then we find a further development, for after these ages had passed, the Creator commences a new phase—‘And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters,’ and at His creative fiat the damp and heavy mists arose and, taking the form of clouds, floated upwards. ‘And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so’—and from that time humid clouds began to separate from the watery world, and between the two there lay a depth of atmospheric space stirred by life-giving winds, the open air and winds cleansing and purifying the seas, and then there followed the call into being of creatures which required air for existence.”

“And is all this your own theory, or based on proof?” interrupted Godfrey.

“Absolute proof, Spenser! indisputable proof from actual fossils and the geological structure of the earth.”

As Godfrey remained silent, Sorrel continued his story,—“In course of time there then followed the appearance of dry land above the waters, for the capillary action of the atmosphere between the water and the clouds reduced the quantity of water and the absorption of the under-land would do the same, whilst in many places the moisture would reach the internal heat and volcanic eruptions would occur; these would also be brought about by the gradual gathering of gases and in many other ways, and the earth, by its upheavals, would be disturbed and tilted upwards and so give the seas and oceans limits which they could not pass, thus dividing land from water, this being what is known as the Devonian period.

“After these had all done their work, and insects had formed islands and the ground had become adapted for growth, God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb _yielding_ seed, and the fruit-tree _yielding_ fruit after his kind, _whose seed is in itself_, upon the earth: and it was so.’ This, to my mind, Spenser, is a direct Creation, not evolution—a creation of everything first, and _then_ evolution, and varieties caused by adaptations to surroundings.”

“It quite agrees with what I have proved in my researches in natural history,” observed Godfrey, “for I have found that each species of animals keeps to itself, and the different species never, under any circumstances, mix in their natural state. For instance, the wild ass will never mate with the zebra, or the zebra with the horse; it is only under the influence of man that these race-distinctions are diverted, and, given the first creation, there follows natural adaptation, selection, and variety, in the same species according to surroundings in consequent succession.”

“Just so,” assented Sorrel. “The first vegetable creation, according to scripture, is ‘the herb yielding seed’—or seed-pod—‘and the fruit-tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself’—so that ever afterwards the fruit of the tree produces its own seed and no further ‘creation’ is necessary, it being from that time a question of repetition and evolution. ‘And it was so,’ for vegetation became luxuriant in the extreme, from which reason that period is called the Carboniferous era.

“In due time all this wealth of vegetation cleared the atmosphere and brightened the clouds, and when the time was ripe, there followed the next scheme which, as in the case of all the other phases, came slowly, without any line of demarcation, one period being gradually and imperceptibly blended with the next. So that the succeeding phase, the creation of the starry firmament, would also come about slowly; the luxuriant vegetation would clear the sky, and the stars beyond would become visible in consequence. This creation of the stars, therefore, can only mean that those already existing became _visible_ for the first time through the gradually clearing sky—for it is not tenable to suppose, even for a moment, that all the stars and celestial bodies were created for _our_ special benefit; the benefit of pleasure or instruction of the few people on earth who seriously study the science of astronomy, considering that myriads of these stars are millions of years older than Earth is now. Of course, seeing that man was not yet created, this influx of light could only be for the immediate benefit of the animals and vegetation then existing, in order that the world might be prepared for the succeeding life of all forms, and there comes another wonderful creation which may have been sudden. A sun is formed and begins to shine on the Earth, and the moon Luna, probably being already there—for she is older than the Earth, or, at any rate, older in her life—but dark, that is, merely luminous like some of the stars, receives the full blaze of the sunlight also, and our Earth, from its position, is illumined by the reflecting moon. And God made ‘the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also’—thus came the completion, or the formation, of many of the stars, some of which might probably mean certain of our own planets, considering that several are younger than Earth, or possibly some of the actual stars or suns of other systems.

“Then commenced another epoch in Earth-history, and one, if anything, even more wonderful than those previous. For ages there had been light, but only the light which every world gives out from itself, as in the case of certain stars which are not suns and on which no sun ever shines, yet which are seen shining by their own light and lighting other worlds, as they do Earth to a great extent, quite apart from the light of our sun and moons, as I have already explained in detail. But the rays of the newly created sun warmed and penetrated the sombre haze which had hitherto surrounded the Earth, till at last all opposition was destroyed and the vivifying rays and heat reached the ground, warming land, water and air, and causing more violent circulation of the atmosphere, and making certain portions of varying temperature. The winds, therefore, became fresher and stronger, and the sun ever after became the visible and physical ruler of Earth and all the other planets which were, or had been, drawn within his force of energy.

“This is, of course, taking my belief that the sun was made _after_ the Earth, which belief I base on excellent and irrefutable grounds, though it is contrary to the opinion held by many great scientists, as I before remarked. You will see how strong is the basis of my theory from the fact that the Earth is proved to be certainly not less than one hundred and thirty million years old by the fossils on it, its structure, and the progress of its life, and even the greatest estimation of the age of the sun, as a sun, is that it _cannot_ be more than fifteen and a half million years. How is it possible, then, for the Earth to have come from the sun’s mass, either in the solid or in any other form?

“Then followed the creative word—‘Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven,’ and the Reptile Age was formed, when sea-animals, reptiles and winged saurians existed.

“Then came the Tertiary period, the age of mammoths, with all kinds of animals _except man_. The fossils of these are found at a depth of from two hundred to two thousand feet below the present surface. Many noted scientists positively assert that there lived at this period human beings of a very primitive type, and say the order given in the Bible is out of place, but I cannot agree with them, for no remains of man have ever been found to exist with these, and it is but reasonable to suppose that considering his bones are of similar substance to those of other animals and of fishes, _his_ remains could not have completely vanished while theirs have been left to fossilise. As a matter of fact, no _human_ fossils, bones, implements, or indeed any other human relics are, or ever have been, found lower than two hundred feet below the present surface. The argument, therefore, is entirely in favour of the Bible sequence of events—for man to be uncreated at this period.

“But after all these (to man) harmful creatures had died off, their places in the ordinary course being taken by others more suited to the quieter time, and over which man could have rule, _then_, and not before, was man created and given dominion over every living and moving thing—which brings us to the present era, when man, as a race, has for a time power to subdue the whole of the vegetable and animal creation, and according to the manner in which the privilege is used, so will posterity and the future of the world suffer, or benefit.”

“Then you believe the Bible story absolutely as written?” said Godfrey, much impressed.

“How can I do otherwise, when I can only prove its correctness, search as I may to find it faulty?” replied Sorrel, with fervour. “I do believe the story most assuredly, as certainly as I believe that this sun will be peopled in time as Earth is now.”

“You really believe that, Sorrel!” asked Godfrey. “Tell me how, for I have never considered the question of creation in so serious an aspect before. If these changes come gradually, what causes them?”

“The Creator, Spenser,” replied Sorrel, reverently, “by first of all creating a certain law which, by means of cause and effect, works itself out _ad infinitum_. Without going over the ground again, I will tell you how from every effect giving rise to a later effect, the Creator’s Wonderful Will and Power are worked out. Take this sun; in time the mass will cool to such an extent that the internal heat will not burst through it, and a crust will form; as this becomes thicker, it will, on the outside, turn from white to black till it is almost cold. This coolness will cause these heavy, hot vapours above to condense and the ground will be covered with water, making it a watery world. The heavy, black, grit-laden clouds above will cause general darkness. Then will come a repetition of the creation of Earth, with which I will not trouble you again in its Biblical sense—the clouds will clear by precipitating their solid matter on the water, where it will sink, to form muddy ooze and the like at the bed. This deposit will lighten the clouds and there will be light—the light of a star unlit by a sun. In time, all the solid matter will have left the clouds which, relieved of their weight, will rise and an atmosphere will form below them, and, being in circulation, will cause winds which, in turn, will disperse the deadly gases and cause the water to have motion, which will purify it, and in the mud molluscs will grow, and the deadly gases above will be destroyed by combining, some with air, others with water, and others with land, so that there will be a healthy, breathable atmosphere through which the stars will be seen, and period follows period as I have just stated, till this present sun has become another world, even like Earth.”

“And what about the present solar system,—where will it be then?”

“Probably revolving round some other sun. There would be a time, long in the past, when each of the planets was in some other part of the universe, each as a sun, the centre of its own system, but as time passed, and the violent energy gave place to the cooler and quieter energy of inhabited worlds, some other world, expending its new-formed energy in visible heat, by a coalescence with one or more others, became this present sun, and, powerful in its youthful and terrible energy, which was more assertive than that of any of the planets near, drew them within the circle of its influence, and itself became the centre and ruler round which these planets must revolve until such times as its energy has no longer the power to retain them, when the next strongest will take up the tale and probably cause new suns and moons to form.”

“How could a sun form,—by impact?”

“Yes, but I think that scarcely likely, for I have often experimented with motes in a sunbeam. If these are agitated in vacuum, they rise and fall and float around but never collide. At least I have never been able to cause any to do so; many draw near to each other, but long before they get sufficiently near to touch, they fly off horizontally and fall. So long as they float in space they will not collide; only is it possible for them to do so when they reach the fixed point to which they have been drawn. The motes will rest upon one another when they have reached the lowest part to which gravity has drawn them, but so long as they are above that part, I cannot cause them to collide, no matter to what agitation they are subjected. They float and dart here and there in the sunbeam as separate units—stars if you like—each avoiding contact with its neighbour, though the sizes are unequal.”

“Then how could a sun form? I could understand the worlds separating if all the forces are equal, for in that case one would repel the other, but if they cannot collide, how can they form a sun by coalescence?”

“Though two worlds could not collide accidentally in space, one could draw the other to its own surface, if powerful enough to do so, the impact causing such heat as to liquefy both.”

“Is not that the same thing as colliding in space?” asked Godfrey, dubiously. “I must confess I see no difference.”

“No, not at all,” said Sorrel, smiling, “I will illustrate the point by a simple experiment I have often used to prove this very question to my own satisfaction.

“If you take two revolvers exactly alike, firing the old-fashioned lead bullets, and so place and fix them that when fired their respective bullets will traverse the same line exactly, at the end of which is an iron-plate target, and arrange for them to be fired simultaneously, one would be inclined to think that the instant the bullet has left the end of the one barrel, it will strike and coalesce with that from the other barrel and travel along the same line as a single globule of molten lead, striking the target as one, for only one splash will be seen. If now, the experiment is repeated and arrangements made by which the bullet shall be photographed during the whole of its flight, you will find that both bullets leave simultaneously and approach each other instantly, but instead of colliding, they then _separate_, and travel together to the target side by side, but the instant they reach the iron plate—a mere breath before impact on it—they coalesce, and the actual impact on the plate takes place as one drop composed of two bullets _already_ united, their union causing them to expend their energy in coalescence into a single globule of liquid lead. If you now increase or diminish the distance by placing the plate further back, or drawing it nearer, the result is the same. The bullets will not coalesce till the actual destination is reached, but will repel one another from the straight line till that time, though they are but a breath apart—from which we may infer that heavenly bodies cannot collide, but must be drawn definitely and irresistibly by some more powerful agency to the actual surface of another world before a union is possible, like a comet flying into the sun.”

“In the case of the bullet experiment,” said Godfrey, “if one followed the other, the latter at greater speed, it would overtake and absorb the former?”

“Naturally, for its energy would be the greater.”

“And if one went immediately behind the other, almost touching, I suppose there would be two impacts on the target; one would not hasten or retard the other?”

“There would be a slight influence, but not an appreciable one; there would be two impacts on the plate, in rapid succession, the first, naturally, striking the plate before that which followed.”

“Are there other ways in which suns could be formed, without the energy called into being by the shock of contact?”

“Certainly, there are many ways; perhaps the quickest and most effective to Earth-minds would be the sudden withdrawal from the atmosphere of, say, our world, our own Earth, of every trace of nitrogen. The air then being all oxygen, without any nitrogen to restrain it, would cause the whole world to catch fire; as the Bible says, ‘The elements shall melt with fervent heat; the earth also, and the works that are therein, shall be burned up’; everything would instantly catch fire; the water, seas, rocks, earth, and sky would become a molten mass of liquid fire—a fresh sun, full of the terrible energy of its own combustion; and in our blazing atmosphere and flaming clouds the people on other worlds would see exactly the same awful combustion as we are watching now. And our Earth, formed into a new sun, would probably still revolve round this sun, if his greater bulk and attraction had not then diminished, and would itself be the centre of a new system by reason of its energy attracting other planets, and causing them to form a new orbit round it.

“Such an inevitable result would follow the simple withdrawal from Earth of such a deadly gas as nitrogen, which by a loving Creator has been made to temper its exactly opposite energising gas, oxygen, the addition of but one-fifth of which, as you know, is sufficient to turn the death-dealing four-fifths of nitrogen into our glorious, life-sustaining atmosphere, that is, of course, eliminating the small quantity of argon present (which is rather less than 1 per cent. of the atmosphere’s volume) and the carbon di-oxide and aqueous vapour. There is thus but a breath between life and an awful, agonising, though rapid, death.”

Godfrey, deeply impressed, stood musing and looking out into the flaming sea around them, when just as he turned to Sorrel to ask a question, there was heard a report in the laboratory, and crash after crash followed in swift succession as something hard could be heard striking the metallic walls there, and then came the sound of shattering glass.