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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (March 1, 1896)
THE BATTALION ] T movement, lifelessness, absolute cold, utter lack of all the properties of matter through which you know it and. conceive of it. “ Darkness was upon the face of the deep.” Not the deep, as we use the term, but the undefined expanse of the universe, the sunless, moonless, starless darkness of the be ginning. But now a first promise of life and activity is given us in the words, “And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” More literally it reads—the spirit of God brooded over, vivified, cherished the vaporous depths ; the figure being that of a fowl brooding over and vivifying the eggs of her nest. The creative spirit of God thus enters the universe of matter and takes up her abode there. That spirit has never deserted the work. During the long ages of prepa ration, formation, evolution, it was the enlivening power ; its wisdom is yet working toward divine ends, modeling, plan ning, overruling, quickening matter, mind and spirit. What you men see glimpses of with your telescopes, microscopes^ spectroscopes, what you run down in your analysis and formu late in your mathematical physics, calling the results of your calculations gravitation, force, law, or what not—that is, as it were, the hem of the garment of God’s spirit as it yet moves upon the face of the waters. “What is life?” is a conun drum that man has vainly grappled with ; what is the motive power behind development ? is a nut which has never been cracked save here in the words, “ the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” A result of the brooding of God’s spirit _over the abyss was quickening, the first vitaliza- tion of matter, or motion. All is as yet a chaos of confusion, but motion is a forecast of life and a proof that intelligence is- at hand. “ And God said let there be light—and there was light.” I need not tell you students of physics that this is in precise accord with our experience ; that the immediate results of such motion as here set up would be light and heat and in tense electricity. I have no idea that this light was the con centrated phenomena t) which we give the name coming from one or more centers, like sun, moon, or star ; it was rather the immediate result of the clash of atom upon atom ; the