DIRECTIONS TO THE BINDER FOR PLACING THE CUTS.

1. Noe offers Sacrifice

2. Joseph relates his Dreams

3. The Israelites dance round the Golden Calf

4. The Interior of the Tabernacle

5. The Death of Samson

6. Ruth and Booz

7. The Triumph of King David

8. The Captivity

9. The Salutation

10. The Infant Jesus

11. The Resurrection

12. Our Lord and the Disciples at Emmaus

13. The Incredulity of St. Thomas

HERE was a time when nothing that we now see existed. There was no earth, no sun or moon, and no stars. There was not a man, an angel, or a devil to be found in the whole universe. Nor was there, in truth, any universe; for the universe is merely the whole heavens, together with the world in which we live, and together with ourselves, who live upon it, the spirits, whom we cannot see, and the inhabitants (if there are any) of the stars. All this once was not in existence. There was but one Being, that is, God.

God always was; and God always was what He is at this present moment. There never was a time when He did not exist; and there never was a time when the nature of God was changed. From all eternity He has done whatsoever it pleased Him to do, only by choosing that so it should be. We cannot comprehend how God has done what it has been His will to do, because we our

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selves are not God; and only God can comprehend His own works.

Some thousands of years ago it pleased Him to create this world in which we live, and the heavens which are above us. Whether there are other worlds besides this earth, and the stars which we see, we cannot tell. All we know is what God has told us respecting Himself, and the works He has created. All that we can do without a revelation is to make guesses as to what took place in ancient times, and as to the way in which things came to be what they are. The only thing we are sure of, until God Himself instructs us, is that the world could not create itself. It must have had some Creator, or else it never would have existed.

It has not pleased God to give us any very full account of every thing that He did when He first made the world and ourselves. What He has revealed to us is as follows:-that when it was His will to make man, He first created an immense mass, or body, of what we call matter. It was that thing from which are made our bodies, the earth we stand on, with all it contains and that grows on it, and also the sun and stars above. It could not think, it could not move, it could not change itself; it was neither hot nor cold, nor had it any fixed shape, and it had no light to lighten it. We cannot comprehend precisely what it was; all we know is, that it was that thing from which our own bodies, the bodies of all animals, the plants of the ground, the solid rock, the flowing waters, and fire flame and light, the clouds, and every thing that we see, or touch, or hear, were afterwards made by God. We call it a chaos, meaning that it was a dead, shapeless, soulless mass; but what it would have appeared to ourselves, if we had been the first beings formed out of it, we cannot conceive.

When God had thus created the matter from which He intended to make the heavens and the earth, He proceeded to shape it according to the pattern which He had formed in His own infinite mind. Why He thought fit to make it precisely what He did, rather

than to make a different heaven and earth, it is impossible to understand. He did what He thought fit, and whatever He thought fit was best.

The Bible relates the course which it pleased the Almighty to follow in changing the shapeless chaos which He had made into a beautiful world. He first

created light. All hitherto was gloom and blackness, when, in a moment, a flood of light streamed throughout the whole, and utter darkness was no more. The Almighty Creator did but will that so it should be, and it was so. God then made a separation between certain portions of the chaotic mass, calling one part heaven, the other part being what we call the earth. On the earth, He next made a difference between what is solid and what is fluid; separating the dry land from the seas and rivers, and preparing the whole for the creation of trees and plants. By His almighty power He next called into existence millions and millions of these various plants and trees, not making them out of nothing, but out of the matter He had already created and prepared. To every kind of plant, from the tallest tree of the forest to the moss upon the wall, He gave a power of producing others of the same kinds by flowers and seeds. Once created, each different plant was to go on for ages and ages, continuing to spread, as it were, by itself, though all were perpetually sustained by the same will of God which first created them.

After this, the sun, moon, and stars, were formed, and made to move, together with this earth itself, in the courses along which they still run. The shapeless chaos had disappeared, and in its place the glorious sights we now see in the firmament above us assumed their present forms, and the heavens shone with ten thousand different worlds, many of them far larger in size than our own earth, but removed to such a distance from us, that only a portion of them can ever be seen by the naked eye of man. All this host of stars God made to move according to one fixed rule, which He stamped on every atom of the matter He had created; He caused the sun itself to follow the same laws by which the

smallest stone or drop of water falls upon the ground. And thus, while so much else has changed, when we look up into the heavens at night, we behold the very same sight of wonderful beauty which appeared on the first night which followed after the creation of the lights of heaven. And thus also the divisions of time were marked out for the use of the creatures whom God was going to call into existence in the world He had made. Then first there was day in every part of the earth on which the light of the sun shone, and night in every other part. Then began the first year, in which spring, summer, autumn, and winter, followed one another in exact order, lasting together about three hundred and sixty-five days. Then one portion of this earth became cold, another temperate, another burning with heat; so that in those spots where the sun shines the lowest down towards the horizon the waters became ice and snow; and in those where it rises highest over our heads the air is hot and burning, and ice and snow are never seen. The moon also then first divided the year into thirteen months, each of twenty-eight days' duration, and fulfilled her office of supplying light to the earth when the sun leaves it in darkness.

As yet, however, nothing moved upon the face of the earth. There was no life in this lower part of creation, except that inferior kind of life which belongs to the plants of the field. There was nought made to inhabit the new-born world, with all its glories and charms. The wisdom and power of God were then next exerted in filling the dry land, the waters, and the air with innumerable creatures, to move to and fro, each in their proper element, and to be supported by the fruits of the earth. And most wonderful was the boundless variety which then came forth from the hand of God. portions of the very same matter with which He had already framed the mountains and seas, the clouds and the stars, the almighty Creator formed birds, beasts, insects, and fishes, so various in their natures, and so extraordinary both in their outward and inward bodies, that the knowledge and wisdom of man has never yet

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