" The air is a mechanical mixture, pointing to a
special design and a special act of origin. The necessary proportions of
each gas and its combined properties could not have originated without
guidance.
But the main purpose of the expanse, as stated in the text, was to
regulate the water supply. That vast masses of watery vapour must at one
time have enveloped the globe, seems probable--apart from revelation;
and that part of this should condense into seas and fresh-water, and
part remain suspended to produce all the phenomena of invisible
air-moisture and visible cloud, while an "expanse" was set, so that the
earth surface should be free, and that light might freely penetrate, and
sound also, and that all the other regular functions of nature dependent
on the existing relation of earth and air should proceed--all this was
very necessary. And when we recollect what a balanced and complex scheme
it is--how very far from being a simple thing; we recognize in the
adjustment of earth's atmospheric envelope, a special result worthy of
the day's work.
Whether the separation between the condensed but ever re-evaporating and
re-condensing water on the earth's surface, and the water vapour in the
atmosphere, is _all_ that is meant by the division of the "waters that
are above the firmament" from those below, it would not be wise to
assert.
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