the world were made, and arranged in its present form.

Suppose we grant this gassy supposition, that the world millions of ages
ago existed as a cloud of atoms, does that bring us any nearer the
object of getting rid of a Creator than before? The atoms must be
material, if a material world is to be made from them; and so they must
be extended; each one of them must have length, breadth and thickness.
The atheist, then, has only multiplied his difficulties a million times,
by pounding up the world into atoms, which are only little bits of the
paving stones he intends to make out of them. Each bit of the paving
stone, no matter how small you break it, remains just as incapable of
making itself, or moving itself, as was the whole stone composed of all
these bits. So we are landed back again at the sublime question, _Did
the paving stones make themselves, and move themselves?_

Others will tell you that millions of years ago the world existed as a
vast cloud of fire mist, which, after a long time, cooled down into
granite, and the granite, by dint of earthquakes, got broken up on the
surface, and washed with rain into clay and soil, whence plants sprang
up of their own accord, and the plants gradually grew into animals of
various kinds, and some of the animals grew into monkeys, and finally
the monkeys into men. The fire mist they stoutly affirm to have existed
from eternity. They do not allege that they remember that (and yet as
they themselves are, as they say, composed body and soul of this eternal
fire mist, they ought to remember), but only that there are certain
comets which occasionally come within fifty or sixty millions of miles
of this earth, which they suppose may be composed of the fire mist which
they _suppose_ this world is made of. A solid basis, truly, on which to
build a world! A cloud in the sky, fifty million of miles away, may
possibly be fire mist, may possibly cool down and condense into a solid
globe; therefore, this fire mist is eternal, and had no need of a
Creator; and our world, and all other worlds, may possibly have been
like it; therefore, they also were never created by Almighty God. Such
is the atheist's ground of faith. The thinnest vapor or the merest
supposition will suffice to risk his eternal salvation upon; provided
only it contradicts the Bible and gets rid of God. We can not avoid
asking with as much gravity as we can command, Where did the mist come
from? Did the mist make itself?