“The earth,” says Holy Scripture, “was invisible and unfinished.”  The heavens and the earth were created without distinction.  How then is it that the heavens are perfect whilst the earth is still unformed and incomplete?  In one word, what was the unfinished condition of the earth?  And for what reason was it invisible?  The fertility of the earth is its perfect finishing; growth of all kinds of plants, the upspringing of tall trees, both productive and sterile, flowers’ sweet scents and fair colours, and all that which, a little later, at the voice of God came forth from the earth to beautify her, their universal Mother.  As nothing of all this yet existed, Scripture is right in calling the earth “without form.”  We could also say of the heavens that they were still imperfect and had not received their natural adornment, since at that time they did not shine with the glory of the sun and of the moon and were not crowned by the choirs of the stars. cf. Hom., Il. xviii. 485, ἐν δὲ τὰ τείρεα πάντα τά τ᾽ οὐρανὸς ἐστεφάνωται, and Tennyson’s “When young night divine crowned dying day with stars.” (Palace of Art.)  These bodies were not yet created.  Thus you will not diverge from the truth in saying that the heavens also were “without form.”  The earth was invisible for two reasons:  it may be because man, the spectator, did not yet exist, or because being submerged under the waters which over-flowed the surface, it could not be seen, since the waters had not yet been gathered together into their own places, where God afterwards collected them, and gave them the name of seas.  What is invisible?  First of all that which our fleshly eye cannot perceive; our mind, for example; then that which, visible in its nature, is hidden by some body which conceals it, like iron in the depths of the earth.  It is in this sense, because it was hidden under the waters, that the earth was still invisible.  However, as light did not yet exist, and as the earth lay in darkness, because of the obscurity of the air above it, it should not astonish us that for this reason Scripture calls it “invisible.”