to our religious convictions, need not make us indifferent to obvious fallacies of argument. The chief consideration in such cases is, is the danger of their expression sufficient to make it worth while combating them? To my thinking there is a statement in Professor Tyndall's inaugural address, as published, which is just of this kind-almost absurdly illogical. Only because of its direct bearing in argumentative connection with what I have already stated to be my conviction of the essential and dangerous error of the whole address, should I allude to it. He says :—

"Diminishing gradually the number of progenitors, Mr. Darwin comes at length to one 'primordial form;' but he does not say, as far as I remember, how he supposes this form to have been introduced. He quotes with satisfaction the words of a celebrated author and divine, who had 'gradually learnt to see that it is just as noble a conception of Deity to believe He created a few original forms as to believe that He required a fresh act of creation to supply the voids caused by the action of His own laws.' What Mr. Darwin thinks of this view of the introduction of life I do not know. But the anthropomorphism, which it seems his object to set aside, is as firmly associated with the creation of few forms as with the creation of a multitude. We need clearness and thoroughness here. Two courses only are possible. Either let us open our doors freely to the conception of creative acts, or, abandoning them, let us radically change our notions of matter."

It is the sentence which I have italicised which strikes me as illogical.

It may seem to a scientific mind to be more thorough and straightforward to be bound by such rigid alternatives; yet it is hardly the way in which men of science have attained to their most important discoveries. It is hard for the uninitiated to understand why only these two courses are open with their contingent inferences. If facts clearly demonstrate that a certain variety of pigeon has been developed from one extremely different, or that an intelligent race of

men has been developed from savages without the aid of external influence, and that thereby the doctrine of evolution is in certain instances established, it does not follow according to any law of analogy that there was no separate creative force employed in the formation of birds and of man; even though it may seem highly probable that all birds were were developed from one common origin, and all men from a common parentage. Or-what is less remotely inferred by Professor Tyndall's argument because science has proved beyond question that "molecular force becomes structural," and therefore that it requires "no great boldness of thought to extend its play into organic nature, and to recognise in molecular force the agency by which plants and animals are built up; " we are not, therefore, bound by any logical consistency to believe that no supernatural force has been employed in what we call the mental and spiritual organisation of man, nor is needful now for the creation in him of that higher life to which his instincts lead him to aspire. Or-to come still closer to the immediate bearing of the Professor's logic, -because, as I am willing to admit, there are "such things woven into the texture of man as awe, reverence, wonder ... the love of the beautiful, physical, and moral, in nature, poetry, and art;" and that "there is also that deep set feeling which, since the earliest dawn of history incorporated itself into the religions of the world; " and that, somehow or other, by processes not yet understood, these may belong to what is purely material in our human nature; though all this radical change in our notions of matter be necessitated by the discoveries of science, the alternative is still not obvious that there is no other course open but to abandon our conception of creative acts—even the creative acts of the past. This seems to me the real argument of the Professor, though, as addressing himself to Mr. Darwin's theories he puts it the reverse

way; for he has evidently accepted the theory that man was not directly created, but evolved from lower forms of matter, and he seeks to carry the idea further. At all events, whether designedly he seeks to do so or not, the admission of the soundness of his argument so far, involves, almost of logical necessity, the abandoning of our conception of that present re-creating force in the life of man, by faith in which the Christian religion is distinguished in its essential character from all the other religious systems of the world. Surely wé may allow for the forces of nature, molecular, crystalline, or other, immense and marvellous structural power, and a wonderful capability of natural selection and development; we may so far radically change our old notions of matter as to place even the human brain in the same scientific category as the electric telegraph, and thus materialise the whole region of thought; and yet reserve for the direct creative energy of God's Spirit all that control of the electric current of human thought which is essential to the eternal life of man, and his moral fitness for that life, past, present, and to come. But the inference is very strong, that if God did not create man He does not re-create him.

The word " spirit" as applied to man, may be capable of much misapplication in the exact definitions of scientific phraseology, and yet for all practical purposes the meaning associated with it in the New Testament be correct. The grand central idea of Christianity—a life of faith in a present personal Redeemer―cannot be affected by any scientific discovery which might prove that human nature is even wholly material. The Bible itself treats man as "dead," "carnal," "of the flesh," and therefore practically material, until regenerated by the direct influence of God's Spirit. Man's need for God is not diminished, but, rather, his absolute dependence upon Him is increased, by the thought of his being the evolved and

developed thing of modern Science; so long as his conscious misery and unsatisfied longings still remain.

Whilst speculatively I hold strongly to the opinion, that what we call "will" in man, as distinct from desire and inclination, is in no sense part of his material organisation, still even if I be wrong in this, I cannot see that, as regards man only, the materialistic doctrines of modern Science at all affect the truths of revelation. God is able to raise the deadto give us an eternal conscious existence, although our frame is dust, and we be wholly built up of material atoms which, as far as human science can investigate, appear to change and separate after what we call death. The New Testament gives us us no hope of eternal life but that which is super-naturally Godgiven. Therefore I hold, and for this reason I have written this paper, that the Christian's issue with the doctrines put forth by Professor Tyndall, is not with his materialistic theories, but with his practical Atheism. The Christian's only hope, and the world's only hope of having the life of man raised to a higher level, is in the existence of an almighty and perfectly beneficent Person, directly taking part in human affairs. The whole drift of Professor Tyndall's inagural address is to extinguish this hope.

EDW. F. SEWELL.

THE BATTLEFIELDS AROUND PARIS VISITED.— CHAMPIGNY.

In the summer of 1871, soon after the termination of the Franco-German war, I visited the most important scenes of that terrible conflict; but owing to the lamentable civil strife which was then raging within and without the city of Paris I was preventedexcept under considerable personal peril-from surveying the many battlefields and bombarded districts around the capital where fierce fratricidal conflicts had taken place. This opportunity I was lately able to avail myself of, and having made a record, from careful inquiry and personal observation, assisted by the presence of intelligent Frenchmen on the spot, of the terrible events which were enacted, and especially of the dire calamities resulting from the battles and bombardments, I avail myself of the freedom of your columns to interest your readers, in the hope that a brief and imperfect recital may be the means of intensifying in their minds a hatred to war, and to increase in them an ardent love of peace, and an opinion in favour of the arbitrament of these international differences not by "blood and iron," but by an appeal to reason and justice.

The first battlefield around Paris which I visited was Champigny, Villiers, and Brie, the scenes of those conflicts on which was enacted the bloody drama of the 30th November and the 2nd December, 1870, when 120,000 French, under the personal leadership of Generals Trochu and Ducrot, vainly strove to break the cordon of the besieging forces, and to raise the siege of Paris.