creative energy pause until the nebulous matter had condensed? until the earth had been detached? until the solar fire had so far withdrawn from the earth's vicinity as to permit a crust to gather round the planet? Did it wait until the air was isolated? until the seas were formed? until evaporation, condensation, and the descent of rain had begun? until the sun's rays had become so tempered by distance and by waste as to be chemically fit for the decompositions necessary to vegetable life? Having waited through those æons until the proper conditions had set in, did it send the fiat forth, Let life be'? These questions define a hypothesis, not without its difficulties, but the dignity of which was demonstrated by the nobleness of the men whom it sustained. However the convictions of individuals here and there may be influenced, the process must be slow which commends the hypothesis of natural evolution to the public mind. For what are the core and essence of this hypothesis? Strip it naked, and you stand face to face with the notion that not alone the more ignoble forms of animalcular or animal life, not alone the nobler forms of the horse and lion, not alone the exquisite and wonderful mechanism of the human body, but that the human mind itself-emotion, intellect, will, and all these phenomena - were once latent in a fiery cloud. Surely the mere statement of such a notion is more than a refutation." "I do not think that any holder of the evolution hypothesis would say that I overstate or overstrain it in any way. I merely strip it

WAS LIFE IN THE STAR DUST.

33

of all vagueness, and bring it before you, unclothed and unvarnished, the notions by which it must stand or fall. Surely these notions represent an absurdity too monstrous to be entertained by any sane mind." The difficulty in the way of carrying out the hypothesis, that all things - mind and body and all their properties are derived by development from star dust is powerfully put, and should lay an arrest on those who speak so dogmatically of the possibility of accounting for all things by natural law. After having made this strong and apparently satisfactory statement, he tries to lessen the effect of it, by hinting that the difficulties may be lessened, if not removed, by falling back upon a philosophic law, that of Relativity, which has been adopted by the school to which he belongs; and by hinting that the perplexities may arise from erroneous traditional views about mind and matter.*

It will be necessary thoroughly to examine that

* "Why are these notions absurd? and why should sanity reject them? The law of relativity, which plays so important a part in modern philosophy, may find its application here. These evolution notions are absurd, monstrous, and fit only for the intellectual gibbet, in relation to the ideas concerning matter which were drilled into us when young. Spirit and matter have ever been presented to us in the rudest contrast; the one as all noble, the other as all vile. But is this correct?" Speaking of certain supposed enlightened minds, with which he evidently concurs: They have as little fellowship with the atheist who says there is no God, as with the theist who professes to know the mind of God." This language points to some seemingly very profound truth, which it will be necessary to examine, when it will be found to look so large because of the mist in which we see it.

66

general doctrine, and the application of it to mind and body, which are alleged to be one and the same; so that, in certain conditions, mind might come out of matter. This will be undertaken in the second series of these Lectures. But, before doing this, we must take up this whole subject of Development, and the Origin of Species, and the Law of Natural Selection, in their relation to the lower animals, to man, and to human history. I am satisfied if in this Lecture I have succeeded in showing that the argument from design is not undermined by modern discoveries; and that, through the process by which the universe has reached its present condition, there runs an evidence of pre-arrangement, skill, and purpose, — quite as much so as in the formation of threads into a web in the loom; as in the types taking their proper places so as to print a volume; as in the dispositions of the soldiers in the campaigns of Hannibal, of Washington, or of Moltke.

NATURAL SELECTION.

ORIGIN OF MAN. HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT. CHRIST AND THE MORAL POWER.

IN these Lectures, I am considering the argument from design in its application to the subjects discussed in modern science. In the last lecture, I have shown that we have numerous examples of adaptation and purpose in the production of plants and animals. We have seen that no known natural power can produce organized out of unorganized matter, can produce protoplasm out of protein, can generate a cell without a parent cell, or a plant or an animal without a seed or germ, or a sentient animal from insentient matter. But the question has often occurred to me, Is religion essentially bound up with the settlement, one way or other, of these scientific questions?

Suppose it proven that there is such a thing as spontaneous generation: would religion thereby be overthrown, either in its evidences, its doctrines, or its precepts? I have doubts if it would. The great body of thinkers in ancient times even those most inclined to theism seem to have believed that lower creatures sprang out of the dust of the

earth, without the need of a previous germ. Some of the profoundest theologians and ablest defenders of religion in the early church were believers in the doctrine of spontaneous generation, — which may be consistently held in modern times by believers in natural and revealed religion. The establishment of the need of a germ, in order to the production of life, does not carry us back three centuries. There is really no ground for the fears of the timid, on the one hand, nor, on the other hand, for the arrogant expectation of the atheist, that he will thereby be able to drive God from his works. Spontaneous generation is not to be understood as a generation out of nothing, an event without a cause, an affair of caprice or chance. It is a production out of preexisting materials by means of powers in the materials, powers very much unknown, working only in certain circumstances, and requiring, in order to their operation, favorable conditions, assorted (so all religious people think) by Divine wisdom. Spontaneous generation, supposing it to exist, cannot be a simple, it must be a very complex process; involving properties possessed by matter, and a concourse of circumstances working to the production of an intended end.

Plants and animals (let me suppose) are now formed out of germs, or, if you can show it to be so, out of wisely endowed and carefully prepared matter. But, How are they propagated? is the next question. By special acts of creation? or by development? I do not know that religion, natural or