As long as such men as Agassiz in this country, and Milne Edwards and his school in France, oppose the theory of Darwin, not only by their authority, but by their facts and arguments, Darwinism cannot be regarded as settled. Sir William Thomson, in a set of papers in the "North British Review" and elsewhere, papers of which I do not say that they will never be answered, but of which I affirm that they have not hitherto been answered, shows that the derivation of all animated beings from one original germ cannot be reconciled with astronomy; which declares that the earth was formed at a comparatively late date, whereas the formation of all living creatures by natural selection requires indefinite ages. My opinion on such a subject is of no scientific value; but I am inclined to think that the theory contains a large body of important truths, which we see illustrated in every department of organic nature; but that it does not contain the whole truth, and that it overlooks more than it perceives. Whence this power which raises the plant, which raises the animal, from age to age? Whence, for example, the sensation in animals, their liability to pleasure and pain? Whence the instincts of animals? — of the spider, the bee, the horse, the dog, the elephant? Natural selection might modify them, supposing them to exist; but the question is, How came they to exist? Were they, at least as germs, in the original star dust? Or have they been added? Or, if added, by natural law? or how? To these questions

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science can give no answer, and should not pretend to be able to give an answer. When it talks, with such seeming profundity and wisdom, of "conditions," let it not imagine that it is giving an explanation, when the conditions are unknown, the conditions, for example, of the production of the affection of the mother bird or beast for its offspring. But, on this subject, religion can say as little, except that it should trace all things up to God; not being able, however, to determine whether he has been acting by an immediate fiat, or, as he usually does, by secondary causes.

On one point, however, religion has a title to speak out. I do not know that she has any special charge given her of the lower animals, except to see that they are protected and kindly treated. But religion is addressed to man, and she has to see that man's nature is not degraded and reduced to the same level as that of the brutes. There has been a special revelation made as to the origin and destiny of man; and this we must uphold and defend.

There is, account for it as we may, a general correspondence between the record in the Bible and the record in stone. My friend Hugh Miller may not have been able to point out an identity in every minute particular; but he has certainly established a general congruity. There is an order and there is a progression very much the same in both. In both there is light before the sun appears. In Genesis, the fiat goes forth, "Let there be light, and there

was light" the first day, and the sun comes forth only the fourth, - in accordance with science, which tells us that the earth was thrown off ages before the sun had become condensed into the centre of the planetary system. In both, the inanimate comes before the animate; in both, the grass and herb and tree, before the animal; in both, fishes and fowls, before creeping things and cattle. In both, we have, as the last of the train, man standing upright, and facing the sky; made of the dust of the ground, and yet filled with the inspiration of God.

As both agree in the history of the past, so both agree as to the future of the world. The Scriptures point, not obscurely, to a day of dissolution. 2 Pet. iii. 5: "This they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished. But the heavens and the earth which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment." All men of science are agreed that, according to the laws now in operation, there is in our system a wasting of energy in the shape of heat, which must, in an indefinite time, bring our cosmos to a state of chillness and death; to be followed, some think, by an accumulation of heat and a conflagration, which will reduce all things to star dust; out of which, by the agglomeration of matter, new worlds will arise. It may be rash in any one to imagine that he sees so far into the future, in which new powers may

ture.

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appear, as they have certainly done in the past; but this, it can be demonstrated, is and must be the issue, according to the powers now working. Such is the correspondence between science and ScripYou will find no such correspondence between modern discovery and any work of heathen mythology, eastern or western. Prima facie, there must be a great truth in that opening chapter of Genesis,, which has anticipated geology by three thousand years.

Mr. Darwin has not given to the world his views as to the origin of man.* Mr. Wallace, who, contemporaneously with Darwin, discovered the law of Natural Selection (the publication of a paper by him called forth Darwin's book), has declared, in a work recently published,† that there are insuperable difficulties in applying that law to the derivation of the human race. He declares boldly, "I do not consider that all nature can be explained on the principles of which I am so ardent an advocate; and he discovers evidence of an "unknown higher law, beyond and independent of all those laws of which we have any knowledge." He conducts an argument to show "the insufficiency of Natural Selection to account for the development of man.” There are gaps between the brute and man which

*This was true when this Lecture was delivered. When it is going through the press, "The Descent of Man," Vol. I., has appeared in America. If Vol. II. appears before this volume is issued, I may notice the whole work in the Appendix.

† Wallace on Natural Selection. X.

cannot be filled up. "The brain of the lowest savages, and, as far as we yet know, of the prehistoric races, is little inferior in size to that of the highest types of man, and immensely superior to that of the higher animals." "The collections of Dr. J. B. Davis and Dr. Morton give the following as the average internal capacity of the cranium in the chief races: Teutonic family, ninety-four cubic inches; Esquimaux, ninety-one cubic inches; Negroes, eighty-five cubic inches; Australians and Tasmanians, eighty-two cubic inches; Bushmen, seventy-seven cubic inches. These last numbers, however, are deduced from comparatively few specimens, and may be below the average; just as a small number of Finns and Cossacks give ninetyeight cubic inches, or considerably more than that of the German races. It is evident, therefore, that the absolute bulk of the brain is not necessarily much less in savage than in civilized man; for Esquimaux skulls are known with a capacity of one hundred and thirteen inches, or hardly less than the largest among Europeans. But, what is still more extraordinary, the few remains yet known of prehistoric man do not indicate any material diminution in the size of the brain case. A Swiss skull of the stone age, found in the lake dwelling of Meilen, corresponded exactly to that of a Swiss youth of the present day. The celebrated Neanderthal skull had a larger circumference than the average; and its capacity, indicating actual mass of brain, is estimated to have been not less than seventy-five