92 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



that in the germs of animals, as in the history of the production of 

 animated Nature through long ages, there are first greater unity and 

 simplicity, and then specific varieties more and more divergent. 



3. I have never set myself, as too many religious men unwisely 

 did, against the theory, first started, it would appear, hy Kant, then 

 elaborated by Sir William Herscbel and Laplace, and perfected, I be- 

 lieve, by a professor in Princeton College, that the mundane system 

 may have been formed out of original matter, evolved according to 

 the mechanical laws with which it is endowed first the outer plan- 

 ets, then the inner, and finally the sun condensed into the centre. 

 This never appeared to me to be an irreligious doctrine, though La- 

 place was unhappily a man without religion. 



4. Once more, I have ever stood up for a doctrine of Develop- 

 ment. There is a development of one form of matter from an- 

 other, of one force from another. There is, as every one allows, 

 a development of the plant and animal from the parent. I see 

 nothing irreligious in holding that the bird may have been evolved 

 by numerous transitions from the reptile, and the living horse 

 the old horse of the Eocene formation. An accumulation of powers, 

 new conditions and surroundings may, it is acknowledged, produce 

 a variety which may become hereditary. Let us suppose that they 

 can also, in rare cases of combination, produce species : religion is 

 not thereby undermined, either in its evidences or in its essential 

 doctrines. 



The question now arises and presses itself upon us : Can we by 

 these acknowleged agencies explain the whole of the present state of 

 the universe, with all its fitnesses, its harmonies, its beauty, its utili- 

 ty, its beneficence ? The development theory, in the narrow and ex- 

 clusive form which it commonly takes, overlooks vastly more than it 

 notices. In particular, there are four grand truths kept out of sight. 

 Without these, we cannot understand the Cosmos. When these are 

 introduced, they bring God into his own universe, and fill it with life 

 and love. 



1. God is present in all his Works, and acts in all their Actings. 

 This is the religious doctrine. " By him all things consist." Paul, 

 addressing the men of Athens, said : " For in him we live, and move, 

 and have our being ; as certain also of your own poets have said, 

 For we are also his offspring." This doctrine may be so stated as to 

 make it pantheistic. It is the one grand truth contained in panthe- 

 ism, giving it all its plausibility, and making it superior to that bald 

 theism which makes God create the world at first, and then stand by 

 and see it go. The doctrine can be so stated as to free it from all 

 such tendencies on the one side or the other, so as to make God dis- 

 tinct from all his works, and yet acting in them. This is, I believe, 

 the philosophical doctrine. It has been held by the greatest thinkers 

 which our world has produced, such as Descartes, Leibnitz, Berkeley, 



