16 LAY SERMONS, ADDRESSES, AND REVIEWS. [i, 



theses of their own. For, as the astronomers discover in 

 the earth no centre of the universe, but an eccentric 

 speck, so the naturalists find man to be no centre of 

 the living world, but one amidst endless modifications 

 of life ; and as the astronomer observes the mark of 

 practically endless time set upon the arrangements of 

 the solar system so the student of life finds the records 

 of ancient forms of existence peopling the world for ages, 

 which, in relation to human experience, are infinite. 



Furthermore, the physiologist finds life to be as 

 dependent for its manifestation on particular molecular 

 arrangements as any physical or chemical phsenomenon ; 

 and, wherever he extends his researches, fixed order 

 and unchanging causation reveal themselves, as plainly 

 as in the rest of Nature. 



Nor can I find that any other fate has awaited the 

 germ of Eeligion. Arising, like all other kinds 01 

 knowledge, out of the action and interaction of man's 

 mind, with that which is not man's mind, it has taken 

 the intellectual coverings of Fetishism or Polytheism ; 01 

 Theism or Atheism ; of Superstition or Rationalism. 

 With these, and their relative merits and demerits, I 

 have nothing to do ; but this it is needful for my 

 purpose to say, that if the religion of the present differs 

 from that of the past, it is because the theology of the 

 present has become more scientific than that of the past; 

 because it has not only renounced idols of wood and 

 idols of stone, but begins to see the necessity of breaking 

 in pieces the idols built up of books and traditions and 

 fine-spun ecclesiastical cobwebs : and of cherishing the 

 noblest and most human of man's emotions, by worship 

 " for the most part of the silent sort" at the altar of the 

 Unknown and Unknowable. 



Such are a few of the new conceptions implanted in 

 our minds by the improvement of natural knowledge. 



