1 882. 9Y Trans. N. Y. Ac. Set, 



been so confidently based. N'ow, what ? This requires a consideration 

 of recent scientific principles and an account of their bearing on 

 theism. 



The great results of scientific inquiry in our day are two, expressed 

 each by a single word, evolution and correlation. The first of 

 these, evolution, is that the arrangements of nature are due, not to im- 

 mediate acts of Divine creation, but to a process of slow development 

 Ti) from small beginnings, (2) by gradual changes, (3) through long 

 periods, and (4) by the operation of natural fcrces. 



This truth is no recent discovery of Mr. Darwin, though formulated 

 by him in one department, but is the general characteristic of modern 

 science. It is displayed (ist) in the great nebular hypothesis. This is 

 simply an account of the development, through the process just de- 

 scribed in its four particulars, of the astronomical system. Our own 

 solar system discloses this as the method of its origin ; the cosmical 

 system illustrates the same process, and the nebulae beyond alike sug- 

 gest it. In this view all astronomers are now substantially, though 

 with some variations, agreed. 



(2d) Next : Geology manifests still more striking evidences of the 

 same process of development. We can trace our globe downward 

 from the condition of a fiery mass, on which water could not exist, to 

 the formation of seas ; in these the deposit of rocks — Archaean, Silurian, 

 Devonian and the rest — took place according to the present laws of de- 

 position ; and still the process goes on to the present time, and gives us 

 the whole body ot the rocks with their elevations and depressions. In 

 all this, geologists agree in finding the slow and gradual operation of 

 natural forces. 



Organic life is now claimed as falling under the same law ; and thus 

 we have almost the whole body of Science committed to the develop- 

 ment theory. 



This theory has two effects : ist. It reduces all operation of creative 

 power to a minimum ; the changes at each point are insignificant : 2nd. 

 It removes this minimum to the remotest period of time. The creative 

 power may have formed germs, in the beginnmg ; but for all else, the 

 work of nature's forces will sufficiently account.' 



The other great scientific idea is that of the correlation or converti- 

 biilty, of the Forces. 



Working in quite a different sphere, and with no relation to the pro- 

 gress already described, Science has given us another change of views 

 of altogether an opposite tendency. Phenomena are no longer ascribed 

 to " fluids," as the electric, or the caloric, fluid. They are now conceived 

 as due to molecular motions in things around us. " Heat," says Tyn- 

 dall, " is a mode of motion ;" and as clearer conceptions began to dawn 



