SKETCH OF DR, JAMES P. JOULE, 103 



to be adapted to every stage of scientific progress. Certain peculiari- 

 ties in Hebrew words used in describing the creation were here re- 

 ferred to. 



Up to this point the existence of a personal Creator had been 

 placed in the argument upon hypothetical ground. Dr. Smith then 

 considered the evidence upon which this truth rests, drawing a dis- 

 tinction between the understanding and reason, affirming the intui- 

 tional power of reason and following the line of the great philosophers 

 like Coleridge, Kant, Leibnitz, and Plato. A rational plan in the 

 universe made every supposition irrational except that of a reason 

 preceding phenomena and upon which phenomena rest. 



Supposing, then, that the theory of evolution should finally be 

 established, we find in Christianity the completion of the process, by 

 the union of man with God in the Incarnation. This view, which 

 presents all things as complete in Christ coming from Him and re- 

 turning to Him, gives a grandeur to Mature which it cannot otherwise 

 possess. Dr. Smith closed with a quotation from Coleridge's " Hymn 

 in the Valley of Chamouny." 



SKETCH OF DE. J. P. JOULE, F.E.S. 



IF the discovery of chemical analysis by means of the spectrum be 

 accepted as the most brilliant scientific achievement of the present 

 century, the research by which the conservation of energy became 

 established on a basis of exact quantitative experiment must be re- 

 garded as far more profound and important in its consequences. This 

 great generalization, beyond doubt, is the property of no single intel- 

 lect. Many men, in diSerent countries, had independently arrived at 

 the conception, and had furnished various kinds and degrees of evi- 

 dence that it was true, but the honor of its nrst experimental demon- 

 stration, by which the quantitative convertibility of forces may be 

 established, belongs to the subject of the following sketch. 



Ja^ies Prescott Joule was born at Salford, England, on Christmas- 

 eve, 1818, and was privately educated at home. He early showed a 

 taste for scientific study, and, at the age of fifteen, became a pupil of 

 Dr. John Dalton, the chemist. This celebrated man — atomist and 

 Quaker — came to Manchester, and became Professor of Mathematics 

 and Natural Philosophy in the New College ; and, when that was re- 

 moved to York, he remained as a private teacher of the same subjects. 

 By him, young Joule was initiated into mathematics, and trained in 

 the art of experiment. 



Mr. Joule's attention was early turned in a direction which natu- 

 rally led him to his great discovery. At an early age he took up the 



