I So 



THE MUSEUM. 



tint of religious partiality and with a 

 stronc; desire to get the truth at all 

 ha^zards, and it will come in the end. 

 Study the pros and the cons and not 

 the pros only. The great thing iS to 

 start in unbiased, as we must remem- 

 ber, that we have taken m our idea of 

 the Bible and Christianity with our 

 mother's milk, and the feeling is natu- 

 rally strong, to think as our ancestors 

 thought for eighteen hundred years, 

 against, comparative!}' speaking, a new 

 idea, for geology is quite new compared 

 with Christianity, or rather the earlier 

 part of Christianity that is depicted in 

 the Genesis. 



Geology has nothing' to do with the 

 Bible, so far as I know, other than 

 with the Pentateuchal account of the 

 creation, and as time goes on the 

 breach between these two will be 

 greater and greater, for every discovery 

 in the field of geology is met by a 

 weakening of the Mosaic account. 



I can not do better than close my 

 paper with a short extract from Prof. 

 Darwin's "Origin of Species, ":|; Dr. 

 Darwin says, "He who can read Sir 

 Charles Lyell's grand work on the 

 "Principles of Geology," which the 

 future historian will recognize as 

 having produced a revolution in natural 

 science, and yet does not admit how 

 vast have been the past periods of 

 time, may at once close this volume." 

 William Cooper, 



Milo, Maine. 



Science Gleanings. 



If life on our earth could not origin- 

 ate from lifeless inorganic matter, or 

 from dead organic matter, then it is 

 entirely alien to the idea of Abio^jene- 



t Origin of Species. 6th London edition. 



sis, or spontaneous generation, as was 

 attempted to be shown in a previous 

 article. How unscientific must be the 

 claim that it may possibly have origin- 

 ated from the development of germs, 

 showered upon our earth from cosmic 

 space, taking root and springing into 

 living forms on earth. To the utmost 

 bounds of space our finite powers have 

 ever been able to penetrate, and illum- 

 itable beyond our conception to think 

 of in distance, the very same laws are 

 in operation. Gravitation, light and 

 heat, sound and electricity are acting 

 everywhere in the same way we see 

 them acting around us. The spectro- 

 scope reveals the \ery same chemical 

 elements in the sun and stellar worlds 

 that form our own earth There is 

 no new element certainly discovered 

 in them, and if so many of these ele- 

 ments have not been discovered in 

 these worlds as are known in our 

 earth, we do well to remember that 

 no one can rightly claim that all the 

 chemical elements that really exist 

 have \et been discovered on our earth. 

 How unlikely then, that we have at- 

 tained the limit of reality in our knowl- 

 edge in this matter, in worlds so re- 

 mote or that our knowledge of the 

 constitution of them should surpass 

 what we have so much better oppor- 

 tunity to discover on earth. But such 

 is the tribute that infidelity brings as 

 its offering to lay upon the altar of 

 science, when it would reject a Living 

 Creator to command forth life into our 

 world, and would seek to induce us to 

 believe the very same laws and power 

 which are incapable of producing life 

 on our earth, have been able to do .=o 

 elsewhere in the regions oi space, with 

 no other material upon which to work. 

 Geologists are fond of building the 



