1882. 97 Trans. N. Y. Ac. Sct. 
been so confidently based. Vow,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 Divinecreation, but to a process of slow development 
(1) from small beginnings, (2) by gradual changes, (3) through long 
periods, and (4) by the operation of natural ferces. 
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 (1st) 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 nebule 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—Archean, 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 of 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: 1st. 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 beginning ; 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- 
AP 
dall, “is a mode of motion ;”’ and as clearer conceptions began to dawn 
