246 LAY SERMONS, ESSAYS, AND REVIEWS. [xn. 



science ? When Astronomy was young &quot; the morning stars sang 

 together for joy,&quot; and the planets were guided in their courses 

 by celestial hands. Now, the harmony of the stars has resolved 

 itself into gravitation according to the inverse squares of the 

 distances, and the orbits of the planets are deducible from the 

 laws of the forces which allow a schoolboy s stone to break a 

 window. The lightning was the angel of the Lord ; but it has 

 pleased Providence, in these modern times, that science should 

 make it the humble messenger of man, and we know that every 

 flash that shimmers about the horizon on a summer s evening 

 is determined by ascertainable conditions, and that its direction 

 and brightness might, if our knowledge of these were great 

 enough, have been calculated. 



The solvency of great mercantile companies rests on the 

 validity of the laws which have been ascertained to govern the 

 seeming irregularity of that human life which the moralist 

 bewails as the most uncertain of things ; plague, pestilence, and 

 famine are admitted, by all but fools, to be the natural result of 

 causes for the most part fully within human control, and not the 

 unavoidable tortures inflicted by wrathful Omnipotence upon His 

 helpless handiwork. 



Harmonious order governing eternally continuous progress 

 the web and woof of matter and force interweaving by slow 

 degrees, without a broken thread, that veil which lies between 

 us and the Infinite that universe which alone we know or can 

 know ; such is the picture which science draws of the world, and 

 in proportion as any part of that picture is in unison with the 

 rest, so may we feel sure that it is rightly painted. Shall 

 Biology alone remain out of harmony with her sister sciences ? 



Such arguments against the hypothesis of the direct creation 

 of species as these are plainly enough deducible from general 

 considerations ; but there are, in addition, phenomena exhibited 

 by species themselves, and yet not so much a part of their very 

 essence as to have required earlier mention, which are in the 

 highest degree perplexing, if we adopt the popularly accepted 

 hypothesis. Such are the facts of distribution in space and in 



