144 THE FATAL BIAS. 
fundamental mistake.” (“The Solar System,” p. 119.) 
Do we find that scientists, though forced to surrender 
this prop, have given up atheistic evolution? By no 
means. Evidently, their atheism is older than their evo- 
lution. ‘ 
Fifty years ago it was thought that in the heavenly 
bodies called nebulae the material of which the world was 
made had been discovered. It was assumed that these ne- 
bulae were worlds in the process of formation. In 1914 the 
scientists at Lick Observatory concluded, from the great 
speed at which the nebulae traveled, that they are the 
remains of worlds which have been or are passing, and 
are not the constituents of worlds to be. This destroyed 
another supposition favoring the theory, but we do not 
notice that scientists have become more friendly to Christ- 
ianity. Or consider the latest speculations on the com- 
position of matter as contained in the works of Lodge, 
Crookes, and Lord Kelvin. It is now believed that mat- 
ter is composed of electrical particles smaller than atoms, 
called electrons. An atom of gold is said to consist of 
137,200 electrons. Now, if one considers how closely 
physical theories are bound up with the principle of evo- 
lution, should we not expect scientists to renounce this 
principle when another stone in its foundation has been 
destroyed? And since there is no such renunciation, is 
it not plain that this class of scientists insists upon an 
atheistic interpretation of the universe, no matter on what 
hypothesis? For the slow increase of variations in plants 
and animals, by which Darwin accounts for the origin of 
species, the evolutionists demanded more than 400,000,000 
years. But it is asserted on the strength of certain cal- 
culations by physicists that the earth cannot possibly have 
existed more than 40,000,000 years. This latter figure, 
based especially on the calculations of Lord Kelvin, 
caused doubts to be raised regarding evolution which 
