18 THE DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESIS, 



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in consistency with their character, or with a due regard to the 

 interests of their people, slight or overlook a form of error at 

 once exceedingly plausible and consummately dangerous, and 

 which is telling so widely on society, that one can scarce travel 

 by railway or in a steamboat, or encounter a group of intelli- 

 gent mechanics, without finding decided trace of its ravages. 

 But ere the Churches can be prepared competently to deal 

 with it, or with the other objections of a similar class which 

 the infidelity of an age so largely engaged as the present in 

 physical pursuits will be from time to time originating, they 

 must greatly extend their educational walks into the field of 

 physical science. The mighty change which has taken place 

 during the present century in the direction in which the 

 minds of the first order are operating, though indicated on 

 the face of the country in characters which cannot be mis- 

 taken, seems to have too much escaped the notice of our theo- 

 logians. Speculative theology and the metaphysics are cog- 

 nate branches of the same science ; and when, as in the last 

 and the preceding ages, the higher philosophy of the world 

 was metaphysical, the Churches took ready cognizance of the 

 fact, and, in due accordance with the requirements of the 

 time, the battle of the Evidences was fought on metaphysical 

 ground. But, judging from the preparations made in their 

 colleges and halls, they do not now seem sufliciently aware, — 

 though the low thunder of every railway, and the snort of 

 every steam-engine, and the whistle of the wind amid the 

 wires of every electric telegraph, serve to publish the fact, — 

 that it is in the departments of physics, not of metaphysics, 

 that the greater minds of the age are engaged, — that the 

 Lockes, Humes, Kants, Berkeleys, Dugald Stewarts, and 

 Thomas Browns, belong to the past, — and that the philoso- 

 phers of the present time, tall enough to be seen all the world 

 over, are the Humboldts, the Aragos, the Agassizes, the Lie- 

 bigs, the Owens, ihe Herschels, the Bucklands, and the 



