46 UNIVERSITIES VS. SCIENCE. 



laws, and after the death of the body will animate forever some 

 kind of an etherial form, we naturally inquire, where will be 

 the habitation of such existences? We turn to the Holy Scrip- 

 tures and we find the abodes of the blessed, the Christian's 

 Heaven, described as in the upper sky, above the earth, outside 

 of all its commotions, in regions of eternal day, where there is 

 no night and the sun forever shines. "Where else can this be 

 than in the outlying regions of space? Now the scientists have 

 lately been telling us that the temperature of the inter-planetary 

 spaces is somewhere about 250 below zero, and that they are 

 filled with shooting stars and meteors and fragments of iron, fly- 

 ing about in all directions with amazing velocities. Now this 

 would not seem to be a very serene and tranquil location for the 

 reunion of the saints. 



The soul quits the natural body if its temperature is reduced 

 to near the freezing point, which is 32 above zero. We can 

 hardly suppose it would leave one body just because it was 

 slightly reduced in temperature, and forthwith take up with an- 

 other that had not the least last shiver of heat in it. 



Again, the place for the eternal punishment of unbelievers is 

 represented to be in lakes of fire beneath the surface of the 

 earth, and we have always supposed there was no lack of that 

 fluid in the bowels of our planet. But now comes forward the 

 great geologist, LeConte, and tells us that the earth is solid from 

 center to circumferance, that even the volcanoes are only so 

 many chemical retorts that are emptied as fast as filled. He has 

 effectually forestalled the arguments of the Beechers, for there 

 is now no longer a place for Hell. 



But by far the most serious inroads yet made in the Christian 

 intrenchments come from the Darwinian hypothesis, or that of 

 the slow and gradual development of the human from the lower 

 races of animals. We will present the main points of this 

 theory as fairly as we can, for the purpose of seeing what infer- 

 ences come with it. There can be no greater argument for 

 development than the actual tracing or following of that devel- 

 opment from either end to the other. We will attempt this kind 

 of a showing, and will take for our example the nations of 



