496 Edward Livingston Youmans. 



sets all the problems of Nature and of man. If evolution 

 be a truth, then must we reconsider all the questions of 

 physics and ryietaphysics that have been settled under the 

 hypothesis ttyat all things came recently and suddenly into 

 existence as/ we now see them. If evolution be true, the 

 standpoint/ of all philosophical and scientific inquiry must 

 be changed; old explanations will not answer. The con- 

 venticjfi of orthodox theologians just held in this city did 

 shirk this question ; they gave it place and time and 



provided for its consideration. A distinguished divine was 

 appointed to report upon it, which he did in an elaborate 

 paper on " The Religious Aspects of the Doctrine of De- 

 velopment." For science there is but one aspect to the 

 question, Is it true ? Theology has other interests to con- 

 sider, but the inquiry into its bearings presupposed the 

 possible verity of the theory. Dr. McCosh does not deny 

 it, but after surveying the succession of plants and animals 

 in the geological epochs, he said : " In looking at these 

 phenomena, men discover everywhere development or evo- 

 lution. It appears in inanimate nature, in suns, planets, 

 and moons being evolved out of an original matter in a 

 way which implies that the earth is older than the sun, and 

 must have existed in ages and had light shining upon it 

 before the sun took his solid form. It is a characteristic of 

 organized beings to produce others after their kind. Those 

 who view development in the proper light see in it only a 

 form or manifestation of law. Gravitation is a law of 

 contemporaneous nature, extending over all bodies simul- 

 taneously over sun, moon, and stars the most remote. 

 Development is a law of successive nature, and secures 

 a connection between the past and the present, and, I 

 may add, the future, securing a unity and it may be a 

 progression from age to age. It is merely an exhibition 

 of order running through successive ages, as the other 

 is of order running through coexisting objects." Dr. 



