MODERN SCIENCE AND NATURAL RELIGION. 127 
(b.) That all life is developed from some common protoplasm. 
(c.) That all the phenomena of life are the necessary con- 
sequences of certain complicated combinations of the particles 
of matter. 
Now, if the six propositions assumed to be facts and the 
only accepted facts of science upon which the highest autho- 
rities on the subject are agreed be accepted, what do they 
absolutely involve? 
First. A beginning so distant as to be practically, to our 
finite minds, an illimitable past. 
Secondly. A common origin of the whole universe,—at any 
rate, of all parts of it which are open to human observation. 
Thirdly. A ceaseless progress from a lower to a higher 
stage of existence, brought about by the operation of perfect 
and, therefore, unchangeable instrumentalities. 
Fourthly. Uniformity of the operations of these instru- 
meutations. 
Fifthly. Uniformity of design pervading the whole, and 
most clearly manifested in the vegetable and animal 
kingdom. 
These conclusions from what are generally accepted by 
scientific men as facts, are not affected by those speculations 
which, in some form or other, are widely accepted as to the 
evolution of all life from some common protoplasm; the 
necessary connexion of vitality with a certain combination of 
molecular particles; for, if ultimately proved to be true, 
they would only deepen the conviction of an eternity past,— 
a common something or nothing, out of which all things have 
been produced,—a constant, ever-active, ever-efficient force or 
power, which has brought into their present condition the 
world we inhabit, the unmeasured numbers and variety of 
living creatures which crowd it, and, chiefest of all, the 
wonderful powers of thought and delicacy of feeling and 
vitality of memory which distinguish Man as the highest, 
noblest organisation of which science has any knowledge. It 
is manifest these conclusions in no way justify Scepticism,—for 
Scepticism concerns itself with the question of Revelation from 
stamped with that vortex motion; they cannot part with it, it will remain 
with them as a characteristic for ever, or at least until the creative act which 
produced it shall take it away again.” But “if this property of rotation 
should be the basis of all that to our senses. appeals as matter,” and must go 
on for ever,— unless checked by a similar act of force which first set it in 
motion,—then it would but return to the condition of the supposed perfect 
fluid, of which it is alone composed, to a condition of imperceptible 
materiality, which, by again receiving vortical motion, would again become 
perceptible matter. 
