1875-1876.] i75 



principles was proved by the number and nature of replies which 

 it had drawn forth, some of which were noticed at length, among 

 others that of the Rev. J. Scott Porter, the protest of the Roman 

 Catholic Bishops of Ireland, and a treatise by the Abbe Moigno, 

 all of whom agreed in viewing that document as an attack on the 

 fundamentals of Christianity. Dr. Macllwaine called attention, 

 with satisfaction, to the different attitude assumed of late by those 

 who might be called the high priests of science, with the notable 

 exception of Dr. Tyndall himself, who had renewed his attack, and 

 endeavoured to re-open the whole atheistic and materialistic con- 

 troversy in his article in the Fortnightly Review for this month. 

 This article Dr. Macllwaine designated as deeply offensive and 

 insulting to the believers in the Divine records of Christianity, and 

 proceeded to quote some of the language therein applied to them. 

 Referring to the fact that because theologians, past and present 

 had ventured to express any views whatever on the subjects of 

 anthropology and cosmogony, Dr. Tyndall had compared them to 

 " squatters" on land to which they had no title whatever, and 

 asserted that expulsion therefrom was all that they deserved. To 

 this Dr. Macllwaine retorted by inquiring what title their opponents 

 could show in the shape of any account of creation which could be 

 compared with the Mosaic cosmogony, and asked was such to be 

 found in the Shasters and Rig Veda of Hindostan, or the poetic 

 dreams of Lucretius, the Atheist, whom Dr. Tyndall so lauded, or 

 in the Book of Mormon ? He went on to assert the claims of 

 theology to be accounted a science, as distinct from religion, which 

 was a matter between every creature and the Creator, and claimed 

 for those who believed the Scripture record a right to modify their 

 views by the light of reason and discovered fact, just as the 

 philosophers of the present day did with regard to the science of 

 half-a-century ago. Dr. Macllwaine illustrated this portion of his 

 subject by a full account of the so-called Bathybius, which Professor 

 Huxley and Dr. Carpenter had so confidently asserted to be a 

 protoplasmic substance — in fact, lower than the lowest previously 

 known of all living beings, and named accordingly. It was now 



