Editors’ Table. 709 
assertions never will be; but these gentlemen have the severest 
of critics among their own craftsmen. Unless Dr. Deems has 
taken a thorough course in zoology and botany, and done a good 
deal of species-work on sufficient material, he is hardly in a posi- 
tion to offer an opinion. 
; And now the Rev. Noah Porter gives way to his prejudices, 
~ and thus expresses himself in his baccalaureate sermon before 
~ _the Yale College graduating class: 
“Those practical questions,” he says, “which threaten to 
agitate and convulse society will very soon force every educated 
man to ask and to answer the comprehensive inquiry: Is there or 
is there not a kingdom of God slowly but surely lifting itself up 
in the sight of the nations, or is it a kingdom of science, a kingdom 
of fate and force, that has no promise for the poor, no comfort 
for the sorrowing, no justice for the wronged, no deliverance for 
the oppressed, or, at the utmost, nothing more than a blind ten- 
before the disappointed vision ?” 
doctrine of evolution, that he should thus confound it with mate- 
lalism and atheism. If “the kingdom of God” is a kingdom of 
morals, then the truths of evolution demonstrate the necessary 
near approach of sucha kingdom, if not its complete establish- 
ment, through the necessary growth of respect for law engendered 
and good will, then evolution points to its infallible approach 
through the growth by exercise of the social affections. But sup- 
posing these agencies to fall short of the production of that state of 
perfection involved in the idea of the kingdom of God, this doctrine 
of science does not necessarily exclude the possibility of personal 
. mind, But such relations must have necessary orderly limits 
have such limits. 5 
dency of progress toward the brilliant mirage that eternally flees 
One is led to believe that President Porter is ignorant of the - 
by social life. If the“ kingdom of God ” is a kingdom of love 
Telations between man and a Supreme Being in the universe of 
due to “the intractability of matter,” just as human relations 
= — The present U. S. Geological Survey has adopted some _ 
3 methods which ‘will make it less acceptable to the people of the 
ey than were the organizations which preceded it. The — 
: Present director has introduced the new rule that illustrations of — 
Scientific material will not be furnished unless such material is the _ 
ł 
