Tlie Albany Institute. 



49 



connection theories of laws and historical and geological compound 

 truths or facts, however sound and satisfactory they may seem to us, 

 are attended with uncertainty. Figures cannot lie, but cyphering, 

 however correct, does not always result in certainty of truth. To 

 insure that, the starting figures must he true ones, and their perfect 

 applicability to the investigation in hand be unquestionable. Even 

 astronomy, so sublime in research, so magnificent in results, claims 

 only to have achieved approximations to the heavenly distances of sun 

 from earth, of star from star, and of the length of the earth's meridi- 

 ans. We cannot accept hypothesis for science. A theory, such, for 



law, or congeries of laws, with which every fact known to us as de- 

 pendent upon law, accords.' If a fact involved by it contradicts it 

 and we regard the existence of such a fact as utterly impossible — that 

 theory would fall. Theories are accepted as science. If they be sci- 

 ence, then, like religion, they are founded on truth. An hypothesis is 

 a large conjecture, propounded for investigation. There is, in our 

 day, a salient example of hypothesis in what is called evolution, or 

 the Darwinian theory. To regard it as a theory, when no fact of an 

 evolvement of a species from a species in our day, or in all the range 

 of history, is recorded — when missing links in the progression of 

 dead matter into the nomad, and of the nomad up to man, occur in 

 numerous instances, and Mr. Darwin himself admits that there is at' 

 least one missing link between the ape and man would seem pre- 

 posterous. Mr. Darwin rendered much actual service to true science, 

 and on the hobby which he borrowed from Lamarck, caparisoned afresh 

 most richly, and rode so gracefully through some new paces, he won 

 high consideration. In my poor judgment, his hypothesis can never 

 become a theory ; but if it were to be raised to that far higher dignity 



ferments of perished ones from the bowels of the earth to supply all 

 the missing links — how could it shake Christianity ? I am free to 

 say that it would not impair my belief in the substantial truth of 

 Genesis. It might weaken the faith of some. But our religion is 

 not founded upon that sublime record. It rests upon the life, the 

 miracles, the teachings of our Lord and Saviour. Religion belongs to 

 a far loftier sphere, and may well hold herself aloof, in her inherent 

 tolerance, from the disputes of wordy scientists. The wisest of them 

 will, I am confident, inform us that science, grand and beneficent as it 

 is, has not ever in any thing attained eternal truth ; that in relation 

 to that a theory is but an assymptote, which were it extended through 

 all space could at most but continually approach, but never reach it. 



