19. It has been suggested by a man of great eminence as a 

 physicist, that vegetable life may have been evolved in another 

 planet and have been thrown on to our earth when such planet 

 broke up, by means of a meteoric stone. I only mention such 

 a theory to show how wild may be the speculations of even 

 great philosophers on this subject. AVe have no proof that 

 vegetable or animal life exists, or has existed, in any other 

 world than our own, and we know that the friction of our 

 atmosphere would destroy, by causing intense heat, any such 

 organism on meteors. Such a means of introducing life into 

 our globe w^ould spoil the potentially-endowment theory, 

 and destroy all belief in the interference of a supernatural 

 Being in the origin and progress of life on our globe, leaving 

 such origin to the chance shot of a broken rock deviated 

 from its course round the sun, and falling upon a plantless 

 and lifeless world. Such a wild, hopeless, cheerless, unscientific 

 theory could do nothing towards an explanation of the origin of 

 species, inasmuch as it would merely relegate to another broken- 

 up planet that creation which the science of the 19th century 

 dares not face on this. 



20. The earth becoming covered with verdure, the potentiality 

 of the original germ, selecting its own spot and its own 

 moment, is required by the doctrine of evolution to effect a new 

 exercise of forces hitherto dormant for myriads of ages. A 

 ^^self-adjusting principle comes into play, and the plant is 

 evolved into an animal. 



21. Where, when, how, or why, the theory does not explain. 

 Exercising his finite mind, man treads fearlessly on the path 

 of the Infinite. He has seen an egg become a chicken, a 

 pigeon^s plumage vary, a bright feather in a bird's tail entranc- 

 ing its mate, and upon foundations slight as these he ventures 

 to unravel the greatest, the grandest, the most sublime, and 

 the most divine of all mysteries — that of Creation. 



22. I remark that without an atmosphere no plant or animal 

 could live or grow. Therefore, before the plant or animal there 

 must have been an atmosphere, and geology tells us plainly 

 enough that such atmosphere has been modified from time 

 to time to meet the requirements of living things on the earth. 

 Did that occur by chance? Did that beautiful combination of 

 oxygen, nitrogen, and carbonic acid — a compound of the same 

 constitution in every part of the earth — come into existence by 

 " natural selection " or the struggle for existence ? ''^ 



* A writer in the Edinhurgh Journal {ot Dec, 1872, ha« discovered that, 

 among other good things, the atmosphere of Edinburgh contains more oxygen 

 than other places. 



