267 



68. By this beautiful and adaptive law the ice necessarily 

 becomes lighter than water, and so, floating at the top, all the 

 inhabitants of the freezing water are saved from destruction ; 

 for if ice were heavier than water it would fall to the bottom, 

 and thus gradually the eutire water would be frozen. 



69. Professor Tyndall states that Count Rumford's inference 

 is unsound, because he described the property of freezing water 

 as the only instance in nature, while it is now known that iron 

 and bismuth do the same thing ; that is to say, they require 

 more room in the solid crystalline condition than in the adjacent 

 molten condition^' ; and he remarks, There is no fish to be 

 taken care of here, still the ^ contrivance ' is the same.^' Now, 

 surely this is shallow and inconclusive reasoning. Because 

 the law mentioned obtains when we melt two metals, there- 

 fore there is no contrivance when it is applied to all living 

 things in the waters of the world where water freezes ? Count 

 Rumford was talking eloquently about the evident design 

 of a Providence. Professor Tyndall thinks that because the 

 law exists where the philosopher can see no contrivance or 

 design — where, in fact, it would be impossible to see either — viz., 

 in the crucible of the laboratory — it cannot be providential or 

 designing when applied to the preservation of myriads of living 

 things; and he concludes his unscientific, unphilosophic, and 

 gratuitously irreligious criticism by remarking : But both life 

 and its conditions set forth the operations of inscrutable Power. 

 We know not its origin, we know not its end. And the pre- 

 sumption, if not the degradation, rests with those who place 

 upon the throne of the universe a magnified image of themselves, 

 and make its doings a mere colossal imitation of their own.^'* 



70. Of course the philosopher who writes thus does not 

 believe in his Bible. I should be sorry to make such a state- 

 ment lightly, but I will quote the writer^s own words. 



" Man himself, they say, has made his appearance in the 

 world since that time of ice (the Glacial period) ; but of the real 

 period and manner of man's introduction little is professed to 

 be known, since to make them square with science, new mean- 

 ings have been found for4he beautiful myths and stories in the 

 Bible.'' 



71. It certainly appears to me that a philosophy which places 

 the Bible in such terms before the youth of the world must 

 prove most injurious to the healthy settlement of religious 

 thought/'' which is at all times in the young susceptible of false 

 impressions. Such philosophers altogether forget that they 

 have to prove that the Bible is untrue. I much question whether 



* Op. cit., p. 125 ; Op. aV.,pp. 151-2. 



