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scope, we have been, to a great extent, led back to the notion that 
formerly prevailed as to the nebular theory, of which there are some half a 
dozen varieties. I for one never contest points of this sort if they seem 
probable. Let it be accepted that some form of the nebular theory has 
not yet been established, but some day will be, — nay, let us treat it as 
if it were established, and that we had to adjust or review our ideas of 
creation in accordance with it. After all you have gained nothing, you 
have established nothing in contradiction, on the ground of revelation. 
All you will have arrived at will be some indication of the way in 
which the various globes have been formed. The Bible says nothing 
about it, but that there was some one who created the materia prima out 
of which the stars were made ; that in the beginning God was. Take any of the 
atoms that are non-living, and which the nebular theory has to assume. You 
get them subject to certain laws of condensation and rotary motion, and 
you find them throwing off outer rings until you get an earth and various 
planetary relations ; but when you have got it you have got nothing that 
ever did live or that ever will. But the world we live in is not one of that 
sort. Here you must come to something beyond the nebular theory, and if 
you get in one case a world in which there is a moisture, and sea, and sky, 
but not a fragment of moss or lichen, while, on the other hand, you get a 
world in which there has come to be a little bit of vegetable fibre, although 
it be not more than an inch in length, there is between those two worlds 
a chasm which is to be measured only by infinity. You have here the 
evident design of God ; that He has done this ; that you have something 
you have not got in your laboratory ; — something no man can produce, 
and that if you say God does not exist it is necessary for you to invent Him. 
You are bound to assign a cause adequate to the production of the effect. 
Look at these gases ! They will not combine except in a certain way. The 
late Clerk Maxwell, who probably knew more than any other man now living 
on this subject of atoms and original molecules, has told us that the primary 
atoms bear all the marks of a manufactured article. I remember Dr. 
Carpenter writing to the Athenceum and dealing with the theory that, 
under certain conditions, from mud and slime and ooze, you could produce 
the living from the non-living. But Dr. Carpenter says, — let every con- 
dition of electrical or chemical or other force be granted, still the production 
of the living from the non-living is not probable ; and he adds, with our 
present knowledge on the subject it is absolutely inconceivable. Dr. 
Carpenter is admitted by Mr. Darwin to be one who probably knows 
more than any other on this subject, and I say that, for the creation 
of the original atoms, for the creation of the manufactured article, you 
may have got your world of atoms, but you have nothing that can live ; 
but when you get a vegetable fibre you have got something which is wholly 
different, something due to an unknown force, and I ask, what is it that 
makes that fibre grow ? 
Capt. F. Petrie. — I am sure I am expressing an opinion which will be 
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