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metallic in proportion as they are nearer to the central portions 
of the nebulae. 
This is found to be the case in fact, the densities of the 
exterior planets (Jupiter and Saturn for example) being rela- 
tively small, and their atmospheres very large and highly 
absorbing, as if containing a larger proportion of metalloid 
substances. 
Ihe above may be taken as an interesting case of legitimate 
speculation requiring and giving motive for further experiments 
and research. 
I ought now in the natural order, after this brief and neces- 
sarily imperfect survey of the chief of the recent astronomical 
discoveries which have more or less bearing on the subject 
of religion, to take up the subject of recent discoveries in the 
atomic theory. But as we shall, in this instance, be brought 
face to face with material atheism, I think it best, before this, 
to make a few brief remarks on Milks Three Essays on Re- 
ligion, and Strauss’s Old and New Faith, that the whole of 
this disagreeable part of my duty may be discussed at once. 
Many among you have, I doubt not, thought it necessary to 
read the three essays of Mill, and to those who have not, it 
may be useful to bring before you a few of the results — probably 
the final results — of the philosophical system of this really great 
and profound thinker, of whom it was said (in some instances 
boastfully) that he lived a long life absolutely without any con- 
sideration of God and religion. 
These Essays are a melancholy termination to the labours of 
a lifetime of philosophical research, but they have at least 
dispelled that illusion. He did not, and we may be permitted 
to doubt whether any man ever did, live absolutely without God 
in the world; and the Essays show that he has even thought 
and, I believe, has been sincerely anxious about those deep 
questions (which vitally affect every person born into the world), 
life, death, the immortality of the soul, God, and future judg- 
ment. They are all bound up with our nature, and form, as it 
were, part of ourselves. We must ask at times of ourselves, 
Whence came I ? and whither am I going ? • we must all 
feel (at least I doubt whether any living man capable of thinking 
has ever avoided the necessity of feeling) that there is something 
besides ourselves and the visible creation, and that that some- 
thing is God, whether it be assumed to be the Pantheistic God 
almost identified with creation itself, or the God omnipotent 
and eternal of the Christian. Then again man cannot, if he 
will (even after a life of evenly maintained philosophical scepti- 
cism), avoid the occasional or frequent intrusion of the thought 
