60 
Christian system. It transcends both demonstration and ex- 
perience, and is the widest and deepest of all truths. But no 
sooner has this doctrine, borrowed from the analysts, been 
adopted by Agnostic metaphysicians, and raised to an in- 
tellectual throne, as a substitute for the living, personal 
God of the Bible, than it is confronted by a rival, a younger 
son of the same parents, the Dissipation of Energy. It is 
the same analysts, from whom the first doctrine has been 
borrowed, who are the sponsors of this rival and suc- 
cessor. Like the giant in the Hindoo tale, the new divinity 
of fatalism places its hand on its own head, and in a 
moment is reduced to ashes. I will give three statements 
of this second doctrine from Professor B. Stewart's Conser- 
vation of Enenjy, Thomson & Tait's Natural Philosophy, and 
the recent work, The Unseen Universe. The first writes as 
follows : — 
“Although in a strictly mechanical sense there is a conserva- 
tion of energy, as regards use or fitness for living things, 
the energy of the universe is in process of deterioration. 
Diffused heat forms what we may call the great waste-heap of 
the universe, and this is growing larger every day. We have 
regarded the universe, not as a collection of matter, but as an 
energetic agent, a lamp. Looked at in this light, it is a 
system that had a beginning, and must have an end ; for a 
process of degradation cannot be eternal. If we regard it as 
a candle that has been lit, we become absolutely certain that it 
cannot have been burning from eternity, and that a time will 
come when it will cease to burn." 
Sir W. Thomson writes thus in his joint treatise, with 
Professor Tait, on Natural Philosophy . “ It is quite certain 
that the solar system cannot have gone on, as at present, for a 
few hundred thousand or a million years, without the irrevo- 
cable loss, by dissipation, not annihilation, of a considerable 
portion of the entire energy, initially in store for sun heat 
and Plutonic action. It is quite certain that the whole store 
of energy in the solar system has been greater in all past time 
than at present. It is probable that the secular rate of dissipa- 
tion has been in some direct proportion to the total amount of 
energy at any time after the commencement of the present 
order of things, and has thus been diminishing from age to 
age .... Hypotheses assuming equability of sun and storm 
for a million years cannot be wholly true .... I think wo 
may say, with much probability that the consolidation of the 
earth's crust cannot have taken place less than twenty, nor 
more than 400 million years ago. I conclude that Leibnitz's 
