64 
going on seems beyond a doubt. But a further suggestion 
is made, that, when the last collision of suns and systems 
occurs, there must ensue a diffusion that undoes the previous 
concentration. So that apei’iod, inconceivably vast, of evolu- 
tion, that is, condensation, may be followed by a paroxysm of 
dissolution, that is, of re-expansion into nebula once more. 
Thus the mighty pendulum of the universe may swing on 
backwards and forwards for ever. 
Now on these three forms of the nebular theory, linked 
closely with the doctrine of evolution, and the conservation 
of energy, two questions must arise. Do these witnesses 
agree ? Are they not in plain contradiction to each other ? 
And next, are they, where they agree, certain truths of 
science, or imperfect and perhaps erroneous conjectures, 
on subjects where all the data are not at present exhaustively 
known ? Has this doctrine of an incessant, purposeless oscil- 
lation from nebulous mist into suns and starry systems, and 
from these back to mist again, dark, dreary, and hopeless, on 
its moral side, any claim whatever to be reckoned a true and 
just exposition of the known laws of physical change ? I 
believe firmly the exact reverse. I hold it to be as baseless 
in physics as it is full of darkness and gloom to all the deeper 
wants and aspirations of the human heart. It degrades, that 
inscrutable Power, which it refuses to name, and of which it 
affirms that we can know nothing, into a drivelling idiot, 
engaged for ever ff in dropping buckets into empty wells, 
and growing old in drawing nothing up who goes on, like a 
convict under his sentence, turning for ever and ever, to no 
profit, the vast tread-wheel of the universe. 
I pass by the question of beginning or no beginning, in 
which the author of The Natural History oj Creation con- 
tradicts flatly, not only the very first word of Divine Revela- 
tion, but the clear voice of sound reason. Be it so, that 
matter is unlimited in quantity, and in past duration. jW hat 
result must follow ? The doctrines of the conservation of 
force and matter, instead of being confirmed, will be turned 
into unmeaning sounds. For the essence of these laws is that 
the amount of matter or force is always the same. But there 
can be no measurement of that which is infinite and un- 
measurable. If the laws are true, the quantity of matter 
must be finite, and the quantity of energy must be finite and 
measurable also. 
Again, if motion is essential to matter, and it has always 
beerT moving, the logical ground of the nebular theory is 
destroyed. Motion is the effect of force. In the present 
