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that was a theory which was set forth as one of the indisputable facts of 
science. Mrs. Somerville, in her Astronomy , told you to look into the 
heavens and see there the masses of star-dust or objects irresolvable or re- 
solvable into worlds in the chaotic condition in which this world was sup- 
posed to have been in originally. But how quietly that theory has glided 
out ! Indeed it has hardly been assailed. The only thing that really assailed 
it was the large telescope of Lord Bosse, which showed that a vast number 
of these supposed irresolvable nebulae were really resolvable into multitudes 
of definite stars similar to the Milky Way, and then the nebular theory dis- 
appeared — 
Mr. Warington. — It has not quite gone yet. 
Rev. W. Mitchell. — Well, it has very nearly, so far as scientific accept- 
ance is concerned. Now there has been another geological theory which has 
caused men to indulge in so many interpretations, and to give themselves 
such exegetical labour among the Hebrew words of the first chapter of 
Genesis, so as to meet the supposed geological fact that there were a vast 
number of successive creations on the earth, separated from one another by 
long and definite intervals of time. But Sir Charles Lyell has since shown 
very fairly that the successive-creation theory is no longer tenable — that it 
cannot be held — that it will not bear a strict scientific investigation — 
Mr. Reddie. — Except Sir Roderick Murchison, perhaps, all geologists have 
given it up. 
Rev. W. Mitchell. — It has been replaced by Darwin’s successive-de- 
velopment theory ; but how long will that last ? It has been broached very 
lately, and it has been found already by its author that it requires to be 
bolstered up by another hypothesis — pangenesis. I say that that develop- 
ment theory will have to follow the course of the nebular theory. It has 
been the same with the theory of the igneous formation of the earth, and with 
almost all the great geological theories which have caused men to make such 
strange interpretations of the first chapter of Genesis. I know I shall be 
thought a heretic when I say it, but there still lingers in the minds of men a 
notion that there is indisputable evidence in the strata of the earth that 
animals, birds, and fishes must have been existing on the earth during 
millions of years ? But Science is not able to demonstrate that, and fails 
whenever she attempts it ; and she has been just as fallacious with regard to 
other geological theories. I say, cannot you rest patiently and wait for the 
evidence of science, and interpret the facts of science with due modesty ? 
What I complain of is that the modern course of geological investigation 
has been entirely opposed to those sound Baconian rules of induction by 
which such great advances in science have been made. Geological science 
has been kept back because geologists have neglected the sound rules of in- 
duction. Read Sir Charles Lyell. He makes the admission — the candid 
admission— that the hasty reception of geological hypotheses, as, for instance, 
the successive-creation theory, has prevented geologists from accepting a vast 
number of real geological facts which have been brought before them, and 
which have been ignored because they w'ere not found to square with these 
