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phenomena. There is some confusion here. The lightning 
flashes, — the magnet attracts, — storm desolates, — the sun 
gives forth his warmth, — electricity circles the world, — light 
envelops creation — are not these phenomena of the universe ? 
are they not integrants of it ? could the universe be, without 
them ? To what phenomena, then, does the Professor refer ? 
and wherein lies the difference between its phenomena and its 
operations ? Whenever natural history seeks to explain the 
genesis of nature by natural means alone, I cannot divest my 
mind of a feeling of vagueness, of assumptions, of incomplete- 
ness. Even granting a force originally invested in nature, 
capable of throwing off all the magnificence of space, and 
sustaining it, by the slow degrees claimed for its works, that 
does not remove the materialistic creative movements : we 
can only recognize a power bestowing power — the creator of 
the material, leaving it to exhibit both the living and all 
the material phenomena flashed upon us from myriads of the 
sublimities of unlimited grandeur : — a shapeless mass was 
therefore the only act of true creation ! a shapeless mass from 
which all else was — developed ! a shapeless mass which filled 
space with glory — which gave forth life, and death, and 
immortality ! — a wondrous creed — a conclusion wild and un- 
philosophical. 
In the work on “Man,” just named, every one knowing 
some of the author's previous works, would of course be 
prepared for strong opinions in favour of the geology whose 
fundamental principles have never been settled, and for the 
whole succession of imaginative deductions which might reason- 
ably be expected from such premises ; but I was surprised and 
pained to read the following : — “ It is of no use, then, when 
new questions like the present are mooted, for certain minds 
to work themselves into a frenzy of orthodoxy, and savagely 
smear themselves with theological war-paint, and raise the 
old war-whoop of the Bible in danger.” The man who could 
scatter opprobrious sentiments like these, broadcast, instead 
of the soft word and the hard argument, must have imbibed 
such a bitterness of prejudice, as to be hardly trustworthy 
when estimating the preponderance of credibility for or against 
the Bible. 
In the same essay there is one quite new doctrine taught — 
at least new to me — that “ time is without limit.” It is well 
to have prepared an eternity, to work out the results of a 
philosophy which teaches the development hypothesis, that- 
there was no such thing as independent creation unless of the 
physical, and of that physical without its phenomena ! 
Although this speculation may have an eternity for its school- 
