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these things at the outset, that you may know that I am fully 
aware of the odium it is possible that even yet may be 
attempted to be cast upon me for daring to bring this subject 
before you. 
4. I am deeply grateful, under these circumstances, that 
the Council of this Society has allowed me to read a Paper on 
this subject. Here, as every author that comes before us 
knows (and some have felt it very deeply), we are perfectly 
free and unsparing in our criticisms. But I court, and have 
always courted, the most unsparing criticism ; and I may here 
repeat what I said in my paper written for the British Asso- 
ciation at Cambridge — namely, that “ throughout this paper I 
shall endeavour to use the plainest and most definite language 
— not arrogantly, but earnestly — and, as it were, to court 
refutation, if refutation of what is advanced be possible.” 
5. Only one word more of preface. Fortunately, as regards 
this subject, no odium theologicum need be evolved. Whatever 
it may once have been, astronomy has long been out of the 
category of sciences whose teaching is supposed to be contrary 
to Scripture. The piety of Newton himself, and of many of 
his most eminent followers, has served to give almost a religious 
character to his great theory, which is often even used in the 
pulpit to lead men's minds “from nature up to nature's God” ; 
and, in point of fact, religious objections have actually been 
urged against my attempt to prove that the theory is untenable \ 
At the same time I am bound to observe, as one who has 
watched philosophical opinions very narrowly for the last 
eight-and-twenty years, with my convictions as to this subject 
always in my mind, that I know of nothing besides in science 
which so completely buoys up the atheistic and infidel classes 
of thinkers and public writers, in their almost stolid worship 
of human science and pride in man's intellectual power, as the 
faith that they all have, and mostly without the least pretence 
even of personal knowledge, in the certainty of the demon- 
strations of the Princvpia of Newton, and of the Meccmique 
Celeste of Laplace. M. Comte has gone so far as to say, with 
a shocking impiety, that “ the heavens declare not the glory 
of God, but of Copernicus, Newton, and Laplace” ; while 
Mr. Darwin, and Professors Huxley and Tyndall, in their 
writings, though on very different subjects, all glance back, 
as to a kind of foundation upon which they can lean with 
confidence, to the astronomical theory which forms the basis 
of Newton's Principia . 
6. Having thus cleared the ground, it may be a relief to 
many, though it may startle most of my hearers, if I now, in 
the first place, observe that the u Current Physical Astronomy” 
of the day, as, for instance, we find it taught in the Astronomer 
