friends, many of them determined friends, all of them promoting interests in which we have part. But those who believe the Bible, and hold to the system of salvation by the Cross, must not be idle. It becomes them to understand their own science, to be ready for its defense and to demand for it the respect of thinking men, as well as the confidence of the people. And we should bear in mind, too, that we shall gain nothing by a mock liberality, nothing by granting too much to natural science. We ought to have our creeds at such a time full and rounded, and to occupy openly all the ground we claim. In this way we shall be best prepared to meet an enemy, and in this way we shall best please the friends of theologic truth.

Let me say in conclusion, a Seminary occupying the position which this does should teach a distinctly pronounced Christain theology. The denomination with which this institution is connected has in the Eastern States spoken its opinions freely and boldly. And now that the inhabitants of newer States prefer to bring with them their churches and their schools, let us see that neither of them suffer by the transfer. New England is a name connected with theology. The sons of New England should not allow her reputation to suffer, either at home or among the diverse populations of the newer States. Moreover, the leading ministers in the Congregational churches in the East have exhibited no uncertain or feeble tendencies in their theological speculations. In zeal, in rapid growth, in earnest piety, other denominations will not yield to them the pre-eminence, but it will doubtless be cordially granted by all in the religious fraternity of our country that the Congregationalists have most loved doctrinal discussion, have sought most persistently to solve the difficult problems of theology, and have done most in modifying theological thought and theological language.

And if, in our day, we are rather wearied than edified by the literature so largely occupied with exercises and taste, with

ability and the highest good, still let us be aware that we are under obligation to those who lingered over these terms with so much affection, and let us remember that we shall cease from all religious affinity with New England when we cease to be interested in the doctrines of Christian theology.

ARTICLE II.

THE NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS.*

To the uninstructed mind the earth seems an eternal thing. Day follows night, the seasons run their course, snow crowns the mountain peak, the ocean rolls its waves, for the old man precisely as when he was a little infant in his mother's arms. As for the sun, it is the same blazing orb which his remotest ancestors have worshiped. The moon loses nothing from the perfection of its disc. Save only a few errant planets, or an occasional comet, the stars are neither brighter nor dimmer than they were of old. The universe is eternal: its matter, at least, has existed forever, said the ancient philosophers. But can we conceive all this matter thus self-existent from all eternity? We are forced by the laws of mind to believe that every finite thing must proceed from some definite cause. The matter of the universe is finite. It must have been caused by something greater than itself; and, since no finite thing can be greater than the universe, its cause must have been. infinite. This infinite cause we call The Creator. And since, logically speaking, the Creator must have existed before the creation, matter can not have endured from all eternity; though, in point of fact, could it be proved that the creation is the only manifestation of the being of the Creator, we might believe that the two have forever co-existed in time. But here, mathematical science comes to our aid. The mathematician

*Introductory Lecture at Rush Medical College, September 27, 1871.

tells us that the constant uniformity believed in by the superficial observer is no uniformity. By unerring figures he demonstrates the existence of motion among the constituents of the universe. All things are in motion, even though their movements be too slow, or too limited, or too distant, to arrest the attention of ordinary observers. As examples of such movements we may instance (1) the gradual deviation of the earth's axis from the pole-star; (2) the circumscribed vibrations of the atoms which unite in a heated bar of iron; or (3) the far off flight of a sun, like Arcturus, moving fifty four miles a second in a direction at right angles to our path in space, yet requiring eight hundred years to change its visible position by a distance equal to the apparent diameter of the moon. These motions beget in all things change; and such changes can not have continued from all eternity. Says Maxwell, concerning the diffusion of heat (Address before the British AssociationNature, Vol. II., p. 421), "If we attempt to ascend the stream of time by giving to its symbol continually diminishing values we are led up to a state of things in which the formula has what is called a critical value; and if we inquire into the state of things the instant before, we find that the formula becomes absurd. We thus arrive at the conception of a state of things which can not be conceived as the physical result of a previous state of things, and we find that this critical condition actually existed at an epoch not in the depths of a past eternity, but separated from the present time by a finite interval." Again: Prof. Tait, of Edinburgh, addressing the British Association, a few days ago, (Nature, Vol. IV., p. 272), upon the results of mathematical investigation, declares that we are enabled distinctly to say that the present order of things has not been evolved through infinite past time by the agency of laws now at work-but must have had a distinctive beginning, a state beyond which we are totally unable to penetrate, a state in fact which must have been produced by other than the now acting causes."

แ

Here, then, we have something tangible for a starting point. If the universe has not always existed as at present, how came it to be as we find it? No man saw its inception; no human being has lived long enough to trace its course by his experience. In the absence of direct knowledge we must answer this question by the aid of such inductions as may become possible. Time was when every one rested content with a misinterpretation of the first chapter of Genesis. Six thousand years ago, the earth began to be; the waters were separated from the firmament; dry land appeared; grass clothed the fields; sun and moon were pasted to the sky; tish, flesh and fowl came forth; six days--and all was done. "But the seashells upon the mountains,--the fossils in the rocks,—how came they there?" "Put there ready made," was always sufficient reply; and any one who doubted of such an interpretation of Scripture was a damnable heretic, fit only to burn here and hereafter. Knowledge of this sort sufficed for the infancy of the race, but a time came when it no longer satisfied the questionings of the thoughtful. Three hundred years ago, when Europe awoke from the slumbers of a thousand years, the problem of the universe was one of the first which pressed the minds of men for a solution. Ever since those days the army of students has continually increased; each one bringing to the common stock his little bundle of facts, until now we are in a fair way to know something definite concerning the life of our earth, at least. And while we can no longer abide the narrow theory of creation expounded by old-fashioned churchmen, we are constrained to admit that every new step in science serves to bring out more fully the literal truth of the magnificent pictorial outline of the Creator's work which is sketched on the first page of the Bible. The picture displays only the work itself; it gives no clue to the proximate causes by which the splendid fabric was produced. The study of those causes involves the study of Natural Science. To that we bend our energies.

Assuming, then, that no one now disputes the theory which assigns to the work of creation a period of unknown length, during which the earth slowly advanced toward its present condition, it may be well for us to consider by what steps the present stage of development has been attained. Since there is no detailed history of the development of the universe, we are compelled to conjecture its method after considering the results of the activity of the forces by which we now find matter kept in motion. Could those results be fully traced, we should possess the key to the whole process; but the investigations of scientific men have not yet penetrated far into the gloomy realm of the unknown, and consequently when we would account for any given series of phenomena, we are often driven to the use of hypothesis-that is, an ingenious approximation to the truth, for want of the truth itself. Such hypotheses are esteemed in proportion to their capacity for connecting facts and for stimulating inquiry. When they can no longer accomplish these functions, they soon give place to something stronger-something better.

Of the various hypotheses of the Creation, which have been advanced, two powerful rivals have contended for the mastery, viz., the Special Creation hypothesis and the Evolution hypothesis. With the outlines of the first, you are all, doubtless well acquainted, for it is only an attempted amplification of the literal Bible barrative. It maintains the doctrine of a Creator who works upon matter in human fashion. When this Creator was ready, He formed the earth by the word of His power. At the right time, He made and placed upon the earth the first plant, the first animal, the first man. These facts no one denies, but the hypothesis is defective, because it leaves out of consideration all natural causes, by means of which these first beginnings may have been made to appear. Michael Angelo, in his great painting of the Creation, gave this hypothesis pictorial expression under the form of an old man with venerable beard, kicking stars and planets into exis