the Israelites were in such frequent and intimate communicationshould consider it to possess either more or less scientific importance than may be allotted to these.

Mr. Gladstone's definition of a sermon permits me to suspect that he may not see much difference between that form of discourse and what I call a myth; and I hope it may be something more than the slowness of apprehension, to which I have confessed, which leads me to imagine that a statement which is 'general' but admits exceptions,' which is popular and aims mainly at producing moral impression,' 'summary' and therefore open to criticism of detail,' amounts to a myth, or perhaps less than a myth. Put algebraically, it comes to this, x=a+b+c; always remembering that there is nothing to show the exact value of either a, or b, or c. It is true that a is commonly supposed to equal 10, but there are exceptions, and these may reduce it to 8, or 3, or 0; b also popularly means 10, but being chiefly used by the algebraist as a 'moral' value, you cannot do much with it in the addition or subtraction of mathematical values; c also is quite summary,' and if you go into the details of which it is made up, many of them may be wrong, and their sum total equal to 0, or even to a minus quantity.

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Mr. Gladstone appears to wish that I should (1) enter upon a sort of essay competition with the author of the Pentateuchal cosmogony; (2) that I should make a further statement about some elementary facts in the history of Indian and Greek philosophy; and (3) that I should show cause for my hesitation in accepting the assertion that Genesis is supported, at any rate to the extent of the first two verses, by the nebular hypothesis.

A certain sense of humour prevents me from accepting the first invitation. I would as soon attempt to put Hamlet's soliloquy into a more scientific shape. But if I supposed the 'Mosaic writer' to be inspired, as Mr. Gladstone does, it would not be consistent with my notions of respect for the Supreme Being to imagine Him unable to frame a form of words which should accurately, or at least not inaccurately, express His own meaning. It is sometimes said that, had the statements contained in the first chapter of Genesis been scientifically true, they would have been unintelligible to ignorant people; but how is the matter mended if, being scientifically untrue, they must needs be rejected by instructed people?

With respect to the second suggestion, it would be presumptuous in me to pretend to instruct Mr. Gladstone in matters which lie as much within the province of Literature and History, as in that of Science; but if any one desirous of further knowledge will be so good as to turn to that most excellent and by no means recondite source of information, the Encyclopædia Britannica, he will find, under the letter E, the word 'Evolution,' and a long article on that subject. Now, I do not recommend him to read the first half of the article;

but the second half, by my friend Mr. Sully, is really very good. He will there find it said that in some of the philosophies of ancient India, the idea of evolution is clearly expressed: Brahma is conceived as the eternal self-existent being, which, on its material side, unfolds itself to the world by gradually condensing itself to material objects through the gradations of ether, fire, water, earth, and other elements.' And again: "In the later system of emanation of Sankhya there is a more marked approach to a materialistic doctrine of evolution.' What little knowledge I have of the matter-chiefly derived from that very instructive book Die Religion des Buddha, by C. F. Koeppen, supplemented by Hardy's interesting works-leads me to think that Mr. Sully might have spoken much more strongly as to the evolutionary character of Indian philosophy, and especially of that of the Buddhists. But the question is too large to be dealt with incidentally.

And with respect to early Greek philosophy 2 the seeker after additional enlightenment need go no further than the same excellent storehouse of information :

The early Ionian physicists, including Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes, seek to explain the world as generated out of a primordial matter which is at the same time the universal support of things. This substance is endowed with a generative or transmutative force by virtue of which it passes into a succession of forms. They thus resemble modern evolutionists, since they regard the world, with its infinite variety of forms, as issuing from a simple mode of matter.

Further on, Mr. Sully remarks that 'Heraclitus deserves a prominent place in the history of the idea of evolution,' and he states, with perfect justice, that Heraclitus has foreshadowed some of the special peculiarities of Mr. Darwin's views. It is indeed a very strange circumstance that the philosophy of the great Ephesian more than adumbrates the two doctrines which have played leading parts, the one in the development of Christian dogma, the other in that of natural science. The former is the conception of the Word (λóyos) which took its Jewish shape in Alexandria, and its Christian form 3 in that Gospel which is usually referred to an Ephesian source of some five centuries later date; and the latter is that of the struggle for existence. The saying that 'strife is father and king of all' (πόλεμος πάντων μὲν πατήρ ἐστι, πάντων δὲ βασιλεύς), ascribed to Heraclitus, would be a not inappropriate motto for the Origin of Species.'

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I have referred only to Mr. Sully's article, because his authority is quite sufficient for my purpose. But the consultation of any of the more elaborate histories of Greek philosophy, such as the great work of Zeller, for example, will only bring out the same fact into 2 I said nothing about the greater number of schools of Greek philosophy,' as Mr. Gladstone implies that I did, but expressly spoke of the founders of Greek philosophy.'

3 See Heinze, Die Lehre vom Logos, p. 9, et seq.

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still more striking prominence. I have professed no acquaintance' with either Indian or Greek philosophy, but I have taken a great deal of pains to secure that such knowledge as I do possess shall be accurate and trustworthy.

In the third place, Mr. Gladstone appears to wish that I should discuss with him the question whether the nebular hypothesis is or is not confirmatory of the Pentateuchal account of the origin of things. Mr. Gladstone appears to be prepared to enter upon this campaign with a light heart. I confess I am not, and my reason for this backwardness will doubtless surprise Mr. Gladstone. It is that, rather more than a quarter of a century ago (namely, in February 1859) when it was my duty, as President of the Geological Society, to deliver the Anniversary Address, I chose a topic which involved a very careful study of the remarkable cosmogonical speculation originally promulgated by Immanuel Kant, and subsequently by Laplace, which is now known as the nebular hypothesis. With the help of such little acquaintance with the principles of physics and astronomy as I had gained, I endeavoured to obtain a clear understanding of this speculation in all its bearings. I am not sure that I succeeded; but of this I am certain, that the problems involved are very difficult, even for those who possess the intellectual discipline requisite for dealing with them. And it was this conviction that led me to express my desire to leave the discussion of the question of the asserted harmony between Genesis and the nebular hypothesis to experts in the appropriate branches of knowledge. And I think my course was a wise one; but as Mr. Gladstone evidently does not understand how there can be any hesitation on my part, unless it arises from a conviction that he is in the right, I may go so far as to set out my difficulties.

They are of two kinds-exegetical and scientific. It appears to me that it is vain to discuss a supposed coincidence between Genesis and science, unless we have first settled, on the one hand, what Genesis says, and, on the other hand, what science says.

In the first place, I cannot find any consensus among Biblical scholars as to the meaning of the words 'In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.' Some say that the Hebrew word bara, which is translated 'create,' means 'made out of nothing.' I venture to object to that rendering, not on the ground of scholarship, but of common sense. Omnipotence itself can surely no more make something' out of' nothing than it can make a triangular circle. What is intended by 'made out of nothing' appears to be caused to come into existence,' with the implication that nothing of the same kind previously existed. It is further usually assumed that the heaven and the earth' means the material substance of the universe. Hence the 'Mosaic writer' is taken to imply that where nothing of a material

Reprinted in Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews, 1870.

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nature previously existed, this substance appeared. That is perfectly conceivable, and therefore no one can deny that it may have happened. But there are other very authoritative critics who say that the ancient Israelite who wrote the passage was not likely to have been capable of such abstract thinking, and that, as a matter of philology, bara is commonly used to signify the fashioning,' or 'forming,' of that which already exists. Now it appears to me that the scientific investigator is wholly incompetent to say anything at all about the first origin of the material universe. The whole power of his organon vanishes when he has to step beyond the chain of natural causes and effects. No form of the nebular hypothesis that I know of is necessarily connected with any view of the origination of the nebular substance. Kant's form of it expressly supposes that the nebular material from which one stellar system starts may be nothing but the disintegrated substance of a stellar and planetary system which has just come to an end. Therefore, so far as I can see, one who believes that matter has existed from all eternity has just as much right to hold the nebular hypothesis as one who believes that matter came into existence at a specified epoch. In other words, the nebular hypothesis and the creation hypothesis, up to this point, neither confirm nor oppose one another.

Next, we read in the revisers' version, in which I suppose the ultimate results of critical scholarship to be embodied: And the earth was waste [without form, in the authorised version] and void.' Most people seem to think that this phraseology intends to imply that the matter out of which the world was to be formed was a veritable 'chaos' devoid of law and order. If this interpretation is correct, the nebular hypothesis can have nothing to say to it. The scientific thinker cannot admit the absence of law and order, anywhere or any when, in nature. Sometimes law and order are patent and visible to our limited vision ; sometimes they are hidden. But every particle of the matter of the most fantastic-looking nebula in the heavens is a realm of law and order in itself, and that it is so is the essential condition of the possibility of solar and planetary evolution from the apparent chaos.6

'Without

'Waste' is too vague a term to be worth consideration. form,' intelligible enough as a metaphor, if taken literally, is absurd; for a material thing existing in space must have a superficies, and if it has a superficies it has a form. The wildest streaks of marestail clouds in the sky, or the most irregular heavenly nebulæ, have surely just as much form as a geometrical tetrahedron; and as for void,’ 5 Ancient,' doubtless, but his antiquity must not be exaggerated. For example, there is no proof that the Mosaic' cosmogony was known to the Israelites of Solomon's time.

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• When Jeremiah (iv. 23) says, 'I beheld the earth, and, lo, it was waste and void,' he certainly does not mean to imply that the form of the earth was less definite, or its substance less solid, than before.

how can that be void which is full of matter? As poetry, these lines are vivid and admirable; as a scientific statement, which they must be taken to be if any one is justified in comparing them with another scientific statement, they fail to convey any intelligible conception to my mind.

The account proceeds: 'And darkness was upon the face of the deep.' So be it; but where, then, is the likeness to the celestial nebulæ, of the existence of which we should know nothing unless they shone with a light of their own? And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.' I have met with no form of the nebular hypothesis which involves anything analogous to this process.

I have said enough to explain some of the difficulties which arise. in my mind, when I try to ascertain whether there is any foundation for the contention that the statements contained in the first two verses of Genesis are supported by the nebular hypothesis. The result does not appear to me to be exactly favourable to that contention. The nebular hypothesis assumes the existence of matter having definite properties as its foundation. Whether such matter was created a few thousand years ago, or whether it has existed through an eternal series of metamorphoses of which our present universe is only the last stage, are alternatives, neither of which is scientifically untenable, and neither scientifically demonstrable. But science knows nothing of any stage in which the universe could be said, in other than a metaphorical and popular sense, to be formless or empty, or in any respect less the seat of law and order than it is now.. One might as well talk of a fresh-laid hen's egg being without form and void,' because the chick therein is potential and not actual, as apply such terms to the nebulous mass which contains a potential solar system.

Until some further enlightenment comes to me, then, I confess myself wholly unable to understand the way in which the nebular hypothesis is to be converted into an ally of the Mosaic writer.'7

But Mr. Gladstone informs us that Professor Dana and Professor Guyot are prepared to prove that the first or cosmogonical portion of the Proem not only accords with, but teaches, the nebular hypothesis.' There is no one to whose authority on geological questions I am more

In looking through the delightful volume recently published by the Astronomer Royal for Ireland, a day or two ago, I find the following remarks on the nebular hypothesis, which I should have been glad to quote in my text if I had known them

sooner :

'Nor can it be ever more than a speculation; it cannot be established by observation, nor can it be proved by calculation. It is merely a conjecture, more or less plausible, but perhaps, in some degree, necessarily true, if our present laws of heat, as we understand them, admit of the extreme application here required, and if the present order of things has reigned for sufficient time without the intervention of any influence at present known to us.'-The Story of the Heavens, p. 506.

Would any prudent advocate base a plea, either for or against Revelation, upon the coincidence, or want of coincidence, of the declarations of the latter with the requirements of an hypothesis thus guardedly dealt with by an astronomical expert?