and no capacity for evil; it presumes him to be beyond all limit of time and place, and he is before all time and place." (Professor Murphy.)

SCIENTIFIC VIEW OF THE INSPIRED RECORD.

From an interesting paper by Francis Peek, in the Contemporary Review for June, 1882, we take an extract showing that scientific attempts to account for the origin of the universe without the intervention of a Creator are utter failures, while the inspired account is in harmony with the facts:

"Opening," he says, "the book of Genesis, we find it there stated that in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.' We now know, by means of scientific investigation, that this statement has to be read as referring to the original creation, which took place many, probably millions of years before man became a living soul; for geology has revealed a wonderful world that existed long ages before the earth assumed its present condition. This is proved by the fossil ruins which compose the coal of the subterranean mines and the strata of the lofty cliffs. The vast space of time that elapsed after the beginning is often urged as refuting revelation, but it is entirely consistent with it. In the beginning,' it is said, 'God created the heaven and the earth.' Here the first revelation closes, and a long pause ensues while the course of the earlier creation runs through its appointed ages and comes to an end; after which, as the narrative proceeds, we learn that at the time the second statement commences, 'the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of it.' The account given by scientific men of the state of the globe during what is termed the glacial period presents a striking confirmation of this further statement. At that time, they tell us, while deep down below lay the ruins of an earlier creation, the heat absorbed from the sun through many ages remained latent in the long since concreted vegetation, and our globe, which was a formless mass covered with an icy shroud, lay void in the blackness of darkness. The investigations give us no clew to the cause of the change which then took place, but from revelation we learn that at that time of desolation the Spirit of God was brooding over the formless void, and that 'God said, Let there be light; and there was light,' with its accompanying heat, by which the world we now see was evolved. Science, still in perfect accord with revelation, tells us that at that particular period, from some unknown cause, the ruined world began to be re-formed, the

vast masses of ice with which it was covered gradually melted, and in melting glided down from higher to lower levels, grinding into powder in their impetuous course the hard rocks on which they had rested, and, carrying the crushed material into the valleys and plains, enriched them with the fertile débris. Science, as has been said, entirely fails even to suggest an admissible cause for this change, but from revelation we learn that the change was caused by the word of God, though the means by which it was effected are not revealed. It may be that then an alteration took place in the position of the earth as regards the sun, or otherwise; but whatever the secondary cause, both science and revelation concur in testifying that, in the beginning of the recreation, light and heat made their influence felt upon the earth, the darkness ceased, the icy covering yielded beneath the sunny influence, and the soil became gradually fitted, by the operation of glacial action, for the vegetation with which it was by and by to be clothed. Then revelation makes known how, by the continued exercise of God's power, this earth was made to bring forth grass, and herbs, and trees, and fruit; then came the lower animal creation; and, finally, man was formed and fitted to occupy his prepared habitation.

"It is urged by some that the account given of the separate creations, on what are termed in Genesis the seven days, is refuted by Darwin's theory of the evolution of species, the famous hypothesis which has taken so great a hold upon the minds of men of science. But, kept within reasonable limits, there is nothing in this theory contrary to revelation, for that which is evolved from a created germ is not less the work of the Creator than the original production; and if it should come to be absolutely demonstrated that the first created species were limited in number, but possessed within themselves the power of developing kindred kinds fitted for the various conditions of existence, such a fact is quite consistent with a reasonable acceptance of the teaching of revelation.

"No more than just this degree of modification of view on each side is needed to enable us to say that thus far at least science and revelation are in harmony. From both we learn that at some point in the vast eternity the heavens and the earth came into being, and the things which we now see were formed of 'things which do not now appear.' Men of faith believe that this occurred through the operation of a first great Cause; skeptical men of culture, that it occurred by the hap of chance; and the question at issue is, Which of these views is the more reasonable? As regards the earlier creation, neither revelation nor science tells us any thing, but we find wonderful testimony to its gran

deur in the fossil remains of a majestic vegetation which lie beneath our feet, bearing witness to the existence of a beautiful world which, from some unknown cause, passed away. For there is evidence of a terrible catastrophe. The glorious primitive world became a ruin, and this globe remained through long ages void, while 'darkness was upon the face of the deep.' Then, while science is still dumb, revelation takes up the story, and sings to us in its beautiful Psalm of Creation the genesis of man's abode."

CREATION.

"Let there be light!" and chaos fled
Back to his midnight cell,

And light, the earliest gift of Heaven,
On cradled nature fell.

Earth from the encroaching waters rose,
Strong ocean knew his place,

Bold rivers forced their unknown ways,
Young streams began their race.

Forth came the sun, that monarch proud,
And at his genial rays

The springing groves and penciled flowers
Put on new robes of praise.

But when his weary couch he sought,
Behold! the regent queen,
Enthroned on silver car, pursued

Her nightly course serene.

And glorious shone the arch of heaven,
With stars serenely bright,

That bowed to every passing cloud
Their coronets of light.

Life roamed along the verdant mead,
Life glided through the flood,
And, tuneful 'mid the woven boughs,
Watched o'er the nestling brood.

But then, with undisputed might,
That Architect divine

His own immortal essence breathed

Into a clay-built shrine;

And stamped the image on the Man,
And gave him kingly power,
And brought him to a home of love
In sinless Eden's bower.

Then music, from undying harps,
The young creation blest,

And forth the first-born Sabbath spread
Its dove-like wing of rest.

It came with holy gladness fraught,
With pure, benignant ray,

And God himself the lesson taught

To keep the Sabbath day.

(Mrs. Sigourney.)

WHAT DENIAL INVOLVES.

Denial of the existence of a Supreme Mind leads to other absurdities. Thus says Rev. Dr. Luther Lee:

"1. When infidels deny the existence of a Creator, they virtually affirm that nothing has produced something, which is an impossibility. If there had once been nothing, there never could have been any thing; hence something must be eternal.

2. When, to escape the above, they affirm that the visible universe is eternal, they only increase the difficulty. Creation wears upon its face, marks of intelligent design, and there must have been an intelligent Designer. If there is no intelligent Creator, these marks of design have no cause, and nothing has produced something, or something exists without cause. Vegetable, animal, and human life exists in such a succession of lives, as proves there must have been a first life of each kind.

"3. When infidels affirm that these different degrees and forms of life are the results of nature's own spontaneity evolving the higher from the lower, they obtain no relief. Nature has never given any evidence of such a spontaneity, and never produces any thing without a germ, seed, or a scion. It leaves the beginning unaccounted for. Where did the first plant, first tree, animal, and first man come from? It avails nothing to talk of a chain consisting of links of men, monkeys, oysters, and vegetables. Where did the first link come from? This phantom folly has been chased far enough."

Science has enlarged our conceptions of God beyond measure, except when it has lost sight of the Evolver in the thing evolved, and made the creation create itself out of hard, dry atoms and forces. It is receiving new and wonderful revelations of God in nature. Study the eye and ear. Apply the telescope and microscope. "I can no longer be satisfied with the orthodox conception of a God out of the world." (Lessing.) "Science is the study of the modes of the

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Divine work. When we see how a thing is made, we should not say that it was not made at all, or made itself." (Le Conte.) 'We can not worship a law, however simple and fruitful it may be; nor a force, if it be blind, however powerful and universal it may be ; nor an ideal, however pure, if it is an abstraction: we worship only a being who is living perfection, under the highest forms-thought, love." (Caro.)

Professor E. D. Morris observes that "it was Coleridge who gave us the equation, World-God=0; and the correlative equation, God-World Absolute Reality. If there be no God, no revelation, no future life, then this world, with all the science thereof and all the glory thereof, equals nothing is emptiness, utter and everlasting. All science without God is nothing. But if faith, with a wider horizon and a purer vision than science possesses, sees a living God, and in him sees a revelation given and eternal life assured, then, though the world be nothing, though all its verities and attainments fade out of sight forever, still the absolute reality survives, and the soul finds peace and rest eternal. Such faith knows Christ to be real and his Word to be true; it finds abundant proofs where proof is needed; it rises from probabilities to certainty, and Christ becomes to it at once true science and life everlasting. In the exercise of such faith, reason finds its own justification; and with such faith at the center, all the truths of science fall into their places, and are forever harmonized both with Christianity and with one another."

We have never had a naturalist of higher scientific attainments and profounder insight into the works of nature than Agassiz, who wrote: "I will frankly tell you that my experience in prolonged scientific investigations convinces me that a belief in God-a God who is behind and within the chaos of vanishing points of human knowledge-adds a wonderful stimulus to the man who attempts to penetrate into the regions of the unknown. Of myself I may say, that I never make the preparations for penetrating into some small province of nature hitherto undiscovered without breathing a prayer to the Being who hides his secrets from me, only to allure me graciously on to the unfolding them.

KNOWLEDGE OF GOD NOT DEPENDENT UPON

LEARNING.

But the proof of God's existence does not depend upon knowledge of chemistry, nor of astronomy, nor of geology, nor of biology. Long before the rise of these sciences man had infallible proof of God's