made to resolve into separate stars the last remaining nebulæ. And even then, the a priori possibility holds. good. Saturn's rings will continue to discuss the question with any comet that may happen to drop in. It may not be scientific truth, for its demonstration has not yet been completed, but it is true science for all that; because it is the product of a fancy disciplined, mathematical, experimental, and observant."*

But the case is not by any means so simple as Mr. Lesley supposes. It is not a blank page on which he may write his guesses, on the slender chance that they may one day be shown to be right. Though were that the case it would give no warrant for the attempts of the evolutionists to overturn Christianity, nor for their arrogant blasphemies against the word of God. Their theory is not only not proven, but it can never be proven; it can never become successful.

SCIENCE KNOWS NOT WHAT THE WORLD IS MADE OF.

The Nebular Theory is a theory of world-building. In order to build anything—a house, or a ship, or a world— you must have materials to make it with, and you must have power to move and fix your materials. The architect, of course, must know of what materials he means to build his house, or his ship, or his world; and he must know the kind of power he means to use, whether of men, or horses, or of steam engines, and the amount of it, in the work of building.

There is a ship lying in the bay waiting for a cargo of wheat. One of our Nebular notionists comes along and admires the vessel. He proposes to describe to you the process of its construction. You ask him, "Were you present when this ship was built and launched ?”. "No; but I know about it, just as well as though I had

*Man's Origin and Destiny, Philadelphia, 1868, p. 25.

been there."—"What materials have been used in building her? Is she oak-built, and copper-fastened? or is she only pine, treenailed? Or is that an iron ship? or is it made of Siemens' new steel plates?" To your astonishment your polite friend replies, "Indeed, my dear sir, I do not know of what materials that ship is built. I do not think anybody here knows. The only thing we do positively know is, that they are unlike any with which we are acquainted.* But I shall have great pleasure in giving you a scientific description of the process of building that ship."

That opens your eyes. You perceive that the poor gentleman has wandered from an asylum for the insane, and excuse yourself on the plea of business from listening to his lecture on ship-building.

This is exactly the state of the case with these theorists of the Nebular Hypothesis. They do not know the stuff of which even our own earth is built; and yet they pretend to teach us the process of its construction. Not only are they ignorant now of the materials of our globe, but they must always continue ignorant, till the day of the general conflagration; and it is probable that their attention may then be demanded by more urgent business. The proof of their ignorance is plain, and they do not deny it.

Let us look at the demonstrations of this assertion. Our earth is a globe of about 8000 miles in diameter. Two thirds of its surface are covered with water, and inaccessible to man. Of the remaining one third, more than half is almost as inaccessible, being covered with snows, arid sands, and forests. Of the accessible parts, less than one thousandth part has been penetrated by mines, or geologically observed where upheaved by earthquakes. The deepest excavations made have been

*Reed's Geology.

sunk less than two miles; and the greatest upheavals observed represent perhaps eight miles of original geological depth of strata, or one thousandth part of the diameter of the earth. It would be a gross exaggeration to say that anybody knows, or can possibly know, by observation, one millionth part of the substance of the earth.

It may be said that "we may judge the unseen interior of the earth from the rocks visible at the surface." But this is forbidden to us, for we know the density of the whole earth, including the surface of the sea, to be twice as heavy as granite; indeed to be about as dense as castiron. And when we ask, "What is this ponderous substance, heavier than iron, which constitutes the solid structure of our earth, compared with which the geolog ical strata are thinner than a coat of paint on a brick house?" we are simply told, "It must be unlike anything with which we are acquainted." There is no dispute about this ignorance; nobody ever pretended to explore the interior of our globe; no one ever expects to observe its rocks and minerals, its strata, their dips and cleavages; science must be eternally ignorant of that subject.

SCIENTIFIC IGNORANCE OF THE HEAVENS.

The ignorance of these theorists regarding the materials of the sun, stars, comets, and nebulæ, is if possible still more profound and extensive. The sun has been burning for six thousand years at least; and were the earth a solid lump of coal, and projected into the sun, it would be consumed in a month, in a fire ten times as intense as is required to dissipate iron into vapor.* What is the fuel which feeds this tremendous fire? Science declares her ignorance. When we come down even to such plain matters as the heat of the sun, and the cold of infinite space-the two fundamental elements of the

*Herschel's Outlines, vi. sec. 400.

whole nebular business-we find the most conflicting statements put forth with the greatest positiveness by the most eminent scientists. But they cannot all be right, and it is possible that all may be wrong. As only one. out of a score or more can be right, our faith in scientific assertions must be greatly shaken. For instance, the heat of the sun, according to Newton, is 1669° Fahrenheit; Pouillet, 1561°; Fourdroyant 7500°; Waterston, 9000°; Spencer, 27,000°; St. Clair Deville 9500°; Rosette, 20,000°; Secchi, 5,344,840°; Ericcson, however, thinks that is a little too hot for comfort, and reduces it one half, to 2,726,700°; Herschel and Pouillet made the temperature of space 224 below zero. The Mount Whitney observations make it twice as cold, 459° below zero. And they make the sun's heat about one half more than Herschel's estimate. Now while scientific men are thus floundering and groping about so plain a matter as the present heat of the sun, how can they pretend to tell us about his heat millions of years ago? Yet the whole nebular theory depends on the cooling down of the sun's heat.

The comets are the most numerous of the bodies of our solar system. The number of comets in the heavens is said by an eminent astronomer to be greater than that of fishes in the sea. Of what materials are they composed? Science acknowledges again that she does not know. And yet these theorists pretend to describe to us the formation of suns and comets, of whose very materials they are themselves profoundly, grossly, and hopelessly ignorant!

Of the forces of even our own solar system they are equally ignorant, knowing a little of gravitation, but nothing of the others. The tails of comets sometimes shoot out, in less than a second, flashes extending

Eclectic Magazine, July, 1880, p. 126.

↑ Harper's Magazine, cited in the California Christian Advocate, May, 5, 1883.

over two and a half degrees, or 4,600,000 miles. Here is a new power, or at least a new revelation of a power unknown before, traveling with more than twenty times. the velocity of light.* What is this power? What force did its tremendous energies exert in the formation of the heavens and the earth? Again, science confesses her ignorance. And yet, in the face of these acknowledg ments of ignorance of the fundamental facts of the problem, these theorists have the face to contradict the Bible as false, and to offer to tell us truly how the worlds were made, though they own that they do not know the forces employed in their construction, and never can know of what materials they are made! And they call that Science! Beside such science, spirit-rapping becomes almost respectable, and the writing on Slade's slates philosophical; for the spirits say they see what they reveal, but the Nebular notionists confess that they reveal what they do not see, what nobody has ever seen, and what nobody ever can see. And they expect us to follow their disciplined scientific fancy" away beyond the realm of facts into the regions of atheism and despair. "If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch."

66

OBJECTIONS TO THE NEBULAR ABSURDITIES.

We have seen that the Nebular Hypothesis is a mere empty theory, unproven and impossible to be proved, from our necessary ignorance of the materials of the world, and of the great cosmical forces used in its construction. This ignorance utterly demolishes its claim to be regarded as in any sense scientific. It is purely a work of imagination-as much so as the Arabian Nights' Entertainments-and of just the same authority as a record of facts.

I might rest the case here, and would do so, had not *Dick's Siderial Heavens, chap. xx. Nicholl's Solar System, p. 76.