universe full of homogeneous matter can not originate any motion; and a universe half full can not perpetuate the motion imparted to it. It is true that by giving us a limited lump of matter we obtain motion by the attraction of gravitation; but then this is a limited supply of motion, and so must find its limit, and come to an end, by the very necessity of the case. A limited universe can not sustain an eternal motion. Grant the power to start the machine, or, if you please, half a dozen powersgravitation, heat, electro-magnetism, chemical actionwill a limited machine keep running to eternity? For, observe, this is the imperative demand, and indispensable to get rid of a Creator outside of the machine, that we must have eternal matter, and eternal motion. A begin ning of any kind, either of matter or of motion, is fatal to atheism. The motion must have begun from eternity, if the matter be eternal, and the laws of matter be eternal; else it could never have begun since, by those laws; and he must have a machine which has kept running from eternity upon a limited supply of force. But no matter how enormous you make the original supply, and how slow you make the expenditure, it must be exhausted in an eternity of time. The coals under the boiler will burn out, and the fire must die, and the white-hot nebula must cool down to the same temperature as the space around it, and then, by Carnot's law (which declares that heat is only active when passing from a body at one temperature to one of a different temperature), all motion derived from it must cease within a limited time. Millenniums ago all motion must have ceased; for, remember, the atheist's mass of matter has been cooling from all eternity, and therefore all its heat power must have long since expired. No perpetual motion can be maintained by a world limited either in space or time.

You can not obtain a centre of gravity, to become a

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centre of attraction, without giving boundaries to your universe; but by thus giving it boundaries, and a centre, you insure the certain accumulation of all its parts in one great heap around this centre. If you say that matter meets no resistance in moving through space in obedience to gravitation, then it will all rush in right lines to the one vast heap, in which sun, moon, stars, and planets will be embedded in an eternal rest. If on the other hand you say, as La Place assumes, that it meets with a resisting medium, the result is the same, only somewhat delayed; matter takes a spiral instead of a direct track; and as Comte shows, arguing from the yearly decreasing orbit of Encke's comet, our planets must fall into the sun, and our sun, and all other suns, into the centre of the whole system. If this progress were only an inch in a million years, but proceeding from eternity, unutterable ages ago the whole finite universe had reached a state of perpetual rest.

That eternal motion, then, which the nebular hypothesis assumes as its source of power, is contrary to the first principles of mechanics. Motion must have originated outside of the great world-machine.

IS NEBULOUS MATTER HOMOGENEOUS ?

We have seen that motion could not originate in an eternal universe full of homogeneous matter; and that it could not be perpetuated in a universe half full, or part full. In the first case, it could not possibly begin. In the second, it must exhaust itself long before eternity was as far spent as it is at present. The world can neither start, nor continue, eternal motion.

As it regards the other fundamental assumption of the Nebular Theory, that all space was originally full of eternal homogeneous nebulous matter, the latest discoveries of science demonstrate that there is no such matter in the known universe, either in earth or heaven.

This could not be proved at the time of the invention of this hypothesis; nor was it supposed that negative proof could ever be discovered. Its possibility was not suspected by the reconstructors of the theory a few years ago. As we have seen, so lately as 1865, Lesley boasted that no negative proof of the existence of such matter in the nebulæ could ever be adduced. The nebulæ were so many millions of miles away that it was deemed perfectly safe to assert the existence of any absurdity in them; for nobody ever dreamed of angels of God descending from them upon the sons of men, to contradict the atheist's assertion, of the existence there of eternal homogeneous matter. The eternity of such matter was, therefore, boldly asserted as an ascertained, indisputable fact.

Thus, for instance, the State Geologist of Illinois: "We can conceive of no time in the past when the material which constitutes the earth did not exist in some form, and we can conceive of no period when it will not exist. . . . Hence, to our finite conceptions, the matter which constitutes the material universe is eternal, and can no more be annihilated than that Infinite Spirit which pervades all things, and which we recognize as God."* The Geologist had no right to use the plural number, and to assume that all the legislature of Illinois recognize any such pantheistic partner of eternal matter as their God. Tyndall is equally explicit in denying any beginning. "The law of conservation rigidly excludes both creation. and annihilation." These men did not imagine that within a few years science would demonstrate their errors.

The homogeneousness, or absolute uniformity, of this eternal matter, in all its qualities, is equally essential to their system, and is with equal confidence assumed, without, however, the shadow of proof. Thus

* Geological Survey of Illinois, 1-11.

† Annual of Scientific Discovery, 1864, 79.

Lesley says: "Grant its one postulate, that space was originally full of homogeneous matter, obedient to the laws of physics," etc.* The homogeneousness of the original matter is the very basis of Spencer's theory of evolution. "From the earliest traceable cosmical changes down to the latest results of civilization, we shall find that the transformation of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous is that in which progress essentially consists." So also the editors of the American Cyclopædia state the theory, "Assuming for the sake of the argument, a rare, homogeneous, nebulous matter, widely diffused," etc.

WHAT COULD BE DONE WITH SUCH MATTER?

Suppose that in his travels and investigations, our atheist should happen upon a mass of homogeneous matter, somewhere; what could be made out of it by the laws of physics? It could never make anything out of itself, but itself; for no chemical changes ever arise till substances of different materials come together in contact, or operate on each other. The law of gravitation might make the lump contract, and become a smaller lump, but it would not make it a lump of different materials from what it was before. The law of gravitation might make it contract, but we have no reason to believe that the contraction of a homogeneous mass could produce any magnetic or electric currents; at least, no simple element ever produces any such electric action in our world. Our atheist can do nothing with it but knead it out into as many shapes as he pleases, but he can never get out of it what is not in it. He may amuse himself molding his nebula, like a boy kneading a lump of putty; he may bake it up into balls, or flatten it into cakes, or punch it out into rings, if he pleases; or he may soften it at the

* Man's Origin and Destiny, 25.

† Illustrations of Universal Progress, 3.

fire, if he has a fire, or allow it to harden in the air; but he can never make it into a loaf of bread, or a piece of soap, or a plate of ice cream. He will never make his putty into an apple, or a beefsteak; simply because there is no apple or beefsteak in it, and no amount of kneading, or baking, or boiling, will enable you to get out of it what is not in it. Neither chemistry, nor electricity, nor gravity, nor any other power or law known to man, can make a simple substance compound, in any other way than by adding another substance to it; when it ceases to be a homogeneous substance, and becomes heterogeneous. Then, when you have two elements, and action and reaction begin, you may compound them; but a homogeneous substance admits of no changes of substance; the only changes possible in homogeneous matter are changes of form. If, then, our atheist had ever so much homogeneous matter, and all the heat and force he desires, he could never make a heterogeneous world out of it, much less a world composed like ours of nearly seventy different substances. If there is only one kind of gas in his nebula, he can never make it into two by any kind of conjuring with the laws of physics; for the laws of physics can no more create matter, than the laws of machinery can create motion. Indeed, our Evolutionists stoutly deny the possibility of the creation of anything, either matter or force. If this homogeneous nebula is acid, it can never become alkaline by any possible action of its own. No such heterogeneous world as we inhabit could ever be produced from a homogeneous substance. If the world was made out of a nebula, that nebula must have contained in it all the elements of the world, and so was not a homogeneous, but a heterogeneous nebula. A homogeneous nebula would be a very useless substance for this purpose.

It may seem strange that men should so boldly assume