there is evidence also that he was a grandson of Nebuchadnezzar, Nabonadius, to strengthen his position, having married the daughter of Nebuchadnezzar. The queen of Dan. v., 10, was the queen-mother. She calls Nebuchadnezzar "thy father," but "son" and "father" are often used in Scripture in the sense of "grandson" and "grandfather." In Gen. xxix., 5, Laban is called the "son of Nahor," yet Nahor was his grandfather. Daniel's account implies what everything in the cuneiform cylinders makes probable that Belshazzar had been made joint king with his father. Nabonadius had done with his son what we know Nabopolassar had done with his son Nebuchadnezzar. When Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem at the time referred to in Dan. i., I, he was only second "King of Babylon," for his father, Nabopolassar, was still living. And now we come upon one of those "undesigned coincidences" which are the clearest proofs of the honesty and accuracy of the inspired historians. Why did Belshazzar only promise to make Daniel "third ruler in the kingdom." Once no answer could be given to that question. The reason is now clear. He himself was only the second ruler.

UNSOLVED PROBLEMS.-Prof. Charles A. Young names four problems in solar physics whose solution is urgently demanded, and would be a great advance in astronomical science. First, an explanation of the peculiar law by which the sun's surface at the equator makes a complete rotation in about 25 days, while a place half-way to the poles requires 27 days; second, an explanation of the occurrence of the spots in periods (each period or cycle being about eleven years), and of their distribution in the two zones lying between the tenth and thirtieth degrees of latitude on each side of the equator; third, a determination of the variations in the amount of heat radiated at different times and from different points on the solar surface; fourth, a satisfactory explanation of the relations of the gases and other matters above the photosphere, or visible surface, to the sun itself-the problem of the corona and the prominences which appear to view during total eclipses. There are other interesting mysteries, but these are the most important. They are quite as great as any mystery

connected with God. We do not suffer these physical mysteries to cut us off from the enjoyment of all the blessings we derive from the sun; neither should we allow any metaphysical mysteries to deprive us of the unspeakable benefits we may receive from the Sun of Righteousness.

INTELLECTUAL VANITY AND UNBELIEF.-Rev. Dr. Eskine N. White, of New York City, accurately describes a class of make-believe unbelievers in the following:

Men from intellectual pride sell their birthright by turning away from God and professing to find a god among the philosophical idols of the day. The temptation comes in this form: "If I wish to prove my intellectual vigor I must not accept anything upon trust. I must demand that everything be explained so that its mysteries be cleared up; then I must not accept anything as true that cannot be proved by the successive steps of logic or demonstrated by the exhibition of scientific experiment. The old faith of my fathers is very simple and very comforting, but I must not be misled by any unexplained instincts of my nature, nor deluded by any pretended revelation from the unseen world. To be sure thousands of women and children, and of simple-minded men have accepted this faith in God and Christ without any very searching intellectual examination, but I require proof."

Now, all this is very well if it is the honest utterence of a man who truly desires to know the truth and who with every faculty awakened proposes fairly to examine the evidences for Christianity; such an honest seeker will be aided by God. But alas! too many are possessed with intellectual vanity, while they have neither intellectual strength nor intellectual honesty. They hear of one and another prominent scientist who amuses himself as an unbeliever; or as the expression now is, an agnostic, or a positivist, and it flatters their vanity to say that with such we take our stand. They make no original investigation. They make no earnest study of evidences. If they reach anything upon the subject, it is upon the destructive side. They sneer at the idea that any new thoughts can be given them that will support the old faith. They withhold assent and pose as un

believers, and think it speaks well for their intellectual independence that they are disciples of this or that scientist. Now, no one more than I approves of independent thought-of an earnest determination to be able to give a reason for the hope that is in one. I rejoice to know that any man is honestly asking for proof even of the highest divine truths, but I do say that for any man from intellectual vanity, from a desire to appear to understand what he has never really studied, from the ambition to call himself by name of this or that great master, to turn aside from the faith of his fathers, to shut his eyes to the signs of God's presence, to steel his heart against the influence of the Holy Spirit, is "to sell his birthright for a mess of pottage."

MATERIALISM SCIENTIFICALLY IMPOSSIBLE.-Prof. Halstead, of the University of Texas, makes the following very acute and strong argument, from the doctrine of the Conservation of Energy.

"Scientists have demonstrated a universal natural law which rules and embraces all processes in the material world; which expresses a perfectly general and particularly characteristic property of all natural forces, and which as regards generality is to be placed by the side of the unalterability of mass. The connections between the various natural forces which modern science has revealed are extraordinarily numerous; but all prove and prove over again that the total quantity of energy in the universe remains unchanged throughout all changes. If a certain quantity of mechanical work is lost, there is obtained, as experiments made will demonstrate, say an equivalent quantity of heat, or, instead of this, of chemical force; and conversely when heat is lost, we gain an equivalent quantity of chemical or mechanical force; and again, when chemical force disappears, an equivalent of heat or work; so that in all interchanges between various natural forces, energy may indeed disappear in one form, but it has only changed into an exactly equivalent quantity of some other form; it is thus neither increased nor diminished, but always remains in exactly the same quantity, and this law holds good for the processes in organic nature. If, now, If, now, mind is a part of the material world; if what we call mental energy is

really a part of the sum of real energy connected with matter in this universe, then some of this invariable quantity of energy exists from time to time as mental energy, and so that we would expect to be able to say that a certain amount of chemical energy disappears but reappears as mental energy, or perhaps disappears as mental energy but reappears as mechanical energy or heat. But the absolute tests of science demonstrate that such is never the case. No bit of physical energy ever disappears as physical energy to become even for an instant mental energy. There is not a single point in the series of changes which take place in the brain at which all the energy is not in actual existence as physical energy. There is not a point where anything of the nature of thought could be inserted as a possible link in the chain of transformations of energy. Thought and physical energy, then, are totally different in essence and kind, and one can never be transformed into the other. Therefore materialism is scientifically impossible."

MR. HERBERT SPENCER in the Nineteenth Century for May concluded a series of articles on "The Factors of Organic Evolution." It is important to have from so accomplished an advocate, who is accepted by the out-and-out evolutionists, an opinion on such a subject. As one reads these papers he wonders at the mingled strength and weakness of the reasoning on which the hypothesis rests. There is no weakness in Mr. Spencer's writing; it is clear and vigorous. But the final conclusion, which seems to be a section tacked to the last paper, not because it is necessary or because it is vitally connected with what precedes it, but because Mr. Spencer wished to say it, is amazing. He alludes to Prof. Huxley's address at the unveiling of the statue of Mr. Darwin in the South Kensington Museum, and proceeds on this wise: "Deprecating the supposition that an authoritative sanction was given by the ceremony to the current ideas concerning organic evolution, he (Huxley) said that 'science commits suicide when it adopts a creed.'" The words are not used in a religious sense. They mean that a scientific creed worthy of unhesitating belief does not exist in Mr. Huxley's opinion. And Mr. Spencer endorses the sentiment. The

words mean that the scientific observer should have a perfectly free mind looking out of his eyes; should see facts as they are, with no regard for existing opinions, and make such deductions only as the facts evidently declare. To have a creed, to go about applying received principles is an injury, a hindrance; as Mr. Spencer adds, biologists in applying their belief in regard to the origin of species "have been narrowed."

While there is truth in these cautions, there is also a very humiliating confession. Such gentlemen as Huxley and Spencer being the judges, the outcome of the earnest and incessant scientific investigations of the past thirty years, the patient and laborious watchfulness, the dissection and examination with the microscope, the enormous accumulation of facts, is not a scientific system which is helpful, but a creed which narrows and destroys the man who accepts it and takes it with him into the field of observation or employs it as a guide or assistant in the process of educing principles from facts. No comment on such an admission is necessary.

Another important statement which occupies a large part of this last paper, which, indeed, is the chief theme of the paper, is that the influence of environment is often exhausted upon the exterior of organisms and does not affect the interior constitution or action. "The operation of those forces which produced the primary differentiation of outer from inner" is a fair specimen of the language used. We have written "is often exhausted," but Mr. Spencer's language leads to the inference that it is usually exhausted on the exterior of organisms. Everybody will see at once how mightily this fact tells against the assertion that environment, that is, the circumstances in which it lives, have a mighty influence in evolving a new species out of an old one. If the environment does not touch the interior it cannot help to or produce such an evolution.-Christian Intelligencer.

A QUESTION For a Lawyer.-While Hopu, a young Sandwich Islander, was in England, he spent an evening in company where an infidel lawyer tried to puzzle hím with difficult questions. At length Hopu said: "I am a poor heathen boy. It is not strange that my blunders in English should amuse you.