ter to be eternal; then all its potencies and possibilities must be co-eternal, or must have entered into or been placed in matter at some definite period. Did they enter matter? If so, where were they before they so entered? And how did they get in? If they had no previous existence, then they were created. If they were created, that fact takes away all difficulty from the supposition that matter itself was created. they were not created, they were co-eternal with matter.

If

The supposition that matter with force is eternal is an immense weight for any theory to carry; for we must remember what "eternal" means-millenniums written in figures, each one of which multiplying all its predecessors by ten, and standing in a line billions of times longer than the greatest distance between the two most remote fixed stars, would be but as a grain of sand to the universe in any attempt to represent eternity. Now whatever force or forces is or are at present at work to differentiate existing matter, to promote development, to give even the suggestion of evolution, must

on this theory have been eternally at work. The homogeneous must have been eternally becoming the heterogeneous; the simple must have been eternally becoming the complex; the rude and inchoate must have eternally been becoming the complete and perfect. But this is inconceivable, because it necessarily involves the concept of a thing being synchronously one thing and another, simple and complex, and while being both at the same time, passing from one to the other; three states in which no one thing can possibly be conceived to be at any one moment.

But, suppose we are obstructed by the barriers of our intellectual limitations from going back measurelessly into the eternity past, the evolutionist can, in imagination, retreat many millions of years along the banks of the stream which has no source, and jump in somewhere with his theory. If the theory of evolution now considered be true, the law of nature demands that all things must be developing from the rude to the perfect, from the simple to the complex, from the lower to the higher, from the inorganic to the organic, from the lifeless to the living,

from the simplest living protozoic cells to Shakespeares and Newtons. Each variation may have required millions of years, and there may have been billions of these variations to bring the drop of protoplasm up to the poet or philosopher. But we can furnish a million times as much duration as may be required because we have eternity at our command in the argument. But, all at once, it occurs to us that the stages of progress on which we stand must have been reached eternal ages ago, and that through those eternal years the physical and intellectual universe should have ascended until the system had reached its consummate flowering, and every living thing become a man, and every man an angel, and angelic nature have developed through the eternities until there should have appeared an infinite God, and that divine product should have had eternal personal existence. The theory of evolution which, by the assumption of the eternity of matter, starts with excluding any God, necessitates the existence of an eternal God. Nay, more. If from the inorganic could be evolved the lowest form of organism in which life

could reside, and if from that lowest form man could be evolved, and not only a specimen man, but the numberless multitudes of men which we call mankind-why not from this great and innumerable human race have been evolved in the lapsing eternities an unlimited number of perfect beings—that is, of gods? If that form of the evolution theory which demands the eternity of matter be true, then polytheism must be true, and there must be an innumerable company of perfect gods still evolving into something better and higher than perfect godhood. An eternity-of-matter evolution that stops short. of this absurdity commits logical suicide. If evolution has been eternally in progress it must eternally progress. An evolution which has beginning must have an end. An evolution which has an end must have a beginning. An evolution which has either beginning or end is no evolution; it is merely a limited development theory; and that is a totally different thing, and is not now under discussion.

XIV. RELATION OF EVOLUTION TO SCIENCE.

EVOLUTIONISTS who are not atheists require time, if they do not demand eternity. Thus, Mr. Darwin's theory of "Natural Selection," according to his own statements, on a calculation made by so competent a person as Mr. St. George Mivart, required two thousand five hundred millions of years, since life began on the planet, for such accretion of infinitesimal variations in succeeding generations as would be necessary to bring the flora and fauna of the planet to their present state. But physical astronomy

shows that the earth has not been able to sustain life more than probably ten millions of years.

We give one view of this subject stated in the words of Sir William Thomson:

To get a superior limit to the possible deviation of something not very different from the present state of things on the earth, other sciences than geology must be appealed to; and here, because, and only because our scientific men are usually mere specialists, the natural philosopher is required. What can a geologist, as such, tell about the nature, origin, and