ALL the physical sciences have their proper bearings on revelation, especially in the first chapter of Genesis. And this is what might be expected, for between God's words and his works there must exist a perfect harmony. As the opening chapter of Genesis records the ordering of the world which was to regulate it to the end of time, also the origin of man with his specific characteristics, the actual working of the vast machine throughout all its parts and the industry of the noble master of the earth throughout all generations should be to harmonize with the great plan of creation sketched by Moses. Therefore physical facts and physical laws-which are but the general realizations of such facts -and the physical sciences, which are but such facts and laws reduced to a system, should one and all be found to accord with the order of the world, delineated in the first chapter of Genesis. And they do so accord. Indeed how could we think the contrary possible, unless we had the boldness to deny, that regular sequence of cause and ef

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fect, that unvarying harmony, that stability, which all experience teaches us, have ever marked the course of physical events: or unless with equal boldness we should dare to affirm, that between the two branches of God's truth, namely, the truth of revelation and the experimental truths of the physical sciences, there was a contradiction?

The connection then between revelation and the physical sciences is obvious and the harmony perfect. This deeply important subject has been discussed by different writers from different motives, and has been treated with varied ability. Not one of the sciences but has been the battle-field in the combats between truth and error, and if a portion of the disputed ground has now and then fallen into the enemy's hands, it is a matter of congratulation that their hold of it has been of short duration. Each day some part on which they have hoisted the banner, and on which they have hoped to establish a lasting footing, has been conquered back and reannexed to

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the domain of truth to which it of right belonged. The purest ideal theories have designed brittle though brilliant systems constructed for the most conflicting purposes. Scientific men have looked into the depths of the earth, unto the luminous heights of the heavens, and into the bowels and bones of brute beasts, like the soothsayers of old, to read the history of the past; and fancying that the inspection gave them an insight into the hidden things of nature, they have delivered their responses touching the origin of the world and of man, as so many undoubted oracles; oracles, however, so contradictory one to another, as to ruin the claims of their authors to the gift of supreme intelligence. "This world," says Buffon, was at first a fragment of the sun, detached from that central body by the collision of a comet," and the renowned author developed his theory with singular ability indeed, but whence came the sun and the comet, without which he could not construct his theory, he omits altogether to inform us. Then we have theories of the Plutonians saying, that the earth was at first one vast ocean of liquid fire, which gradually cooled down, until at length the surface was solidified into the earth's crust. No, says the Neptunian, the earth was at first invested with one chaotic ocean, holding the materials of all rocks in solution, from the waters of which they were by and by precipitated. No, says a third, all space was at first filled with atoms of ethereal matter, after a time condensed into nebulæ, which nebulæ were further condensed into the sun, the stars and the planets, of which last, the earth underwent a cooling process to fit it for becoming what it is, the habitation of organized beings. Then with regard to man, one asserts the multiple origin of mankind through the

creation of different races in distinct zoological zones, thus contradicting the biblical account of the derivation of all men from a single pair, and the distribution of mankind into communities and nations from a common centre in Western Asia. Another will have it that all animals and plants have descended from some one prototype, and putting Adam and Eve out of the way, looks back through a bewildering number of years to a simple progenitor, a worm, perhaps, or a bit of sponge, or some animated shell.

The great guide of this school is Mr. Darwin, who must be a funny kind of a gentleman. In the elaboration of his theory, which has caused great and unaccountable sensation in the scientific and literary world, he believes that animals have descended from at most four or five progenitors. Nay, analogy leads him to believe that all animals and plants have descended from one prototype, and therefore infers that probably all the organic beings that ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form into which life was first breathed.

The progeny first became diversified into numerous species, when individuals in the struggle for life were modified in the breeding and cross-breeding, according to the necessities for getting along in the world or by accidents; for example, a bear slips into the water, and becomes the parents of whales, or the fish gets out of the water and is represented in after years by dogs and cats, horses and men, of whom we say Mr. Darwin himself is not the least remarkable specimen. He says he can hardly doubt that all vertebrate animals having two lungs have descended by ordinary generation from an ancient prototype of which we know nothing, furnished with a floating apparatus or swim-bladder. So all lungs were

once swim-bladders, and betray a fishy ancestry. His argument is, that the lung is a developed swimbladder, and that it could not come into existence except by improvement upon that swimming machinery, therefore that all creatures which now have lungs once swam. In their fishy state they required tails; accordingly, we must not be astonished to find animals possessed of lungs also having tails. A well-developed tail having been formed in an aquatic animal, it might subsequently come to be worked in for all purposes, as a flyflapper, as in the case of the horse, or as an aid for turning about, as we see in the dog. So far Mr. Darwin. Here we must say that if tails continued in our supposed family, amongst our cousins, cats, dogs, horses, &c., on account of their utility, we don't see why we were not allowed to keep the same appendage, at the time of the wonderful transition, when we passed from the fashion of haddocks and herrings; whereas tails would be useful to us when mosquitoes are about, and indeed would be an aid for turning about to a very large class of politicians.

Another school puts forward development theories, asserting the transition from ancient monkeys into man, through natural changes or developments in the course of past time. Philosophers of this school do not condescend to tell us what time it required to make a man out of a monkey, nor how far we may look back to see our grandsires hanging by the tail from the boughs of the Banyan tree, or cracking cocoanuts on the Island of St. Domingo. Differing thus as wide as the poles are asunder, our world builders and man-makers are perfectly agreed in one thing they all beg the question. They assume the materials of the world as pre-existing and ready at hand, for each one to fashion the world

and its inhabitants out of them according to his own peculiar fancy. But ask whence came these pre-existing materials, and they will give you no more satisfaction than the Cochin China world-builder, who gravely tells you that "a hen laid an egg, and from the egg came the universe;" but whence came the hen he cannot tell. Differing, toto cœlo, in other respects, they agree in another point: they condemn. Moses of ignorance of philosophy

nothing less. He was quite in the dark about the origin of things say all; he and his creations were ages behind the true date of the world's production. He knew nothing about geology; he knew nothing about zoology, &c., &c., &c. So philosophers differ, and so they agree, and so continue piling theory upon theory, rivalling the confusion of their predecessors building in the plain of Senaar. But He, who in olden time so easily scattered the builders of the tower of Babel, scatters with equal facility modern world builders, with their notions, theories, and systems. One scheme appears to-day, another to-morrow, following one another like the suc cessive views presented at each turn of the kaleidoscope, and they are as evanescent. Voltaire, the archscoffer of the last century, once in his life told the truth, when he said "that philosophers put themselves in the place of God, and destroy and renew the world after their own fashion." They do put themselves in the place of God, all who ascribe the formation of the universe to second causes, irrespectively of the Great First Cause, whose creative energy alone could impart efficiency te second causes; whose intelligence could direct them to the working out of ends of surpassing wisdom; whose goodness alone. could make them fruitful of the most beneficial results. It is edifying and consoling to the Christian philosopher to know that science,