of elementary matter. This bare making of all hydrogen atoms alike does not, I think, do much to establish the existence of a wise and good creator, as I have elsewhere pointed out. That conclusion is in reality suggested by some remote consequences, as I have said, in animal mechanism. We have no right to look upon all the wonders of such mechanism as specially contemplated and provided for in the original properties of matter. We must bear in mind how much the process of their actual production, upon Mr. Darwin's hypothesis, takes away from this idea, viz. that matter was originally created and endowed with a special view to bringing them about. I have asserted that, with all abatements, the facts of animal and human life do seem to me to indicate at least an intelligent Creator. But I do not think that this present way of looking at the matter heightens their effect for that end, nor yet that we shall find much, apart from the phenomena of life, which will help us to such theological conclusions. If the nature and properties of atoms had done nothing more than produce a chaos of fire like the sun, or a barren rock like the moon, would they have suggested the thought of a wise and good Creator?

I will not say more on the various forms of the first cause argument, but, before going on to another class of arguments, I would say something as to a work which has just appeared-The Unseen

Universe.' It is a book remarkable for the acquaintance shown with the present progress of physical science, and for the boldness and originality of some of its speculations. The writers assume a position precisely opposed to that of the first-cause arguments. They persistently assert the doctrine of continuity, sketched by Sir W. R. Grove in his wellknown address to the British Association at Nottingham. This doctrine is what I have already spoken of as the growing belief of scientific men, viz. that the present state of the universe has grown out of past states, by the steady and uninterrupted action of general laws. There have been no breaks, no incoming of anomalous powers unrelated to this scheme of things. The authors of The Unseen Universe' do, indeed, assert the existence of a God. They regard that assertion as in fact self-evident. But they hold that the Divine Being cannot have acted on the universe at any time in a direct, anomalous way, or we should have had breach of continuity. Yet they hold strongly that the present visible universe cannot have been eternal. They explain very clearly the tendency, of which I have spoken, to an ultimate dissipation of energy, a condition of things in which those transformations of energy, which are in fact the source of all the events of our universe, would come to an end. They think, 1 The Unseen Universe,' Art. 54.

indeed, that not only does the visible universe clearly tend thus to a final state of rest, coldness, death, but that possibly its very matter, commonly thought of as indestructible, may come to an end. This last conjecture is founded upon Sir W. Thomson's theory, that an atom is a vortex ring in some invisible perfect fluid, that is, a filament of rotating fluid in the form of some closed or re-entering curve, something to which a twisting smoke wreath would have a rough resemblance. If the fluid were really perfect and frictionless, such a ring vortex would last for ever. This was the character which Sir W. Thomson gave it, but the book in question conjectures that this fluid, the basis of matter, may not be perfect. If, then, our visible universe be finite in duration, certainly as regards its activities, possibly as regards its material, how are we to avoid the idea of creation, how are we to hold to that of continuity? Here comes in the characteristic idea of the book.1 The present visible universe is supposed to have been produced out of an invisible universe. The connection is not thought of as strictly that of antecedent and consequent. Rather the invisible universe is the contemporary as well as parent of the visible. The latter is, as it were, an island in the former as a sea. Or, to use perhaps a better analogy, even as some phenomenon that we behold, 1 'The Unseen Universe,' Art. 216.

say a smoke wreath, is a phenomenon in this visible universe, even so is that stupendous whole but a phenomenon in the yet older and greater unseen universe. And the idea is thrown out that this unseen universe, with which our material universe is immediately connected, may be again only a product of another universe still further removed from us, and so on ad infinitum. But a natural connection between these universes is supposed. None of these states of things is a creation in the common sense of that word. Energy, it is thought, may be transferred to our material universe from the unseen universe with which it is immediately connected, or vice versâ. The supernatural events alleged in connection with the origin of Christianity are accounted for by the coming in of the powers of this invisible universe. The hope of immortality is held out from the possibility of our personally obtaining a place in that unseen system, but this, it is allowed, cannot be thought of as indicated by science, apart from the resurrection of Christ. The entire stock of energy, whose transformations make up the development of the successive universes, is supposed to be infinite. The intelligent power which directs all these transformations is identified with the Second Person of the Christian Trinity; the source of life with the Third Person.

The fundamental idea of upholding the doctrine of continuity would, I suppose, be approved by many

men of science. As I have said, it is not my wish here to attempt a decision as to its truth. It seems to me, indeed, one of those fundamental principles which are not proper subjects for argument, but must be intuitively accepted or modified by every individual mind. But if we accept this principle, there is still a good deal in the scheme which I have briefly and imperfectly sketched that is open to question. To begin with what is said as to God, it may be true that our minds do instinctively think of some mysterious infinite being, as the ground of this visible universe. But the idea to which we are thus led is not that definite conception of God which religious men cherish; it is not that of a being perfect in wisdom and goodness, as well as self-existent or allpowerful. The existence of a being corresponding to this last idea I cannot allow to be 'absolutely selfevident.' And next, to come to the characteristic idea of the book, it may be the most reasonable view to think of this present visible universe as evolved out of one unseen. If, as I have pointed out before, we consider the nature of human knowledge and the general drift of modern discovery, we may conclude that this idea of eternal development is to be preferred to that of absolute creation. But when we consider next the allegation that the present visible universe, as known to us, cannot have existed from eternity, or exist to eternity, by reason of the dissipa