work of informing mankind, by giving breadth and scope to the conceptions of the human intellect, in filling the human heart with reverence and awe.
III. We also venture to think that the duration in time which modern physical science claims for the physical world, those vast periods which geological science predicates respecting the existence of this globe since it assumed anything like its present aspect, those still vaster æons which astronomical science asks for the formation of planetary systems from nebulous matter, are more in harmony with the theological conception of the eternity of God, than a world made just as we find it now, six thousand years ago. If religion tells us that God is eternal, science certainly aids us in grasping the idea, when it reveals that that small portion of the visible world of which we have any knowledge has endured for millions of ages.
IV. It is one of the favourite theories of that school of thought that would remove from the mind the idea of God, that matter contains in itself the properties by which vegetable and animal life have come into being. An organism, it is said, is the result of certain properties peculiar to certain kinds of matter, adapting themselves to an external environment. In virtue of these principles certain forms of vegetable and animal life are evolved from pre-existing forms. This is the celebrated doctrine of evolution. With-
