in a most responsible position, and is looked up to, as a high authority on scientific questions. He should adhere strictly to facts, and not indulge in wild speculations on the origin of life and mind.

Professor Tyndall opens his Address with a sketch of the atomic philosophy, as propounded by Democritus and his successors. Their speculations, though extremely interesting, are so well known as to require little comment, except in so far as they prove that the atomic theory, which he preaches as zealously as if it were a new religion, is more than two thousand years old. His admiration for, and faith in, Lucretius are unbounded. He remarks, with evident satisfaction, Lucretius' notions that the mechanical shock of atoms is the all-sufficient cause of things, and that the constitution of nature has not been "in any way determined by intelligent design"; and he quotes the following atheistical passage

from the poet's writings: "If you will apprehend and keep in mind these things, nature, free at once, and rid of her haughty lords, is seen to do all things spontaneously of herself, without the meddling of the gods." After this, no wonder that Plato and Aristotle are dismissed with scant praise.

In inquiring into the causes which checked the advance of science during the many centuries that passed unmarked by any philosophic discovery, after the days of Pythagoras, Hipparchus, and Ptolemy, the Professor mentions the various causes assigned by other writers, and then proceeds to speak with very bad taste of the introduction of Christianity as one of the stumbling-blocks in the path of progress, though he pays a great and glowing tribute to the heroic fortitude and pure lives of the early Christians. How could he do otherwise? evidently considers that the benefits conferred by Christianity are to be reckoned as of small

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importance if science be at stake. I cannot be surprised at this, when I see by a note in the reprint that one of his great authorities is the infidel Renan.

It is painful to notice throughout the Address the tendency to place religion in antagonism to science, as if we were living in the days of the Inquisition, and it was necessary for Dr. Tyndall to come forward as the champion of free-thought. Never has there been a time of such entire civil and religious liberty as now, when even the atheist Bradlaugh can pour forth his blasphemy in Hyde Park or Trafalgar Square without the slightest hindrance; surely this ought to satisfy the Professor. In the present century some of our best scientific workers have been members of the clerical profession. Few names among geologists are more distinguished than that of the Rev. W. D. Conybeare, the discoverer of the Plesiosaurus, or that of the Rev. Mr. White, of Selborne, as a naturalist; and it happens

somewhat curiously at this present time, as if to refute Dr. Tyndall, that two of the observers appointed to watch the transit of Venus were the Rev. Father Perry, Astronomer of Stonyhurst College, and the Rev. W. Sidgreaves, also of Stonyhurst, both members of the Roman Catholic Church, which has been generally looked upon as the most intolerant of religions. Carried away by this hostile spirit, he seems determined to deprive the poor disbeliever in the almighty atom of every crumb of comfort, for, when speaking of Newton, he says: “When the human mind has achieved greatness, and given evidence of extraordinary power in any domain, there is a tendency to credit it with similar power in all other domains. Thus theologians have found comfort in the thought that Newton dealt with the question of revelation forgetful of the fact that the very devotion of his powers through all the best years of his life to a totally different class of ideas, not to

speak of any natural disqualification, tended to render him less, instead of more, competent to deal with theological and historical questions." I do not agree in this estimate of Newton. He was endowed with such high reasoning powers, to which his imagination was always under subjection, that he could hardly fail to make a sound deduction from any description of facts that were fairly set before him. He was not only well able from his intellectual capacity to comprehend religious truth, but was especially so, from the fact of his having devoted much time and attention to theological subjects, as is proved by his work on the Prophecies, and his letters on the existence of a Deity, written at the request of Dr. Bentley. A man is disqualified for giving a correct opinion on any particular subject by one or other of two causes, either by natural inaptitude, or from his mind being warped by too exclusive attention to some special study. Now we think that both these