dissolutions of formal differentiations. Therefore, although it is undoubtedly true that "the solar system could only have been evolved out of its nebulous state into that which it now presents if the nebula possessed" those particular attributes which were necessity to the evolution of such a product, this consideration is clearly deprived of all its force from our present point of view. For unless it can be shown that there is some independent reason for believing these particular attributes--which must have been of a more and more simple a character the further we recede in time--to have been miraculously imposed, the analogy is overwhelming that they all progressively arose _by way of natural law_. And if so, the universe which has been thus produced is the only universe in this particular point of space and time which could have been thus produced. That it is an _orderly_ universe we have seen _ad nauseam_ to be no argument in favour of its having been a _designed_ universe, so long as the cause of its order--general laws--can be seen to admit of a natural explanation. Thus there is clearly nothing to be gained on the side of teleology by going back to the dim and dismal birth of the nebula; for no "thoroughgoing evolutionist" would for one moment entertain the supposition that natural law in the simplest phases of its development partook any more of a miraculous character than it does in its more recent and vastly more complex phases. The absence of knowledge must not be used as equivalent to its presence; and if analogy can be held to justify any inference whatsoever, surely we may conclude with confidence that if existing general laws admit of being conceivably attributed to a natural genesis, the primordial laws of a condensing nebula must have been the same. There is another passage in Professor Flint's work to which it seems desirable to refer. It begins thus: "There is the law of heredity: like produces like. But why is there such a law? Why does like produce like?... Physical science cannot answer these questions; but that is no reason why they should not both be asked and answered. I can conceive of no other intelligent answer being given to them than that there is a God of wisdom, who designed that the world should be for all ages the abode of life," &c.