I have thus led you to the outer rim of speculative science, for beyond the nebula scientific thought has never ventured hitherto, and have tried to state that which I considered ought, in fairness, to be outspoken. I do not think this evolution hypothesis is to be flouted away contemptuously; I do not think it is to be denounced as wicked. It is to be brought before the bar of disciplined reason, and there justified or condemned. Let us hearken to those who wisely support it, and to those who wisely oppose it; and let us tolerate those, and they are many, who foolishly try to do neither of these things. The only thing out of place in the discussion is dogmatism on either side. Fear not the evolution hypothesis. Steady yourselves in its presence upon that faith in the ultimate triumph of truth which was expressed by old Gamaliel when he said: “If it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it; if it be of man, it will come to naught.” Under the fierce light of scientific inquiry this hypothesis is sure to be dissipated if it possess not a core of truth. Trust me, its existence as an hypothesis in the mind is quite compatible with the simultaneous existence of all those virtues to which the term Christian has been applied. It does not solve—it does not profess to solve—the ultimate mystery untouched. At bottom it does nothing more than “transport the conception of life’s origin to an indefinitely distant past.” For, granting the nebula and its potential life, the question, whence came they? would still remain to baffle and bewilder us. And with regard to the ages of forgetfulness which lie between the conscious life of the nebula and the conscious life of the earth, it is but an extension of that forgetfulness which preceded the birth of us all. Those who hold the doctrine of evolution are by no means ignorant of the uncertainty of their data, and they yield no more to it than a provisional assent. They regard the nebular hypothesis as probable, and in the utter absence of any evidence to prove the act illegal, they extend the method of nature from the present into the past. Here the observed uniformity of nature is their only guide. Within the long range of physical inquiry they have never discerned in nature the insertion of caprice. Throughout this range the laws of physical and intellectual continuity have run side by side. Having thus determined the elements of their curve in this world of observation and experiment, they prolong that curve into an antecedent world, and accept as probable the unbroken sequence of development from the nebula to the present time.