Now, we have no particular fault to find with the nebular hypothesis. It is only an explanation of a change which matter has undergone. It does not affect the question of creation whether matter was first in a state of incandescent gas, or sprang at the bidding of the eternal fiat into its manifold conditions of to-day. Indeed, we will grant that there is a plausibility in the theory which to many minds renders it fascinating; but that does not make matter eternal and self-conserving. It is entirely consistent with the dogma of creation that God first made matter devoid of harmonious forms and relations, and that these slowly developed in accordance with the laws he appointed. There is nothing inconsistent in supposing that our terrestrial planet is a fragment struck off from the central mass, and that, after having undergone numerous changes, it at last settled down into a fit abode for man. The church never expressed herself pro or con; for no matter how individual writers may have felt and written, no matter how much they may have sought to place this or that physical theory in antagonism with revealed truth, the church never took action, for the reason that the question lies beyond the sphere of her infallible judgment until it touches upon the revealed doctrine. It is Dr. Draper, therefore, who strenuously seeks to draw inferences from modern physical theories, so as to put them in conflict, not only with revelation, but with the truths of natural theology. After having given an outline of the nebular hypothesis, he says: “If such be the cosmogony of the solar system, such the genesis of the planetary worlds, we are constrained to extend our view of the dominion of law, and to recognize its agency in the creation as well as in the conservation of the innumerable orbs that throng the universe.” Now, what he means by extending our views of the dominion of law is to make it paramount and supreme. But what is this law? If its agency is to be recognized in the creation of the innumerable orbs that throng the universe, it certainly must have existed prior to that event, else Dr. Draper uses the word creation in a sense entirely novel. Now, supposing, as we are fairly bound to do, that Dr. Draper attaches to the term creation its ordinary signification, we will have the curious spectacle of law creating that of which it is but the expression. We cannot perceive what other meaning we are to extract from the saying that we must recognize the agency of law in the creation of the universe. Law is, therefore, the creator of the universe; that is to say, “The general expression of the conditions under which certain assemblages of phenomena occur” (Carpenter’s definition of law) ushered into existence the cause of those phenomena. Can anything more absurd be conceived? But apart from the notion of law being at the bottom of creation, how can Dr. Draper, consistently with his ideas of “infinite space,” “infinite time,”