We are told, also, that life has existed during periods of time so vast as to be incalculable. This we admit. But then, in the succession of life, there has been an order, “by which the lowest appeared first, and the highest have come last, while intermediate forms disclose a rising gradation.” This, too, we may admit, though not without reservations; for Prof. Huxley himself confesses that numerous intermediate forms do not occur in the order in which they ought to occur if they really had formed steps in the progression from one species to another; for we find these intermediate forms mixed up with the higher and the lower ones “in contemporaneous deposits.” But, even supposing that the lowest forms precede the highest, what evidence would this be in favor of evolution? The order of succession may indeed prove that the lower forms existed before the higher forms were created; but it does not show that the lower forms are the parents of the higher. This is merely assumed by the evolutionists as a convenient substitute for proof; that is, they first assume that evolution is a fact, and then conclude that the fact of evolution is established. Lastly, that matter is indestructible, and that therefore all the material changes and transformations of the world consist in using over and over the same stock of materials, is a doctrine which has no special bearing on the question. When a new individual of any living species is generated, its organism is indeed formed out of old matter; but this had no need of demonstration. What our evolutionists ought to show is that new individuals of a certain species have been generated by individuals of some other species; and this surely cannot be shown by a recourse to the indestructibility of matter. That matter is indestructible is, however, a groundless assertion. For though natural forces cannot destroy it, God, who has created it, and who keeps it in existence, can always withdraw his action, and let it fall into its primitive nothingness. And as to the so-called “fact” now also held to be established, that “force obeys the same laws”—that is, that force is indestructible, and that new forms of force are perpetually derived from old ones—we need only remark that the theory of transformation of forces, as held and explained by our advanced scientists, is but a travesty of truth, and an impotent effort to upset the principle of causality. Neither statical nor dynamical forces are ever transformed. Indeed, they have no form attached to them. What our modern physicists call “transformation of force” is nothing but the change of one kinetic phenomenon into another—that is, a succession of modes of movement of various kinds. Now, modes of movement are modes of being, not of force, though they are the measure of the dynamical forces by which they have been produced. The force with which any element of matter is endowed is constantly the same, both as to quality and as to quantity. Its exertion