Infidels, being sensible of this truth, have endeavored to simplify matters to the level of our ignorance, by reducing all primordial elements to one, or at most two, simple elements, and all forces to the form of one universal and irrational law; but the progress of science utterly blasts the effort. No scientific man now dreams of one primordial element. Chemistry reveals a great many different elements, which can not be reduced or changed from their simple forms, much less identified as one and the self-same "substance." The idea of "one substance" _only_ is a very great error, which grew out of an abuse of language in confounding the two words, matter and substance. The latter word is equally applicable to _matter_, or _spirit_, but the former always contrasts with spirit; so to confound the two is to ignore a distinction upon which everything depends in any, except the materialistic, philosophy. When the term substance is used in the currency of the term matter it admits of the plural form as well as the singular. Indeed, all the primordial elements known in chemistry are known as so many different substances. It is unscientific and absurd to confound all these elements by claiming the one-substance theory. It has been called "the hog philosophy," on account of its swallowing down so many _different_ substances in the single form of the word.
"Eighty theories, hostile to Christianity, developed in the course of forty or fifty years, were brought before the Institute of France in 1806, all of which are repudiated"--dead. It is useless to go further into details. Science has been as much abused as religion. What benefit would accrue to the human family from an effort upon our part to bring to the foreground all the blunders made in scientific researches which are to-day numbered with the old effete errors in religion? And where is the propriety of infidels making a set of asses of themselves by playing upon the little irregularities of language and character in religion, as they _themselves_ allow no man to do in science and morality.
"EQUAL HANDED JUSTICE" TO ALL, IS OUR MOTTO.
GEOLOGY IN ITS STRUGGLES AND GROWTH AS A SCIENCE.
The science of Geology in its early history is like all other sciences, an infant. It was not a Hercules at its birth. On the contrary, it was childlike and rather crooked in many of its ways; but chastisement and criticism have brought it very far toward real manhood. Its early nurses were standing continually on the dark line separating the comprehensible from the incomprehensible, without any guides. They were out upon an unexplored sea in the mere twilight of the morning. They were opposed at every step by the combative tendencies of human nature, which are ever seeking too much for their own gratification to admit any strange, startling propositions as intruders among old and long cherished ideas. In its history it appears before us, first as an enemy to religion, and then as an unobjectionable science, a neutral. But since the publication of "The Footprints of the Creator," by the lamented Hugh Miller, it appears in front as a fast friend and abettor. And now, since it has approached so near to its manhood, we do not see how we did without its aid so long. Its first grand position touching the immense masses of the rock formations as results of second causes, in operation away back yonder before organic life appeared upon our planet, was looked upon by intelligent Biblical scholars of those times with suspicion, as a system at variance with the records of the Bible. This, along with difference of sentiment among its friends, has been the means of a very rapid growth towards perfection. Curiosity was aroused and observations multiplied, errors corrected and the untenable removed, until the science now stands before us with its bases settled in unquestionable facts. Let us all learn from this circumstance the bearings of the times in which we live, for a double process of elimination is now going on under the providence of God, by means of which both Christianity and science will have more beauty and strength of manhood to command the respect of our children.