the same respecting which the thinkers of former time
came to the conclusion that they were essentially good, and to end
in good, the modern speculator arrives at the quite opposite and
extremely uncomfortable conclusion that they are essentially evil,
and to end--in nothing.

And I have here a volume,[C] before quoted, by a very foolish and
very lugubrious author, who in his concluding chapter gives
us,--founded, you will observe, on a series of 'ifs,'--the latest
scientific views concerning the order of creation. "We have spoken
already about a medium pervading space"--this is the Scientific
God, you observe, differing from the unscientific one, in that the
purest in heart cannot see--nor the softest in heart feel--this
spacious Deity--a _Medium_, pervading space--"the office of which"
(italics all mine) "appears to be to _degrade_ and ultimately
_extinguish_, all differential motion. It has been well pointed out
by Thomson, that, looked at _in this light_, the universe is a
system that had a beginning and must have an end, for a process of
degradation cannot be eternal. If we could view the Universe as a
candle not lit, then it is perhaps conceivable to regard it as
having been always in existence; but if we regard it rather as a
candle that has been lit, we become absolutely certain that it
cannot have been burning from eternity, and that a time will come
when it will cease to burn. We are led to look to a beginning in
which the particles of matter were in a diffuse chaotic state, but
endowed with the power of gravitation; and we are led to look to an
end in which the whole Universe will be one equally heated inert
mass, _and from which everything like life, or motion, or beauty,
will have utterly gone away_."

Do you wish me to congratulate you on this extremely cheerful
result of telescopic and microscopic observation, and so at once
close my lecture? or may I venture yet to trespass on your time by
stating to you any of the more comfortable views held by persons
who did not regard the universe in what my author humorously calls
"this _light_"?

In the peculiarly characteristic notice with which the 'Daily News'
honored my last week's lecture, that courteous journal charged me,
in the metaphorical term now classical on Exchange, with "hedging,"
to conceal my own opinions. The charge was not prudently chosen,
since, of all men now obtaining any portion of popular regard, I am
pretty well known to be precisely