his usual vulgar insolence. He stormed and swore, he roared and snorted, and, we are told, he squeaked through his nose with uprolled eyes in imitation of Baxter's supposed manner of praying. "When I saw," says an eye-witness, "the meek man stand before the flaming eyes and fierce looks of this bigot, I thought of Paul standing before Nero." His conduct, says Bishop Burnet, would have amazed one in the bashaw of Turkey. The accused asked for time to prepare his defence. "Not a minute to save his life!" was the amiable reply; and, pointing to the infamous Oates, who stood pilloried in Palace Yard, Jeffreys thundered, "There stands Oates on one side of the pillory, and if Baxter stood on the other, the two greatest rogues in the kingdom would stand together. This is an old rogue, a schismatical knave, a hypocritical villain." When the counsel reminded the judge of King Charles's esteem for the accused, and his offer of a mitre, he shouted, "What ailed the old blockhead, the unthankful villain, that he would not conform ? the conceited, stubborn, fanatical dog!" "My lord,” said the venerable old man, "I have been much censured by dissenters for speaking well of bishops." "Ha! Baxter for bishops!" jeered the ermined buffoon, "that's a merry conceit indeed; turn to it, turn to it." The proof being given, he exclaimed, "Ay, that's Kidderminster bishops, rascals like yourself, factious, snivelling Presbyterians. Thou art an old knave," continued the browbeating bully, "thou hast written books enough to load a cart, and every book as full of treason as an egg is full of meat. Hadst thou been whipped out of thy writing forty years ago it had been well. I see many of your brotherhood waiting to see what will become of their mighty don; but, by the grace of God Almighty, I will crush you all. Come, what do you say for yourself, old knave? speak up! I am not afraid of you for all your snivelling calves," alluding to some of the spectators who were in tears. "Your lordship need not," replied Baxter, "I'll not hurt you. But these things will surely be understood one day; what fools one sort of Protestants are to persecute the other!" Lifting up his eyes to heaven, he said, "I am not concerned to answer such stuff, but am ready to produce my writings for the confutation of all this; and my life and conversation are known to many in this nation."

After Jeffreys had passionately charged the jury, Baxter inquired, "Does your lordship think they will pass a verdict after such a trial as that?" "I'll warrant you, Mr. Baxter," he sneered, "don't trouble yourself about that ;" and bring in a verdict of guilty they did, without retiring from the box. He was fined five hundred marks, to lie in prison till he paid it, and bound to his good behaviour for seven years; and but for the remonstrance of his fellow-judges, Jeffreys would have added the sentence of whipping at the cart's tail through the city. "My lord, there was once a ChiefJustice," said Baxter, referring to his deceased friend, Sir Matthew Hale, "who would have treated me very

differently." "There's not an honest man in England but regards thee as a knave," was the brutal reply.*

The old man, bowed and broken with seventy years of toil and suffering, penniless, homeless, wifeless, childless, was haled to the cells of King's Bench Prison, where he languished well-nigh two years, hoping no respite but that of death. But the celestial vision of the Lord he loved cheered the solitude of his lonely chamber; and sweetly falling on his inner ear, unheeding the obscene riot of the gaol, sang the sevenfold chorus of cherubim and seraphim on high. Pain and sickness, bereavement and sorrow, persecution and shame, were all forgotten in the thrilling anticipation of the divine and eternal beatitude of the redeemed before the throne. The rude stone walls seemed to his waiting soul but the portals of the palace of the great King, the house not made with hands in heaven. "He talked," says Calamy, "about another world, like one who had been there."

But persecution and sickness had done their work. His feeble frame broke down beneath his accumulated trials. After his release he lingered about four years "in age and feebleness extreme," preaching as opportunity and strength permitted, till at last the weary wheels of life stood still. "In profound lowliness," writes a sympathizing biographer, “with a settled reliance on the divine mercy, repeating at frequent intervals the prayer of the Redeemer, on whom his hopes reposed, and breathing out benedictions on those who encircled his dying bed, he passed away from a life of almost unequalled toil and suffering" to the rest that remaineth for the people of God.

The malice of his enemies sought to pursue him beyond the grave, by asserting that his last hours were darkened by doubt and despair. But his dying words are the best refutation of this posthumous slander. To Dr. Increase Mather, of New England, he said the day before his death, "I have pain; but I have peace, I have peace......I believe, I believe." To a later inquiry of how he was, he replied, in anticipation of his speedy departure, "Almost well." His last words were, speaking of his Divine Master, "O, I thank him! I thank him!" and turning to a friend by his bedside, "The Lord teach you to die."

Thus passed away in his seventy-seventh year, on the 8th of December 1691, one of the noblest and bravest spirits of the seventeenth century. In primitive times, says Bishop Wilkins, he would have been counted a Father of the Church. He rests from his labours, but his works do follow him. Being dead, he yet speaketh. His words of wisdom can never die. In camps and

* When Baxter was on this or some previous occasion brought before Jeffreys, "Richard," said the brutal Chief-Justice, "I see a rogue in your face." "I had not known before," replied Baxter, "that my face was a mirror."-ED.

Among the phrases applied to Baxter in a scurrilous Latin epitaph by the Rev. Thomas Long, prebendary of Exeter, are the following:-"Reformed Jesuit, brazen heresiarch, chief of schismatics, cause of the leprosy of the Church, the sworn enemy of king and bishops, and the very bond of rebels."

His collected works amount to no less than one hundred and sixty-eight volumes, many of them ponderous folio tomes of forgotten controversy, or of superseded ecclesiastical lore. We know of no parallel instance of such intense literary activity, conjoined with such a busy life, save in the kindred character of John Wesley. | Baxter's "Methodus Theologica Christianæ," written, he tell us," in a troublesome, smoky, suffocating room, in the midst of daily pains of sciatica, and many worse," and his "Catholic Theology" are now left to the undisturbed repose of ancient libraries-the mausolea of the labours of the mighty dead-the prey of the bookworm, insect or human. His "Holy Commonwealth, or Plea for Monarchy under God the Universal Monarch," was condemned to the flames by the University of Oxford, for the assertion of the constitutional, but, as then thought, seditious principle, that the laws of England are above the king. In a Dantean vision of hell, one of his clerical opponents represents the pious Puritan as throned in perdition, crowned with wreaths of serpents and chaplets of adders, his triumphal chariot a pulpit drawn by wolves. "Make room," exclaims the amiable critic, "scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, atheists and politicians, for the greatest rebel on earth, and next to him that fell from heaven." The tumult of the strifes and controversies in which Baxter was engaged has passed away. Most of the principles for which he contended have long since been universally conceded. But even in the sternest polemical conflict his zeal was tempered with love. "While we wrangle here in the dark," with a tender pathos he exclaims, "we are dying and passing to the world that will decide all our controversies; and the safest passage thither is by peaceable holiness."

Baxter was not exempt from a touch of human infirmity and a tinge of superstition, incident to the age in which he lived-a superstition that was shared by Sir Matthew Hale and Sir Thomas Browne, one of the ablest judges and one of the subtlest intellects of Europe. In the remarkable witchcraft delusion of Old and of New England he saw unquestionable evidence of the certainty of the world of spirits; and wrote a treatise commemorating the fact.

But it is by his "practical works" that he is best known; and these will never grow old nor lose their spell of power. As long as weary hearts and bruised consciences ache with a sense of sin and sorrow; as long as heavy-laden spirits struggle, often baffled and defeated, with the ills of earth, and yearn with an infinite longing for the repose of heaven, so long will the "Call to the Unconverted," the "Dying Thoughts," the "Saint's Rest," continue to probe the wounded

of the soul and its unfailing antidote, to quicken to a flame of devotion the sluggish feelings of the mind. Throughout all time will the "Reformed Pastor" be a manual of ministerial conduct and duty, an inspiration and example of pastoral diligence and zeal.

The secret of this power is the intense earnestness of the man. He poured his very soul into his books. They seem written with his heart's blood. He walked continually on the very verge of the spirit-world. The shadows of death fell ever broad and black across his path. All his acts were projected against the background of eternity. The awful presence of the king of terrors stood ever with lifted spear before him. Chronic and painful disease grappled ever at the springs of life. A premature old age,―præmatura senectus, as he himself called it,-accompanied him through life from his very youth. "As waves follow waves in the tempestuous sea," he writes, "so one pain and danger follows another in this sinful, miserable flesh. I die daily, and yet remain alive." His spirit gleamed more brightly for the extreme fragility of the earthen vessel in which it was enshrined, like a lamp shining through an alabaster vase. He walked a stranger on earth, as a citizen of heaven. The evanescent shows and semblances of time were as nothing; the fadeless verities of eternity were all in all. Like a dying man, dissevered from the ephemeral interests of life, he wrote and spoke as from the borders of the grave. Each day must be redeemed as though it were the last. "I live only for work," he says. The worst consequence of his afflictions was, he considered, the loss of time which they entailed. He therefore wasted no midnight oil in minute revision, for he knew not if to-morrow's sun would permit the completion of the task he had begun. Each sermon had all the emphasis of dying words. Indeed, the last time he preached he almost died in the pulpit. Therefore he fearlessly administered reproof and exhortation alike before king or protector, before parliament or parishioners. He feared God, and feared only him. He had no time or disposition to cultivate the graces of style, the arts of rhetoric. He sought not to catch the applause or shun the blame of men, beyond both of which he was soon to pass for

ever.

Hence he poured the tumultuous current of his thought upon the page, often with impassioned and unpremeditated eloquence, often with thrilling and pathetic power, sometimes with diffuseness or monotony, but never with artificial prettiness or fanciful conceits. "I must cast water on this fire," he exclaims, "though I have not a silver vessel to carry it in. The plainest words are the most profitable oratory in the weightiest matters. The transcript of the heart has the greatest force on the hearts of others." When the success of his labours was referred to, he meekly replied, "I am but a pen in the hand of God; and what praise is due to a pen ?"

He was not insensible to the defects of his writings, and admits that "fewer and well-studied had been better." But he adds, in explanation of their character, "The knowledge of man's nothingness and God's transcendent greatness, with whom it is that I have most to do; and the sense of the brevity of human things and

the nearness of eternity, are the principal causes of this effect."

Well were it for each of us who read the record of this noble life, if similar lofty principles and solemn sense of our duties and relationships inspired each thought and act, and moulded our daily life and conduct.

3.

Hypothesis.

Scientific infidels knew that there was too much order and regularity in the motions of the planets to allow any rational mind to ascribe these motions to accident, according to Buffon's notion. They saw that these movements must be regulated by law. La Place, an eminent mathematician, saw that there are at least five great regularities pervading the system, for which Buffon's theory gave no reason:

1. The planets all move in elliptical orbits, nearly circular. They might, on the contrary, have been as elongated as those of comets.

2. They revolve in orbits nearly in the plane of the sun's equator. They might have revolved in orbits inclined to it at any angle, or even in the plane of his poles.

3. They revolve around the sun all in the same direction, which is the direction of his rotation on his axis.

space much cooler; and that this cloud, by gradual cooling, and the pressure of its parts, settled down into solid forms. It was supposed that some portions of this cloud would begin to cool sooner than others, and so become solid sooner, and that the hot gas, rushing to the solid part, would form a vortex, which would set the cloud in motion around its centre. As the speed of its rotation would increase, and the outside condense and grow solid before the inside, the cloud would whirl off the rings of solid matter, which would keep revolving in the same orbits in which they were cast off, and would revolve faster and faster as they grew cooler and more solid, till they broke up, by the force of their velocity, into smaller pieces; which fragments, in their turn, repeated the process, until the present number of planets and their satellites was produced.

This theory differs from Buffon's much as a low-pressure engine, deriving most of its power from the condenser, differs from one of high-pressure. La Place

does not explode the boiler to make his planets, but merely runs his train so fast as to break an axle every now and then, when the wheel runs off with the velocity

5. The satellites (with the exception of those of Uranus) revolve around their primary planets, and also rotate on their axes, in the same normal direction.

It was evident, even to the believers in chance, that so many regularities were not produced by chance. La Place found, by computing the chances by the formula of probabilities, that the chances were two millions to one against these regularities happening by chance, and four millions to one in favour of these motions having a common origin. The grand phenomenon being a motion of rotation in the whole system, of which the rotation of the sun is the central part, he thought if he could account for this, he could explain all the rest.

He set out by supposing that the sun and planets originally existed as a vast cloud of gaseous matter, in

engineer to guide it, grows into a little locomotive by dint of running, and after a while breaks an axle too— breaking is a hereditary failing of these suns and planets that had no God to make them--and the wheels thus thrown off supply it with moons and rings, like Saturn's. The illustration is not nearly so absurd as the theory, inasmuch as a locomotive is an incomparably less complicated contrivance than a planet. However, the nonsense was cradled in the halls of philosophy in the manner following.

Herschel had discovered numbers of nebulæ, or luminous clouds, in the distant heavens, shining with a distinct light, but which, with the highest magnifying power he could apply, presented no trace of stars. Some nebulæ, it is true, his largest telescope resolved, like our own Milky Way, into beds of distinct stars; but there were others-for instance, one in the belt of

But

Orion-visible to the naked eye as a cloud, but which his forty feet telescope only displayed as a larger cloud, without any shape of stars. Now, reasoning upon the matter, he found that if these nebula were composed of stars as large as those distinctly visible, they must be immensely distant to be indistinguishable by his telescope, and exceedingly numerous and close together to give a cloud of light visible to the naked eye. In fact, the suns of those firmaments must be so close to each other as to present a blaze of glory, and complexities of revolution inconceivable to the dwellers on earth. as this daring idea seemed incredible, even to his giant mind, he thought the appearance of these nebulæ might be more rationally accounted for by supposing that they were not stars at all, but simply clouds of gaseous matter, like the matter of comets, from which he supposed that stars were formed by a long process of condensation and solidification. He thought this theory was favoured by the fact that nebulæ are generally seen in those portions of the heavens that are not thickly strewn with stars; and also by the various forms of these clouds. Some were merely loose clouds, without any definite form; others seemed gathering towards the centre. In some, of a roundish or oval form, the central mass seemed well defined. In a few, the process seemed nearly complete-a bright star shining in the midst of a faint nebulous halo. Here, then, it was said, we see the whole progress of the growth of stars: their development from the gaseous, nebulous fluid into solid, brilliant suns. La Place accepted Herschel's discoveries as conclusive proof of the truth of his theory, and it was generally accepted by the scientific world. Oddly enough, nobody seems to have noticed that those appearances of condensation toward the centre, which seemed to Herschel so strongly in favour of his theory of the nebulous fluid, were diametrically opposed to La Place's requirements of condensation at the circumference; and these two contradictory notions were supposed to support each other, and to furnish a solid basis for the Development Hypothesis.

This theory, as stated by Herschel, and expounded by Nicholl, Dick, and other Christian writers, is not necessarily atheistical. On the contrary, they allege that it furnishes us with greater evidences of the power of God, and gives us higher ideas of his wisdom, to suppose a system of creation by development, under natural law, than by a direct exercise of his will. Undoubtedly, had God so pleased, he could somehow have made suns from fire mists, but not according to La Place's plan, as we shall presently see. Or he could have caused firmaments to grow from seeds, as forests do, according to some sublime and uniform law of such celestial vegetation. In such a case, we should have had the same kind of evidence of his being, power, wisdom, and goodness, in creation by natural law, which we now have from his providence by natural law, when he sends us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons; and so much greater an amount of it, as the heavens are greater than the

earth. The first creation of primeval elements demands a creator, and the contrivance of the law of development a contriver; and the force, either of gravity, chemical attraction, or any other, by which it operates, must proceed from an agent. The Development Theory, then, cannot exist without God.

However, as it seems to remove nim a few steps from his works, and as all ungodly men desire his absence, Atheists and Pantheists of all kinds have earnestly laid hold of it as the foundation of their system of the development of the universe from eternal, self-existent, homogeneous matter. All the Atheists and Pantheists, with one voice, assert the eternity of the matter out of which the universe made itself, as a simple, uncompounded, nebulous cloud of gas. It is quite indispensable to their system to allege that the nebula was homogeneous; for if they alleged that it was compounded of different ingredients, nobody would believe that it was eternal. They could not persuade a child that a plumpudding, or a wall of brick and mortar, had existed just so from eternity; much less a steam-ship filled with passengers, or a planet with a vastly larger crew and company. They therefore alleged that, though we see no homogeneous, simple, or uncompounded substance on earth, it was there, far away in the heavens. They thought it was so far away that nobody would ever get there to see whether or no, and so they were quite safe in asserting its existence.

Now, one does not see, even if the nebula had been exactly what the Development men assert-simple, homogeneous matter-how they could ever have made such a compound world as this out of it; or how they could have made anything at all out of it. No chemical actions, or reactions, or combinations, can begin in a simple substance: there must always be at least two different substances to make a compound. Heating or cooling a simple substance will never make it a compound. You may heat water in a boiler, and cool it again as often as you please, but your heating and cooling will never make coffee out of it, unless you put coffee into it. So you may heat and cool your simple nebulæ to all eternity, but you will never get coffee out of it, much less coffee and coffee-pot, china and company, with the biscuits and butter-all which, and a great deal more, our philosophers continue to churn out of the nebulæ.

But the progress of science has enabled us to show that the nebulæ, far from being simple, homogeneous matter, are compounded of as many ingredients as the flame of your lamp or gas light, which is combined of half a score of different substances. In another place* I have discussed this subject fully, and have shown how, by the discovery of Spectrum Analysis, we are able to analyze the chemical composition of the most distant flames, to tell whether they proceed from solids or gases in a state of combustion, and what are the gases and

* Scientific Atheism, ch. I.

minerals consumed in them. As space forbids the details of this discovery here, I can only state the results,—namely: that some of the nebulæ consist of clouds of small solid stars, of which the nebulæ in Orion is an instance; but others consist of flames of gases, in all cases compound, and showing, besides the oxygen- | ated flame, the lines which declare the presence of hydrogen, and of several metals. Thus it is proved that no such eternal, homogeneous nebulæ are to be found in heaven, and consequently nobody could ever make worlds out of a substance which had no existence. To say that this notion was mere moonshine, would be far too favourable a judgment, for moonshine has an actual existence, and may be both seen and felt; but no such nebulæ as this theory demands was ever seen or felt. It was a mere castle in the air. Indeed it never was pretended that anybody ever did see the nebulæ scaling off into rings, and the rings breaking up into planets and moons, nor was it likely anybody ever would see such a phenomenon. Its author merely put it forth as a probable theory, and no scientific man ever pretended to demonstrate it as a discovered fact. Among scientific astronomers it was merely a notion.

It was always an unsatisfactory notion. It made us no wiser about the origin of things. It gave no answer to the all-important questions: Where did the gaseous matter come from? How did it get to be so hot, while the space around it was so cold? Whence came the fire that heated it? Did it contain within itself all the principles of things now found in the resulting planets, such as attraction, repulsion, chemical affinity, animal and vegetable life, and intellect? If so, how came they there? If not, where did they come from?

Besides, it was an impracticable notion, contrary to the known principles of mechanics. The great requirement of the whole system-the power to work the engine -the motion of rotation upon which the whole worldturning business depends-never could, by any possibility, be raised either by La Place's, or any other mechanical plan. If he had the moving power, no doubt he could scatter off pieces of matter from his rotating sun, as drops of water are scattered from a rotating grindstone; but his theory is a plan to make the grindstone turn itself, and is precisely of the same value as any of the hundreds of ingenious schemes for a perpetual motion, whose inventors have dreamed of creating power by machinery, in defiance of the fundamental law of mechanics, that "action and reaction are equal." The power is to be raised by making his gas cool at one part of the surface faster than at another, and so make a vortex around that spot, which would set the whole revolving. No conceivable reason can be assigned why it should begin to cool at one place of the surface faster than another; or indeed why, if eternally hot, it ever should begin to cool at all. But to make the required vortex for the rotation of the mass, it should not begin to cool at any part of the surface, but near the middle, where, as every engine-driver who ever

|

saw a condenser, and every woman who has cooled a dish of mush, knows, it could not begin to cool at all; and so no motion could be produced. This is so well known in the machine-shops and dockyards, that it is very rare to find an intelligent millwright or machinist acknowledge the theory.

Even were the rotation and the cooling process to take place, as is supposed, no such results would proceed from these combined operations as the case requires; for, according to the theory, as the cooling and contracting rings revolve in the verge of a vortex of fluid less dense than themselves, one of these two results must take place: either, as is most probable, from their exceeding tenuity, the rings will break at once into fragments, when, instead of flying outwards, they will sink towards the centre, and as long as they are heavier than the surrounding fluid, they will stay there; and as the cooling goes on on the outside, so will the concentration of the heavier matter, till we have one great spheroid, with a solid centre, liquid covering, and gaseous atmosphere. A vortex will never make, nor allow to exist beyond its centre, planets heavier than the fluid of which it is composed. The other alternative, and the one which La Place selected, was the supposition that the cooling and contracting rings did not at first break up into pieces, but retained their continuity; but, contrary to all experience and reason, he supposed that these cooling rings kept contracting and widening out from the heated mass at the same time. The only fluid planetary rings which we can examine-those of Saturn -have been closing in on the planet since the days of Huygens, and in a dozen of years or so will be united with the body of the planet; and every boy who has seen a blacksmith hoop a cart-wheel, has learned the principle that a heated ring contracts as it cools, and in doing so presses in upon the mass around which it clings. But according to this nebular notion, the fire mist keeps cooling and shrinking up, while the rings, of the very same heat and material, keep cooling faster, and widening out from it-a piece of schismatical behaviour without a parallel among solids or fluids, either in heaven or earth, or under the earth.

Plateau's experiment of making a globule of oil rotate and disperse into drops, by centrifugal force communicated by clockwork, while floating in a mixture of alcohol and water, all of the same density, is no illustration of the nebular theory, the essential condition of which is, that the cooling contracting rings be of a different density from the rest of the mass. Their divergence from the more fluid portion is supposed to arise from their growing heavier as they cool, and therefore capable of a greater centrifugal force; in consequence of which they rotate so much faster than the fluid from which they derived their motion, that finally they fly out of it. The only other instance of such a performance which I can

* Bond, of Cambridge, U. S., quoted by Sir David Brewster in More Worlds than One," 35.