Facts Better Than Speculations.
By N. Y. Observer
WHEN an effort was made to introduce the doctrine of evolution into the class-books of science in Prussia, Professor Virchow, of Berlin, successfully resisted the attempt. "While facts," he said, "should be taught, conjecture should only be mentioned as conjecture. The production of the first organism out of inorganic matter has never been proved, and the connection between monkeys and men is unintelligible to those who are content to argue from what comes under their own observation. Every attempt to form our problems into doctrines, to introduce our hypotheses as the bases of instruction by a religion of evolution, every such attempt will make shipwreck, and in its wreck will also bring with it the greatest peril for the whole position of science." When a German philosopher of such eminence as Virchow warns his disciples against "a religion of evolution," we may well summon Christian teachers to pause before they imbue their young pupils' mind with theories of which there is no proof, and which tend directly to materialism. The disciple very soon gets ahead of his master when the master is off the track. Nor is there a more dangerous teacher than the good great man, who, in the pride of intellect, or in the rarified atmosphere of too much learning, has attempted to evolve a new system of creation which will explain what needs no explanation. "Professing to be wise they became fools," may be said of many in these days, as of old, and great men are not always wise in this country any more than they were in the land of Uz.—N. Y. Observer.