Other facts are even more perplexing to this theory. The moon is moving from her place at an increasing rate and astronomy cannot account for it. The earth's axis of revolution has varied from time to time. Only one star in a thousand has ever been catalogued. Of only about a hundred is the calculation of the parallax possible, so distant are they.
As to our earth, a well-known writer says: "No one of standing in the scientific world of to-day is willing to go on record as having a theory of his own regarding the internal fires of this planet or attempting to account for their origin."
In view of this state of uncertainty, it seems to the non-scientific mind hazardous to project across these vast ages a guess as to what the conditions were and how the universe originated. And above all to found on this guess a vast philosophy of the universe affecting all we hold precious for this life and that to come. Well may we hesitate before such demands.
4. The origin of life is a problem Evolution has sought in vain to solve or account for by its natural or resident forces.
Prof. Le Conte labors hard to show that it might have come from the union of the four gases, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen, under some peculiar circumstances. If he had said under the direct act of the Creator we could assent cheerfully. For these do enter into the substance which forms the bodies of living things. But the claim of Evolution is that all came by "resident forces," self-operating. Once admit the direct act of the Creator, and, as Haeckel says, they might as well admit it along the whole process, for the argument for a single instance is valid for the whole. So they will have none of it.
Prof. Le Conte labors to show that protoplasm might be self-originating, but Prof. Conn says, "Protoplasm is not a chemical compound but a mechanism.... Unorganized protoplasm does not exist.... It could never have been produced by chemical process. Chemistry has produced starches, fats, albumens, but not protoplasm." (Method of Evolution.)
Lord Kelvin, in writing to the London Times, said:
"Forty years ago I asked Liebig, walking somewhere in the country, if he believed that the grass and flowers which we saw around us grew by mere chemical forces. He answered, 'No, no more than I could believe that a book of botany describing them could grow by mere chemical forces.'"
Tyndall, after laborious experiments during eight months, thus candidly states the result, in an address before the Royal Institute, London: "From the beginning to the end of the inquiry, there is not, as you have seen, a shadow of evidence in favor of the doctrine of spontaneous generation.... In the lowest, as in the highest of organized creatures, the method of nature is, that life shall be the issue of antecedent life."