Messrs. Gladstone & Tribe have been investigating the results of the decomposition of alcohol by aluminium. When absolute alcohol, in which iodine has been dissolved, is poured upon finely divided aluminium in a flask, energetic action takes place and large quantities of hydrogen are evolved. A pasty mass remains, and this heated to 100 deg. C., gives off alcohol, and leaves a solid residue, which liquefies at 275 deg. C., alcohol and an oily body containing iodine passing over. At a higher temperature, this product was again decomposed, with formation of alcohol, ethylene, and alumina. But the most interesting results were obtained under diminished pressure. Then a greenish white solid sublimed, and this was found to be aluminic ethylate. This is therefore the second known organometallic body, containing oxygen, which is capable of distillation, cacodylic oxide being the other.
CURRENT LITERATURE.
Prof. Huxley's ingenious if somewhat shallow evasion of the Biblical account of creation, by crediting it to Milton rather than to Moses, has perhaps aroused many minds to inquire what modern theologians really do think of the first chapters of Genesis. This question is answered by a recent publication[12] by Dr. Cocker of the Michigan State University. In the "Theistic Conception of the World" he treats the first two chapters of the Bible as a poem, which he calls the "symbolical hymn of creation." It has an exordium, six strophes, each with its refrain, and an episode. He does not believe the sacred narrative intends to describe the exact mode of forming the world, nor even to set the successive events in order. It is an ascription, designed to embody in symbolical language the fact that all existence is derived from God. One paragraph will show the broad ground on which this conclusion is based:
A cursory reading of the narrative will convince any one that its purpose is not to enlarge men's views of nature, but to teach them something concerning nature's God. It says nothing about the forces of nature, the laws of nature, the classifications of natural history, or the size, positions, distances, and motions of the heavenly bodies. From first to last, every phenomenon and every law is linked immediately to some act or some command of God. It is God who creates, God who commands, God who names, God who approves, and God who blesses. Strike out the allusions to God, and the narrative is meaningless. Clearly it was never intended to teach science. It has obviously one purpose, to reveal and keep before the minds of men the grand truth that Jehovah is the sole Creator and Lord of the heavens and the earth; and it leaves the scientific comprehension of nature to the natural powers with which God has endowed man for that end.
But the author believes that the Mosaic account is practically correct, or perhaps we should say harmonious with the truth. It may be truthful without being all the truth, or truthful and still be very defective. He considers that when scientific knowledge is complete, the Scripture, rightly interpreted, will be found in harmony with its final conclusions. How Moses was made acquainted with the events of creation is a matter upon which it is impossible to be positive. The author sees no objection to the suggestion that he may have witnessed a series of pictures or visions, the result of which upon his mind is given in the hymn of creation. This explanation of the Biblical narrative forms but a small part of the work, which is chiefly given to a discussion of the views and positive discoveries of scientific men which relate to the production of the world. It is a remarkable tribute to the overmastering power of positive knowledge. Science and theology are mingled in an extraordinary way, but a way that is now necessary, for there is not one province of human thought that has not been compelled to acknowledge the great possibilities of inductive reasoning. Dr. Cocker labors to establish the old faith on the new ground. He is a man of great reading and has a strong belief in the religion to which he has given his heart. Every question is approached in the firm faith that when rightly interpreted it will be found to sustain the Christian religion. This is the fundamental fault of the work. It is a plea for a cause that does not need it, for a cause that is quite as apt to lose as to gain by the defence. The difficulty with this method of meeting the hypothesis of science is that the scientific views are themselves in a state of unstable equilibrium. They may topple at any moment, and then the correspondence that eager devotees have found between them and the Bible is a slur that falls altogether on the religion and not on the science. This is a great error, and those who are drawn into it belittle the cause that is dear to them. While our author is catholic in his reading, he does not seem to assign to all writers in his field their just value. His quotations, the fresh, the obsolete, the trustworthy, and the doubtful, are mingled in a confusion that only the experienced can penetrate. His book is creditable to his unshaken faith, and it presents the religious aspect of modern knowledge in a thorough manner.
It is not strange that under the present condition of the general mind the question as to the right of the State to teach religion at the public expense should be regarded with unusual interest. This question has been very ably discussed by the Rev. Dr. Spear, whose book upon the subject,[13] originally published as a series of essays in "The Independent," is notably thorough and notably calm and judicial in tone. Dr. Spear considers the subject in both its constitutional and its equitable aspect, and the conclusion to which he is led is that "the public school, like the State, under whose authority it exists, by whose taxing power it is supported, should be simply a civil institution, absolutely secular and not at all religious in its purposes, and all practical questions involving this principle should be settled in accordance therewith." He admits that this logical result of his argument excludes the Bible from the public school, just as it excludes the Westminster Catechism, the Koran, or any of the sacred books of heathenism. But, as he justly says, this conclusion pronounces no judgment against the Bible and none for it; it simply omits to use it and declines to inculcate the religion which it teaches. It is difficult to see how any other view of the case can be taken consistently with the spirit of our institutions, from the Constitution of the United States downward; and it is a cheering promise of the disappearance of bigotry, even in its milder forms, when we see this view set forth by a distinguished orthodox minister of the Gospel. There still, however, remains this question in connection with religious toleration and religious qualifications—Does a religion one element of which is absolute subservience to the will of a foreign potentate or prelate, the Roman or the Greek, for example, and which undertakes to deal with a civil relation, marriage for example, come properly within the provision for universal religious toleration, or does it not, for the reasons assigned, assume a relation to the State more or less political?