, dashing and striking against each other? Did
these atoms, devoid of sense and life, with their reflections and
repurcussions, their cohesions, implexions, and entanglements, their
scattered dispersions and divulsions, produce life and intelligence? If
so, we will call it by the name of chance. Hear this, O, ye scientists,
there is but one choice, and that is between _God_ and _chance_!

The chance theory is that "infinite atoms of various sizes and figures,
devoid of life and sense, moving fortuitously from eternity in infinite
space, and making successive encounters and various implexions and
entanglements with one another, produced first a confused chaos of these
omnifarious particles or atoms, which, jumbling together with infinite
variety of motions by the tugging of their different and contrary
forces, hindered and restricted each other until, by joint conspiracy,
they conglomerated into a vortex or vortexes, where, after many
convulsions and evolutions, molitions and essays, in which all manner of
tricks were tried," without design, "they _chanced_ in length of time to
settle into the form and system of things known as earth, air and fire,
sun, moon and stars, plants, animals and men;" so that senseless atoms
unconsciously moved themselves, although dead as grains of sand, and
kept up the motion until, without any _living substance_ underlying, and
adequate to produce motion, all things so beautifully arranged sprang
into life and being. O, ye stars, what is the magnitude of an infidel's
credulity? What is there which he can not believe? It is no longer to be
set down that he is a reasonable man. "The fool saith in his heart there
is no God." There is a grand relation between the eternal spirit and
that eternal substance which lies behind and underneath all that is, and
that relation is the relation between the "King Eternal" and that over
which he presides and which he controls. So out of nothing nothing
comes.

RELIGIOUS HYSTERIA, OR GETTING INSTANTANEOUSLY CONVERTED.

BY GEORGE HERBERT CURTEIS, M.A.,

_Late Fellow and Sub-Rector of Exeter College, Principal of the
Litchfield Theological College, and Prebendary of Litchfield Cathedral._

I fear it is impossible to deny, that in the early part of the
eighteenth century--amid the general coldness, languor, and want of
enthusiasm which characterized that effete epoch--"the Church of
England, as well as all the dissenting bodies, slumbered and slept."