Being the Morse Lectures of 1895 PROFESSOR OF BIOLOGY, AMHERST COLLEGE Morse Lectures 1893—THE PLACE OF CHRIST IN MODERN THEOLOGY. By Rev. A.M. Fairbairn, D.D. 8vo, $2.50 1894—THE RELIGIONS OF JAPAN. By Rev. William Elliot Griffis, D.D. 12mo, $2.00. 1895—THE WHENCE AND THE WHITHER OF MAN. By Professor John M. Tyler. 12mo, $1.75. CHAPTERS : Introduction , I , II , III , IV , V , VI , VII , VIII , IX , X , Index FIGURES : 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10...

In the year 1865 Professor Samuel Finley Breese Morse, to whom the world is indebted for the application of the principles of electro-magnetism to telegraphy, gave the sum of ten thousand dollars to Union Theological Seminary to found a lectureship in memory of his father, the Rev. Jedediah Morse, D.D., theologian, geographer, and gazetteer. The subject of the lectures was to have to do with "The relations of the Bible to any of the sciences." The ten chapters of this book correspond to ten lect

The story of a human life can be told in very few words. A youth of golden dreams and visions; a few years of struggle or of neglected opportunities; then retrospect and the end. But how few of the visions are realized. Faust sums up the whole of life in the twice-repeated word versagen , renounce, and history tells a similar story. Terah died in Haran; Abraham obtained but a grave in the land promised him and his children; Jacob, cheated in marriage, bitterly disappointed in his children, died

The first and lowest form in our ancestral series is the amœba, a little fresh-water animal from 1/500 to 1/1000 of an inch in diameter. Under the microscope it looks like a little drop of mucilage. This semifluid, mucilaginous substance is the Protoplasm. Its outer portion is clear and transparent, its inner more granular. In the inner portion is a little spheroidal body, the nucleus. This is certainly of great importance in the life of the animal; but just what it does, or what is its relation

In tracing the genealogy of any American family it is often difficult or impossible to say whether a certain branch is descended from John Oldworthy or his cousin or second cousin. In the latter cases to find the common ancestor we must go back to the grandfather or great-grandfather. The same difficulty, but greatly enhanced, meets us when we try to make a genealogical tree of the animal kingdom. Thus it seems altogether probable that all higher forms are descended from an ancestor of the same

In tracing man's ancestry from fish upward we ought properly to describe three or four fish, an amphibian, a reptile, and then take up the series of mammalian ancestors. But we have not sufficient time for so extended a study, and a simpler method may answer our purpose fairly well. Let us fix our attention on the few organs which still show the capacity of marked development, and follow each one of these rapidly in its upward course. We must remember that there are changes in the vegetative org

We have sketched hastily the development of the human body. This portion of our history is marked by the successive dominance of higher and higher functions. It is a history treating of successive eras. There is first the period of the dominance of reproduction and digestion, purely vegetative functions, characteristics of the plant just as truly as of the animal. This period extends from the beginning of life up to the time when the annelid was the highest living form yet developed. But in inse

I have attempted to show that animal development has not been an aimless drifting. Functions developed and organs arose and were perfected in a certain order. First the purely vegetative organs appeared, and the animal lived for digestion and reproduction; then came muscle and it brought with it nerve. But these were not enough; the brain had all the time been gradually improving, and now it becomes the dominant function to which all others are subordinated. The experiment was fairly tried. Mere

We are too prone to think that soil and climate, hill-side or plain, mountain and shore, temperature and rainfall, constitute the sole or the most important elements in human environment. Every one of these elements is doubtless important. Frost, drought, or barrenness of soil may make a region a desert, or dwarf the development of its inhabitants. Mountaineer, and the dweller on the plain, and the fisherman on the shore of the ocean develop different traits through the influence of their surrou

In Kingsley's fascinating historical romance, Raphael Aben-Ezra says to Hypatia, "Is it not possible that we have been so busy discussing what the philosopher should be, that we have forgotten that he must first of all be a man?" This truth we too often forget. No statesman, philosopher, least of all teacher, can be truly great who is not, first of all, and above all, a great man. And in our study of man are we not prone to forget that he stands in certain very definite and close relations with

We have studied the teachings of science concerning man and his environment, let us turn now to the teachings of the Bible. And though eight chapters have been devoted to the teachings of science, and only one to the teachings of the Bible, it is not because I underestimate the importance of the latter. It is more difficult to clearly discover just what are the teachings of Nature in science. The lesson is written in a language foreign to most of us, and one requiring careful study; and yet once

In all our study we have taken for granted the truth of the theory of evolution. If you are not already persuaded of this by the writings of Darwin, Wallace, and many others, no words or arguments of mine would convince you. We have used as the foundation of our argument only the fundamental propositions of Mr. Darwin's theory. But while all evolutionists accept these propositions they differ more or less in the weight or efficiency which they assign to each. In a sum in multiplication you may g

* Apparently capable of indefinite development. [ image ]...

[TABLE OF CONTENTS] Amœba, 32 Annelids, 61 , 103 Apes, anthropoid, 91 Appetites, 137 Arthropoda, 61 Articulata, 61 Beauty, perception of, 121 Bible, 241 Blastosphere, 44 Brain, 64 , 108 ; of insects, 69 ; vertebrates, 75 , 85 ; man, 96 . See also Ganglion Cell, 34 , 36 Child, mental development of, 204 Christianity, 192 , 250 , 252 Church, 265 Circulatory system, worms, 62 ; insects, 66 ; vertebrates, 84 Classification, 20 Cœlenterata, 42 , 55 Conformity to environment, 150 , 170 , 177 , 197 , 2