142 LAY SERMONS, ADDRESSES, AND REVIEWS. [vil 



to prove that anything whatever may not be the effect 

 of a material and necessary cause, and that human logic 

 •is equally incompetent to prove that any act is 

 really spontaneous. A really spontaneous act is one 

 which, by the assumption, has no cause ; and the attempt 

 to prove such a negative as this is, on the face of the 

 matter, absurd. And while it is thus a philosophical 

 impossibility to demonstrate that any given phenomenon 

 is not the effect of a material cause, any one who is 

 acquainted with the history of science will admit, that 

 its progress has, in all ages, meant, and now, more than 

 ever, means, the extension of the province of what we 

 call matter and causation, and the concomittant gradual 

 banishment from all regions of human thought of what 

 we call spirit and spontaneity. 



I have endeavoured, in the first part of this discourse, 

 to give you a conception of the direction towards which 

 modern physiology is tending ; and I ask you, what is 

 the difference between the conception of life as the 

 product of a certain disposition of material molecules, 

 and the old notion of an Archseus o;overnin£ and di- 

 recting blind matter within each living body, except 

 this — that here, as elsewhere, matter and law have de- 

 voured spirit and spontaneity ? And as surely as every 

 future grows out of past and present, so will the phy- 

 siology of the future gradually extend the realm of 

 matter and law until it is co-extensive with knowledge, 

 with feeling, and with action. 



The consciousness of this great truth weighs like a 

 nightmare, I believe, upon many of the best minds of 

 these days. They watch what they conceive to be the 

 progress of materialism, in such fear and powerless anger 

 as a savage feels, when, during an eclipse, the great 

 shadow creeps over the face of the sun. The advancing 

 tide of matter threatens to drown their souls ; the tight- 



