128 TENTH ANNUAL REPORT OP 



Tinwortliy of the very tliouglit of the Almighty — much more, so un- 

 worthy of the price which He has j)aid for it?" 



Thus the mind, turned hack upon itself, begins to discover that^ 

 after all, it is not " of the earth, earthy," but derived from a higher 

 source, and reserved for a higher destiny. And, strange to say, this 

 altered and bettered opinion of itself is traceable to the first check 

 which it feels — the first baffling of its analytical powers. So long as 

 the mind was extending the sphere of its researches into the material 

 universe, weighing, and numbering, and tabulating, all nature seemed 

 to move in blind obedience to a force whose influence might be calcu- 

 lated ; every world being found to act upon its fellow in exact propor- 

 tion to its position and its weight, and our world to be but a part, and 

 a small part, of one vast machine. And with such a view of the rela- 

 tion of the earth to the universe, might not unnaturally come a lower 

 estimate of man, the dweller on the earth. "Is he, too, but a part 

 in the house in which he dwells ? Is his course also subject to those 

 immutable laws which bind the universe together? And, if so, where 

 is his individuality ? Where the reflex of that image in Avhich he is 

 said to have been created?" But the moment that the mind appre- 

 hends the action of the inexiDlicable laws of life, and is certified of the 

 individuality of every living things however small, and compares these 

 microscopic "wholes" with the "whole" that it feels itself to be, 

 that moment it begins to see that the human soul is a something 

 apart from the world, in and over which it is placed. 



Galileo in his cell was bound in fetters, but his spirit could not be 

 bound. His thoughts were as free, and his mind had as wide a range, 

 as if he could have flown through all space on the wings of light. And 

 thus it is with man — prisoned for a short time in this lower world, he 

 belongs to an order of being that no world can confine. He cannot 

 continue stationary, nor plod forever a dull round in the treadmill 

 here. lie must either rise above all height, into communion with the 

 Deity ; or fall, bereft of hope, forever. We must not estimate such a 

 being by the narrow bounds of the cell which he now inhabits. We 

 must judge of him by his intellectual powers, his aspirations, his in- 

 tuitive conceptions of his own nature ; and, as a spirit, all these place 

 him, in his individu.aUty, far above any plurality of mere material 

 worlds. 



I may seem to be wandering from my proper theme, but my object 

 is to vindicate the teaching of the Book of Nature from the aspersions 

 of the ignorant and the prejudiced. Whilst I admit that half views 

 of natural science may lead men astray, and whilst I deplore the infi- 

 delity of scientific men whose minds are absorbed in the material on 

 which they work, I deny that the study of nature has, in itself, an 

 evil tendency. On the contrary, the study of organic nature, at least, 

 ought to be one of the purest sources of intellectual pleasure. It 

 places before us structures the most exquisite in form and delicate in 

 material ; the perfect works of Him who is Himself the sum of all 

 perfections : — and if our minds are properly balanced, we shall not 

 rest satisfied with a mere knowledge and admiration of these wonder- 

 ful and manifold works ; but, reading in them the evidence of their 

 relation to their Maker, we shall be led on to investigate our oivn. 



I do not assert that this study is, of itself, sufficient to make men 



