26 



is it even conceivable that property which is unalterable 

 should determine movements and the formation of structures 

 which change from time to time, and the form and exact 

 character of which last must have been foreseen and prepared 

 for from the very beginning. The act of construction, the 

 arrangement of material particles according to a definite and 

 pre-arranged plan and for a special purpose, can no more be 

 attributed to the properties of the matter in the case of a 

 living being than in the case of a watch. 



The advocates of materialistic doctrines do not offer a sug- 

 gestion as to the precise changes which occur when what they 

 deem to be merely a compound substance containing oxygen, 

 hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon, and, possibly, one or more 

 other elements, passes from the living to the non-living 

 state. The new materialists stand alone among all the sects 

 known to history in not being able, nay, in not attempting, 

 to establish their views by arguments or to support their 

 doctrines by appealing to facts and reason. They content 

 themselves with authoritative declarations of the most positive 

 and solemn kind, but which, from a scientific and philo- 

 sophical standpoint will be pronounced by dispassionate critics 

 absurd and contrary to fact, and, therefore, not creditable to 

 science. They command people to believe, and encourage 

 them to have robust faith, but as for evidence in support of 

 their materialistic tenets they have literally none. If people 

 generally were acquainted with the facts revealed by the 

 microscopic examination of living matter, and would allow 

 their minds to be influenced by what they observed they would 

 no more believe in the dicta of the materialist than give their 

 faith to an authority who declared that the earth was flat. 



The general acceptance of materialistic doctrines is, in 

 itself an indication how little thought is given by most 

 people in these days to the importance of inquiring into 

 the nature of the evidence upon which far-reaching con- 

 clusions they too readily receive are supposed to rest. 

 People have been misled in times past by false teaching, 

 and large numbers have become steeped in ignorance, bigotry, 

 and fanaticism. But I do not believe that the most lamentable 

 instances on record have led to results more disastrous, or 

 more likely to prove injurious to the interests of individuals 

 and possibly to nations than this attempt in our own time to 

 establish the weakest and worst form of materialism ever ad- 

 vanced, is calculated to produce in the future. It is bad 

 enough when numbers of people become converts to a system 

 founded on truth more or less perverted, or misinterpreted, 

 owing to the ignorance or mistaken zeal of its exponents ; but 



