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force on themselves and others the acceptance of the proposition that the 

 views impugned are not atheistic, or only in a very slight degree atheistic, 

 to accurately define the powers and attributes of the God they would 

 substitute for the God in whom men have hitherto believed ? If this were 

 done, we should be able to judge whether it was possible for men in their 

 senses to acknowledge such a power, to submit themselves to its guidance, 

 to love, honour, and obey it, to worship it, for the God of man demands 

 all this and more. Judging from much that has been said and written upon 

 this subject during the last few years, it is difficult to come to any other 

 conclusion than that the real aim of many who speak and write in favour of 

 the new views is to destroy, and within a measurable period of time, belief 

 in the existence of the Supreme Being, in Providence, and in a living God, 

 and to force those who think at all to endeavour, by the mightiest mental 

 effort of which they are capable, to train and exercise their minds by the 

 contemplation of an everlasting infinite nothing. Instead of the new 

 doctrines being explained in detail, we are assured by patronisers and pro- 

 moters of this retrograde nonsense that the reasonings of So-and-so, who 

 has, in fact, done what he could to prove there is no God, " are inspired by 

 a reverence which is truly religious," and so on, until every one capable of 

 thinking must feel weary of such mawkish adulation and misrepresentation 

 of fact. Of course, the real question is whether, in such a system as has 

 been proposed, any power deserving the name of God is required or could 

 possibly find a place, and then what powers the Deity permitted to exist 

 possesses. A God without will, without power to arrange, order, design 

 according as he wills, can hardly be worshipped by man. For, can 

 omnipotence restricted in its operation by inexorable laws be omnipo- 

 tent ? Is not the idea of omnipotence and omniscience, testing by experi- 

 ment the results of infinite constructive power, worthy of a philosophy 

 hereafter to be distinguished, for physical revelations supposed to be about 

 to be made, and its rejection of the theistic idea ? 



Much confusion has resulted from the acceptance of fallacies concerning the 

 nature of the changes in living matter, and the dictum, not proved nor at 

 this time provable, that the living and the non-living are one, governed by 

 the same laws and due to the same cause. The chasm between the living 

 and the non-living has not been bridged, and it cannot be bridged by idle 

 assertions to the contrary and speculations about cosmic vapour, however 

 desirous the public may be that the operation of bridging should be accom- 

 plished. The form of Materialistic doctrine now popular neither accounts for 

 any single operation peculiar to living matter, nor helps us to understand the 

 nature of any one. Nothing whatever, I fear, has been added by physical 

 science to our knowledge of the real nature of the marvellous change which 

 occurs when a material atom passes from the non-living to the living state, 

 and becomes an integral part of the very simplest or lowest living matter in 

 existence. The nature of this change, which is unquestionably different in 

 its essential nature from any known physical change, has not yet been 

 elucidated, though it has been over and over again declared that it is 



