10 



Nature, herself has been discovered. And a very pretty 

 nature, indeed, is the materialistic nature which has been 

 embodied by authority, and held up for the contemplation and 

 admiration of mankind. Instead of the benign nature of the 

 Epicurean, which gave to all, which made all, and which pro- 

 vided for all, we have a benighted nature in the shape of a 

 blind, insatiable, relentless, irresistible fate, falsely called 

 law working like a dull, senseless machine of overwhelming 

 might, maiming, crushing, distorting, destroying, and thus 

 continuing and preserving, destitute of intelligence and 

 reason, devoid of justice and mercy. A nature not con- 

 tributing to the happiness or enjoyment of any, working 

 upon a world peopled with machines and continued by the 

 destruction of the products of ever-recurring, ever-failing, 

 unintelligent, undesigned experiment. A nature whose law is 

 in part worked out by length and strength of tooth and claw ; 

 a nature which must be detested by the good, and despised 

 by all who can think, and see, and reason. Such is the natural 

 world which is held up for our admiration with the consoling 

 assurance of dictatorial authority that it sprang from chaos in 

 obedience to everlasting self-originating (?) law, and that it will 

 return to chaos, in obedience to the same, all life and work 

 and thought being but the undulations of cosmic nebulosity, 

 and dependent upon the never-ceasing gyrations of infinite, 

 everlasting atoms, as they bound through the ages from void 

 to void. 



This, the dullest, the narrowest, the most superficial of all 

 creeds materialism, which includes some mixture of anti- 

 theism and atheism of various forms and hues has been half 

 accepted by hundreds of persons during the last few years. 

 I believe all materialistic doctrines, vary as they may in detail, 

 will be found to agree in accepting as a truth if, indeed, they 

 are not actually based on it the monstrous assumption that 

 the living and the non-living are one, and that every living 

 thing is just as much a machine as a watch, or a windmill, or 

 a hydraulic apparatus. 



According to the material contention, everything owes its 

 existence to the properties of the material particles out of 

 which it is constructed. But is it not strange that it never 

 seems to have occurred to the materialistic devotee that neither 

 the watch, nor the steam-engine, nor the windmill, nor the 

 hydraulic apparatus, nor any other machine known to, or made 

 by, any individual in this world, is dependant for its construc- 

 tion upon the properties of the material particles of the matter 

 out of which its several parts have been constructed ? Who 

 would think of asserting that in the properties of brass and 



