9 



came underlay andin obedience to laws supposed to have been 

 enacted in the first beginning, still continue their movements, 

 and being acted upon by, and acting upon other atoms, actions 

 of the most complex character are established. Gradually 

 these actions are supposed to take the form of life, and as the 

 ages have rolled on, living forms have assumed a higher 

 character until, at last, the evolution of man himself was con- 

 summated. Of all things the farthest removed from the re- 

 mote cause of his existence, man, the only being in nature 

 longing to know of law, of cause, of consequence, is commanded 

 to see grandeur, and more than grandeur in the fanciful sugges- 

 tion of a creator of molecules of cosmic vapour out of which 

 earth and air and water, and every form of matter, non-living 

 and living, were, according to the hypothesis, gradually formed, 

 or evolved themselves in obedience to some compulsory arrange- 

 ment, or not to be accurately defined necessity, or "law," 

 supposed to have been enacted for once and for all by the 

 Creator in the first beginning, and still causing everything 

 and operating on everything up to this very day. 



The materialist needlessly, and without reason or, rather, 

 against reason, as it appears to many sneers at the want 

 of enlightenment of past generations, and in his own 

 dogmatic and self-confident, infallible way expounds the 

 materialistic views of the existing order of things ; extols 

 the tendencies of what he calls the thought of his time, 

 by which he seems to mean materialistic dogma, and 

 prophecies concerning the proofs of the truth of his teach- 

 ings which are to be discovered by unborn materialistic 

 investigators. His hearers listen with wrapt and unquestion- 

 ing reverence to his vague and extravagant utterances. They 

 cannot doubt; they dare not think. Have not gifted me- 

 chanisms of the highest culture spoken ? have not privileged 

 spirits of transcendent power prophesied ? Who, then, tit to 

 survive, can doubt who dares to disparage the glorious 

 grandeur of the universal, ever-moving molecular mechanism? 



How often are we enjoined with austere solemnity not to 

 resist the influence of the cold logic of materialistic science ? 

 We shall be spurned by many, but we must be encouraged by 

 the conviction that we are acquiring material truth, and 

 sustained by the consolation that, though we may be looked 

 down upon, we may feel certain that we alone are right. We 

 are not only told how we, must look at nature, but precisely 

 what we are to see is most accurately described, exactly as it 

 has been discerned by the materialistic intellect and caused to 

 assume a form fit to be received by the people at large. The 

 moving forces and molecular mechanisms have been revealed, 

 c 



