of faith in some absurd dogmas, the threatened penalty for 

 refusal being that of being numbered amongst the fools, the 

 bigots, the orthodox, and the like. 



Some who accept fancies of the most conjectural character 

 as new articles of belief, which involve the abandonment of 

 old truths as well as the sacrifice of firm bulwarks of belief, 

 seem to reluctantly yield a regretful, but conscientious 

 submission to the stern dictates of truth, and pose as if 

 they were exercising a self-denying virtue, possibly not 

 unalloyed with pity, nor quite free from contempt for those 

 who still hopefully cling to the beliefs of their fathers. Never- 

 theless, if you will take the trouble to thoroughly investigate 

 the principles of the new faith, you will be convinced that all 

 that can be obtained by the most careful analytical examina- 

 tion of the foundations upon which different forms of new 

 materialism rest, are dogmas about forces and properties, 

 hypotheses as to what may be, or might be, or must be, and 

 a robust faith, which you are requested to have, in wonderful 

 discoveries which are to be made after the lapse of some time 

 by privileged spirits who, it is asserted, will make their 

 appearance in the future. 



That a materialistic and antitheistic view of things may pre- 

 sent itself to some minds, and assume what seems to be a 

 reasonable form is, however, possible; but the pretentious 

 vapourings in philosophical phraseology familiar to us, and 

 which are supposed to tend towards that by not a few much- 

 to-be-desired consummation, are often but a poor parody on 

 materialism, and a real disgrace to the critical and reasoning 

 power of our time. Some of the assertions which have been 

 made about the properties and potencies of matter, and which 

 are repeated even in text-books, would not survive candid 

 answers to the questionings of a curious schoolboy. 



The popular scientific doctrines of the last few years all 

 seem to admit some vague, imaginary, non-existing first cause, 

 of which neither the nature nor the attributes have been 

 defined, and which is placed at such a remote distance in 

 time from the present era, that in us it can hardly excite more 

 interest than the possibility of a shadowy phantom in an all- 

 pervading primitive mist. There seems to be a fanciful con- 

 ception of material atoms being evolved from the void ; but it 

 is, of course, useless to ask why, when, or how ? By one 

 supreme mysterious fiat, or effort, beyond, above, and inde- 

 pendent of all law, eternal forces and properties were conferred 

 upon these atoms, I suppose, at the moment of their evolution 

 from the nothing, by virtue of which they restlessly gyrate. 

 The vibrations communicated to atoms by the first impulse then 



