! 3 6 A TTA CKS UPON RELIGION 



we submit to this new law of liberty of work and liberty of 

 thought, not only shall we fail to forward the interests of 

 truth in philosophy and in physiology, but we shall be 

 helping to construct a barricade that would not be easily 

 destroyed, and would certainly prevent anyone from ap- 

 proaching truth for many long years to come. 



The- nature of things and the nature of Mind not to be 

 discovered by attacks upon Religion. Concerning the powerful 

 advocates of modern philosophic views it must be admitted 

 that not a few, when commenting upon doctrines irre- 

 concilable with their own, manifest a spirit far removed 

 from the calm indifference said to be characteristic of the 

 wise. Instead of attracting us, by endeavouring to influence 

 our reason, and simply directing attention to the new facts 

 that have been discovered, and enlightening willing listeners 

 as to the true causes of phenomena and the nature of 

 things, they loudly declare that their pupils must first cast 

 away all that they have been taught to regard as unchanging 

 truth and dismiss as fable the wonders that their fathers 

 believed, and believing which they died. 



To prepare ourselves for instruction we are to abandon 

 our ideas of a supernatural, and, instead of attributing the 

 creation of all things to God, we are to believe implicitly in 

 the potency of force to form, and that force does form all 

 the wonderful things, living as well as lifeless, of which we 

 have knowledge or experience. The forces and properties 

 of the material molecules not God have somehow stamped 

 upon the formless the marvellous form and structure and the 

 beautiful appearance the component particles have been con- 

 strained to assume. 



But disbelief in the truth of the old world views and 



