no SELECTED ESSAYS FROM LAY SERMONS 



cause; and the attempt to prove such a negative as this is, 

 on the face of the matter, absurd. And while it is thus a 

 philosophical impossibility to demonstrate that any given 

 phenomenon is not the effect of a material cause, any one 

 who is acquainted with the history of science will admit, 

 that its progress has, in all ages, meant, and now, more than 

 ever, means, the extension of the province of what we call 

 matter and causation, and the concomitant gradual banish- 

 ment from all regions of human thought of what w^e call 

 spirit and spontaneity. 



I have endeavoured, in the first part of this discourse, to 

 give you a conception of the direction towards which modern 

 physiology is tending; and I ask you, what is the difference 

 between the conception of life as the product of a certain 

 disposition of material molecules, and the old notion of an 

 Arch^us governing and directing blind matter within each 

 living body, except this — that here, as elsewhere, matter 

 and law have devoured spirit and spontaneity? And as 

 surely as every future grows out of past and present, so will 

 the physiology of the future gradually extend the realm of 

 matter and law until it is co-extensive with knowledge, with 

 feeling, and with action. 



The consciousness of this great truth weighs like a night- 

 mare, I believe, upon many of the best minds of these days. 

 They watch what they conceive to be the progress of mate- 

 rialism, in such fear and powerless anger as a savage feels, 

 when, during an eclipse, the great shadow creeps over the 

 face of the sun. The advancing tide of matter threatens to 

 drown their souls; the tightening grasp of law impedes their 

 freedom; they are alarmed lest man's moral nature be de- 

 based by the increase of his wisdom. 



If the "New Philosophy" be worthy of the reprobation 

 with which it is visited, I confess their fears seem to me to 



