ORIGIN OF MATTER AND THE INDESTRUCTIBILITY OF MIND. 445 



search will enable them to closely approximate its actual age. This then will fix 

 the date and age of the physical forces, as the age of our part of the planetary sys- 

 tem is about the age of the other planets, the Sun preceding them as they were 

 doubtles fragments of the Sun thrown off at different times, while the satellites of 

 the different planets are parts of their respective planets and are younger. 



But again the mathematicians have weighed the planets and by calculation 

 located undiscovered planets and satellites where the physical forces required they 

 should be to keep the different bodies in their orbits directed astronomers to turn 

 their telescopes into that portion of the heavens and who found them as located. 

 Here is proof positive of government, direction and control of the physical 

 forces. But the age of the globe will fix the age of the physical forces, as they 

 could not have existed in that portion of space occupied by our system for any 

 considerable space of time without producing the matter of which the system is com- 

 posed, nor could our system have existed at its origin without these laws any more 

 than it could to-day, and without them now there would be an immediate "wreck 

 of matter and a crush of worlds." All the different laws governing matter are as 

 inflexible and as exact as mathematics and chemistry and they will be so regard- 

 ed by the learned as soon as they shall be as well understood and will remain as 

 unchangeable as their Author throughout until their appointed time comes 

 when they will die and with them matter and tim.e. But it is said matter is in- 

 destructible and so says philosophy, that is, however, during the existence of 

 those lav/s that gave it birth and govern it. For during the existence of the phys- 

 ical forces as fast as matter in one form dissolves the physical forces take up the 

 elements of which it was composed and clothe it in new forms. But when there 

 are no physical forces to take care of those elements they too will dissolve with 

 the form they composed, and death and not mutation will be written upon every 

 form of matter. 



There is now, has been and will continue to be in the material world so long 

 .as that material world shall remain an inconceivable amount of minor, mental and 

 moral forces, emanations from the great moral force and governed, directed and 

 controlled by this force, and over which the physical forces have no influence, 

 no power, no control, no direction, except incidentally and as the moral and 

 mental symphatise with the material as it may be brought under the influence of 

 and subjected to the physical forces. 



But man has assumed that he is the highest order of intelligence in the ma- 

 terial Universe and being at the head of the animal kingdom he alone will inherit 

 the future domain of mind, intelligence and moral force. That he is at the head of 

 the animal kingdom and the highest order of intelligence in the material Universe 

 is the merest assumption, with no authority in reason or nature and without any 

 proof to sustain it. While it is not denied that on this very minute portion called 

 the globe he occupies that position, but as to what orders of mind, intelligence 

 and moral forces exist in other portions of the physical worlds may be regarded 

 as too uncertain for even conjecture, yet it must be considered that somewhere in 

 the material Universe there is a very high order of mental and moral force in the 



