1872. ] 39] [Prices 
materialism against physicists, for I am happy in believing that the great 
majority of physicists are not materialists. I give credit to all who dis- 
avow a materialistic faith, including Dr. Huxley ; giving credit to the like 
disavowals here, there is no materialist known to me in this Society. I 
have been enabled to use the authority and facts furnished by eminent 
physicists, with great advantage, to sustain the views expressed in this 
essay, as those of Bichat, Morgan, Carpenter, Holmes, and Tyndall. 
While the drift of Professor Huxley’s lay sermon favors materialism, 
there is that in ‘systematic materialism ’’ that repels him as something 
pernicious. The last words of the sermon are these : ‘‘The errors of 
systematic materialism may paralyze the energies and destroy the beauty 
of life. He has some other faith, therefore, which preserves him from 
the deadly influence he deprecates, and the loss of the sense of the beauty 
of life which he loves. It can only be a more elevating philosophy, by 
his concession, that can preserve to us a sense of the beauty of life ; may 
o> 
we not say, ‘‘the beauty of holiness?’? Such good fruit must be proof of 
the greater truth of the higher philosophy he conceives and believes, yet 
does not explain or advocate, but has sought to supplant. Now how only 
do men attain their highest sense and example of this ‘“‘beauty of life?” 
It is by a belief in the immortal life, and by cherishing the highest ideal 
of perfection, which that belief ever presents to our apprehension, with 
an obedience to the injunction to strive to be perfect as the higher per- 
fection ; even looking to the perfection ‘‘of our Father in heaven.”’ That 
sannot be the truth of life that could “‘ paralyze the energies and destroy 
the beauty of life.”’ 
demns itself? Why seek to establish a theory at which our given sense 
of truth and beauty revolts? Why seek to entomb the mind in matter, 
and thereby lose our own soul? The useful, the beautiful, and the per- 
fect in God’s creation attest the truths thereof and thatit is His. It re- 
mains ever to be a sure test, by their fruits are all things to be known. 
I would now leave it, as the testimony of one who has lived longer than 
Why then seek to build up a philosophy which con- 
the allotted three score years and ten, not unobservant of men, nor unre- 
flecting upon the question of the wherefore of our being, with a mind 
consciously open to the reception of every truth presented, for all that the 
conviction of one mind may be worth,—that the doctrine of materialism 
cannot be adopted as a belief of mankind, until men shall become capable 
of confounding things the most opposite in nature ; until they can believe 
that light can be darkness ; good be evil ; right, wrong ; not until men can 
dissever effect from its due cause ; logic from reason ; creation from its 
Creator. Not until then, will they confound mind with matter. All 
nature demands a broader and truer interpretation, wherein every part 
shall have assigned to it its just significance, and unto the whole its ade- 
quate import be ascribed. Each and all imply no less than that there isa 
Creator, and that the human soul has a lifeimmortal. Ifthe soul of man 
has not this significance, then, truly, Creation is without adequate motive 
or result for all eternity. But if we be children and heirs of God, there 
is a sufficient solution of the purpose of our being, and an object worthy 
the glory of the universe. 
