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deducible from scientific evidence,, on the ground that ve had 
associated something contrary to those conclusions with truths 
which we hold it most important to maintain. 
The alarm at one time felt at the conclusions of geologists 
that the antiquity of the earth itself, and even of plants and 
animals, was to be reckoned by something considerably ex- 
ceeding a few thousand years, may pretty well be looked upon 
as a thing of the past. But instances in which scientific dis- 
coveries, or conclusions based on good evidence, run counter 
to our preconceived ideas occur from time to time, and are 
likely to occur in the future. In this connexion I would refer 
for a minute or two to a scientific doctrine which is now begin- 
ning to be pretty generally received, and which has, I think, 
given needless alarm to some who have the cause of religion 
at heart ; I mean the doctrine of the conservation of force. I 
am not going to enter on any lengthy explanation of what the 
doctrine means; suffice it to say that for every development of 
worlz there must be a corresponding expenditure of something ; 
and conversely, when work is apparently lost, its full 
equivalent must appear in some other shape, in quantity 
corresponding to the work apparently lost, and very com- 
monly in the shape of heat. We have reason to believe 
that this law is no less applicable to living beings than 
to dead matter, and that, for instance, the work exerted by 
a labouring man is the equivalent of a part of the energy 
due to chemical combinations between the constituents of 
his food and the air he breathes. It is this last applica- 
tion of the law which seems to give rise, in the minds of 
religious men, to apprehensions -which to me appear wholly 
groundless. We have long been familiar with the idea that 
living beings, no less than dead matter, are subject to the three 
laws of motion; and if we have now reason to believe that 
they are no less subject to the law of the conservation of force, I 
cannot imagine what religion has to fear from that. To aid our 
ideas let us adopt a rude analogy, and compare a living being 
to a railway train in motion. If we have now reason to regard 
the will, considered in relation to the exertion of muscular 
work, as something more nearly analogous to the intelligence 
of the engine-driver than to the coals under the boiler, that 
surely is not in any way derogatory to our idea of a living 
being, or of the wisdom and power involved in its first creation. 
Bather, as it seems to me, our ideas of what constitutes a living 
being tend to be refined and exalted. 
If we allow the existence of, — say even if we adopt for trial 
the hypothesis of the existence of, — an intelligent Being above 
ourselves to whose Will the arrangement of Nature is due. 
