464 On Electricity and its Present Applications. (August, 
have been carried on. It is not necessary to suppose that 
such an event as the formation of an organised being shall 
have occurred often. If in the whole course of millions of 
years it has once happened, either on the land or in the 
depths of the ocean, that a group of atoms, few or many, 
have been so segregated as to have the power of assimilating 
outside material, and the power of producing other groups 
more or less similar to themselves, then we have no more 
demands to make on the ‘ Theory of Spontaneous Genera- 
tion.’ The more we study the aftual nature of matter the 
less improbable will it seem that organic beings should have 
so originated.” 
All this seems to me to be only a petitio principii, or begging 
of the question, which there is absolutely no ground for 
acceding to. It reminds one of the boast of Archimedes : 
“ Give me a fixed place to stand upon, and I will move the 
world.” “ Concede to me,” these reasoners say, “ that 
matter can form and fashion itself into a living being, and I 
will dispense with your God, and depose him from his throne 
of supremacy.” The premiss, if it does not mean this, at 
all events tends to lead some of its upholders to this and 
other conclusions which are opposed to the first principles 
of religion. Such conclusions, however, would be a mistake, 
even although the premises were proved to be true, for these 
would by no means do away with the irresistible and un- 
avoidable recognition of an all-pervading, unceasing, and 
intelligent energy presiding over and throughout the uni- 
verse. . . 
As a safeguard against the dangerous and atheistical ten- 
dencies referred to, we should, in accordance with the 
instinctive promptings of our own nature, of all nature, and 
of reason and revelation, believe in God as the Creator 
and Governor of the Universe ; and in gratitude for all that 
we owe to Him we ought, in the words of Christ’s summa- 
tion of the moral law, to love Him “with all our heart, and 
with all our soul, and with all our mind.” But if scientists 
choose to make their abode in the cold shade of Agnosticism, 
or the still colder, darker, and more inhospitable region of 
Atheism, the loss and damage will be to themselves and to 
those who adopt their belief — a belief which, if it became 
general in any country, would, as has been proved by the 
past history of the world, destroy the basis on which its 
moral government is founded, and sooner or later bring 
degradation, misery, and ruin in its sequence. 
Given life and organization, given their inseparable com- 
bination with Electron , — but given by whom ? — and we must 
