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theological and ethical advice, and tells ns what we are not to 
see or think of as possible, either “ behind, above, or around” 
the “phenomena of matter and force” (i. e. “pull and push”). 
We are told that we are “ not to see in the phenomena of the 
material world the evidences of Divine pleasure or displeasure;” 
and here an excuse is even found for denouncing a super- 
stitious view of the Scotch Sunday, and strange to say, apropos 
of nothing, the “ Thirty-nine Articles”! — which are made to 
rhyme with “ particles,” in a verse of that strangely conserva- 
tive-revolutionist, and most illogical thinker, Mr. Carlyle. 
17. This sensational style of writing is not only unsuitable to 
“ scientific ” men, but scarcely complimentary to the logical 
its haste to faulty of the “ unscientific.” It is as clearly un- 
attach ethical reasonable as Dr. Tyndall’s assumption that he 
knows all about the antecedents of motion, which he 
takes for granted (in the most self-contradictory way) in such 
frequent sentences of his book as that, for instance, in which he 
declares that “ the dispersion of the slightest mist by the special 
volition of the Eternal, would be as much a miracle as the roll- 
ing of the Rhone over the Grimsell precipices and down 
Haslithal to Brientz ” (p. 35). If these ethical sallies were 
at all necessary to the scientific explorations, we might be more 
patient of them ; but being wholly gratuitous and out of place, 
suitable only for “young men’s debating and mutual improve- 
ment societies,” we firmly protest, as reasoners, against their 
inappropriateness, self-contradiction, and we must add with all 
respect, their unworthy tone. 
If the facts of science be really such, when thoroughly ex- 
amined, as to supersede human prayer and Divine volition 
altogether, no doubt the facts will prevail, and prayer be at 
length unknown among civilized men. Meanwhile, it is not too 
much to ask that the facts be stated, as far as they are known, 
with as much exactness, and as little metaphor as possible. As 
yet, they appear to some of us to leave that very hiatus w r hich 
the “hypothesis of prayer” might require,— even though it 
were “ prayer for fine weather.” 
18. But it is right now to point out that in viewing the 
physical order of nature as a whole, we have no right hitherto 
to pronounce that there is such absolute and rigid 
D i, nd to C over- uniformity, such absence, we mean, of all approach 
iiduction° tific spontaneity, as the thermodynamic philosophy 
w’ould assume. There are signs that there, at least, 
may be other facts. The consideration of the human organ- 
ization already referred to {sect, 12) may open further possi- 
bilities of exception or addition to merely mechanical law. In 
localizing the functions of human life, physiology, no doubt, 
