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the elements of religion, the eminent lawyer taking the sceptical 
side with the declaration that he was the mouth- piece of most 
intelligent men, who do not believe that the doctrines of our 
faith are demonstrable — such a doctrine as the Being of God, 
for instance ; so that influential and cultured people of his class 
now only accept religion' because, on the whole, they deem it a 
better thing for society than no religion. I do not pretend to 
be able to measure the amount of truth which such assertions 
contain. That they do hold some, I feel convinced. That 
they are exaggerations, I am equally convinced. But that 
they should be true to any extent, and that they should be so 
boldly announced by such men, are sufficiently serious facts for 
me as a Christian, and I have responded to the request made 
to me to speak on the latest and most influential form of 
scepticism with much willingness, albeit with grave doubts of 
my worthiness. 
My subject is Present-Day Materialism. Time was, and 
not long ago, when a shorter and simpler term would have con- 
veyed the same meaning : the term Atheism. But it will not 
now. There are utterances of Dr. Tyndall (as Dr. Lionel 
Beale showed by quotations in the Times twelve months ago), 
which admit of only one interpretation : the total denial of the 
being of a God. I suppose, however, that we must date such 
utterances not in Dr. Tyndall’s “ hours of clearness and 
vigour,” but in his hours of less strong, and somewhat un- 
healthy thought.* Be it so. The eminent scientist’s own 
description of his atheistical mood accepted, what does he 
offer as a confession of faith ? Something which I am quite 
unable to distinguish from Pantheism. As a plain man, desiring 
to exhibit intellectual sincerity to, and to see it exhibited in all, 
I have felt that to make the whole universe into God — a process 
involved in placing in the atom of matter the initial, developing, 
and perfecting power of the universe, as Dr. Tyndall does, comes to 
much the same thing as denying altogether the God in whom I 
believe. As I read Dr. Tyndall’s address, the old and irrepres- 
sible question comes up for answer: Is there a living God? Is 
there a Supreme Spirit “immanent” in, but separate from, the 
universe of matter and force? On the reply to this momentous 
question hang all the essentials of the Christian faith ; and the 
discussion of it, and of other related questions, has been forced 
upon us by Dr. Tyndall in his opening address, as President of 
the British Association, at its late meetings in Belfast. From 
this, the very best authority, we learn the latest views of the 
*Note I. Appendix. 
