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universe which appeals far less powerfully to his bodily than to 
his mental self. He is reading what ? The so-called Book of 
Nature. It would not be a book if it did not suggest thought 
and evoke emotion. But is not an author needed for every 
book ? Whose thoughts are these, he asks ? Whose emotions 
tremble in every page ? As I put the question and feel that 
there can be but one answer in the mind, heart, and conscience 
of every sincere man, — I think I see new aud irresistible 
meanings in that famous saying of the Old Book, — ff The fool 
has said in his heart, ‘ There is no God.’ ” 
The Old Materialism denied the existence of a soul in man, 
and, with the Sadducees, denied resurrection after death. What 
says the New Materialism? It is not easy to make out. We 
have to learn by inference rather than from any positive state- 
ment. Dr. Tyndall and Dr. Huxley have both used the expres- 
sion, “ Soul of force,” to describe the Mysterious Power which 
they declare to be inscrutable. I hold it to be a fatal expression 
for men who hold religion at arm’s length, and thrust Chris- 
tianity aside. It is an admission which undermines their whole 
philosophy. But as I desire to adhere strictly to an examina- 
tion of this philosophy on its own teachings, and to avoid every 
aid which revealed truth offers, I invite you to take up with me 
one or two of the accepted teachings of science, and inquire how 
they affect the great object of man’s spiritual nature and its 
continued existence in another state. The human body, science 
says, like the body of every animal, is subject to the law of 
change. Every seven or ten years a man has quite a new body. 
Daily waste goes on. Daily supply is therefore necessary. Meal 
by meal, breath by breath, the body is nourished. Particle by 
particle it disappears ; particle by particle it is sustained. The 
sustaining process is a process of renewal. What is renewal ? 
It is simply the replacing of lost particles by fresh ones. The 
infant begins its life in a little plump, soft body, very familiar 
to us. At the age of ten it has become quite a different creature. 
Physically it is in no sense child. Science says so — will not have 
it otherwise. Follow the same child up to seventy years of age, 
and what will be seen ? A very different body indeed ; so 
changed that except by those who have personal means of 
identification it could not be recognized. Who, indeed, having 
seen me in my cradle, and not seeing me again until to-day, 
could recognize the infant in the man ? No one. And yet that 
I am the same person in the cradle forty years ago and in this 
place now, cannot be questioned. How the same ? Not the 
same materially j but the same mentally and morally. The 
softest parts of our bodies change most rapidly. The brain, 
