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Creation, says in summing up one part of his subject, — that there are only 
two great departments in the universe, that law makes this and that, and 
law does this and the other. When I read that, I could not help saying, 
“ It is not so.” Law does nothing. It is merely a convenient term describing 
the mode in which power acts. It is power that does everything, and law does 
nothing. I object to the use of the word even in such a passage as that 
which I find in the 60th paragraph, where Mr. Pattison says : — 
“ But though we admit that we do not know the real ultimate nature of 
substances, yet neither does the objector pretend to this knowledge, and 
therefore we axe at least as much entitled to say that matter obeys laws as 
the objector is to say that matter is a law to itself.” 
I do not see that as Christians or Theists we gain anything by saying that, 
for “ law ” is in fact a misnomer in such cases. What is law ? Simply a 
collation of the facts. When you use the term law of grammar or language, 
you mean that such and such a thing is an observed fact in proper speech, — 
that it is a prevailing usage . But there is no exhibition of power in that ; 
and when you use the term “law” in any sense implying power or action, 
you are importing a purely false meaning into it. There is one other passage 
in the 58th paragraph in which the word “ unthinkable ” occurs. Mr. 
Pattison says : — 
“ When the logicians tell us that the Infinite is unknowable, they cannot 
mean to say that it is unthinkable.” 
Professor Tyndall makes a great deal of that. He says of the creation of 
man, and of the statement that God breathed into him the breath of life, 
that it is unthinkable — that you cannot think it. I ask, “ Is it unthink- 
able 1 ” and I will leave it there. And now will you let me leave the whole 
subject by drawing attention to two or three points summing up what I 
have been saying ? You know what Professor Tyndall tells us in a 
brilliant passage about the salt crystals. He says, “ Look at them, they are 
made what they are.” Suppose you stood before the pyramids of Egypt 
and were told that nobody had planned them. But you know that 
there was an architect and swarms of slaves to carry out his design. So 
he says with the salt crystals, the unscientific mind can picture to 
itself swarms of slaves depositing those crystals, but that is not the 
scientific idea. The scientific idea, forsooth, is that those crystals are 
self-positing. We get rid of the slaves at once. I will not disagree with 
the Professor : we all know that they are self-posited ; but what I fail 
to see is how the dismissal of the slaves gets rid of the master. 
(Cheers.) The slaves were there only because there had been a preceding 
mind, which had an idea to carry into execution ; but when you talk of the 
self-posited crystals, you no more get rid of the evidence of mind than when 
you talk of the self-adjusting valves of the steam-engine ; in fact, the 
evidence of mind is all the greater. But when you get to life — look at the 
