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feeble, in defence of our Faith, and contribute, as far as in me 
lies, to the refutation of an assertion which is frequently and 
with great confidence repeated in various quarters, that the 
scientific, and even the clerical, world is fast drifting into 
unbelief. 
2. It would be my wish to keep aloof as much as possible 
from the personal, and to deal with arguments rather than 
with their authors. It will not be possible, however, entirely 
to avoid the mention of names ; but when compelled to do so, 
I hope to say nothing that could give reasonable offence to 
any one. 
3. Objections to believing that the Will of a Supreme Being 
is a factor in the changes and mutual interactions which take 
place among the various parts of the universe are generally 
founded on “the Reign of Law,” this - term, “law,” being 
applied metaphorically to the physical world, whereas in its 
primary signification it is concerned with beings who can 
choose whether they will obey or disobey it, taking, of course, 
into account the consequences of obedience or disobedience. 
The term, as applied to physical results, is sometimes objected 
to as misleading ; but, for my own part, I do not see why it 
should not be used, if we keep in mind the distinction between 
inanimate matter and beings endowed with will. When this 
distinction is overlooked, confusion may doubtless ensue. 
Now, granting a Creator (and on that subject I hope to say 
something presently), there is nothing in the prevalence of 
physical law that is not perfectly consistent with the belief that 
that Creator originally prescribed the laws, and now governs 
the world in accordance with them. 
4. Dr. Tyndall, in his Address at the Midland Institute in 
Birmingham, in 1877, observes that while, in a variety of ways, 
we can distribute the items of a never- varying sum (the sum, 
namely, of the forces of nature), no creative power is placed 
in our hands. “ The animal body,” he says, “ distributes, 
but it cannot create.” In a masterly paper by Mr. Porter, 
the President of Yale College in the United States, read at 
this Institute on December 2nd, 1878, it is contended that the 
animal body has more than a distributive power over the forces 
of nature — that it has a power (of course within limits) of 
directing as well as distributing — of unlocking at pleasure the 
potential energy stored up in the nerves, which no mere 
machine can do. This is a circumstance which indeed appears 
to be fatal to Dr. Tyndall* s doctrine that the animal body is a 
mere machine, but it need not prevent us from holding, with 
him, that whatever powers the animal body may possess, 
creative power at all events does not belong to it. And the 
