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examine it, you will say it is a good explanation of a fact coming within 
human experience as to originative motion, which is the evolution of spirit. 
To what, then, shall we trace the grand system of motion we see in the * 
material universe ? It is curious that we so seldom hear in these recent 
speculations any reference to the fact that grand old physical philosophers 
like Newton, Leibnitz, Galileo, Torricelli, and all that great school, who 
created modern physical science, recognised inertia as an essential attribute 
of all matter. They held that the nature of matter is inert ; that if it be in 
a state of motion it has no power of self-rest ; if in a state of rest it has no 
power of self-excitement. If this be true must we not go outside of matter 
for the origination of motion ? The argument put thus seems exceedingly 
short and simple — so simple, indeed, and so short, that it almost produces a 
feeling of indifference when we seem to imply the charge that learned men 
overlook it. Then, I think, the practical mind will rest, and derive another 
simple confirmation of the thesis of this important paper— “ You must 
recognise will in the universe.” It has been well said that force implies 
substance on which it acts ; that you must go outside the m .terial sub- 
stance to find the origin of force. Spirit moves matter, and it is the Infinite 
spirit that moves this vast universe. 
Lev. S. Wainwright, D.D. —If I understand the last speaker aright, he con- 
tends that there must be such a thing as will, because he is conscious he 
possesses it. Huxley asks us to demonstrate this proposition, to demonstrate 
that consciousness, and the speaker has given us mauy reasons that come 
admirably near doing so. To refer to the paper, the writer says, “ What 
greater break in the uniformity of nature can be imagined than the com- 
mencement of life ? ” I would have preferred the sentence without the last 
two words. He then continues, “If ” — I would have preferred the word 
“ since,” — “ terrestrial life had a commencement, there can be no great 
difficulty in believing that the whole universe had a commencement 
also.” Now, science makes it certain that there was a time, to use Professor 
Tyndall’s words, in his Midland Address, “ when there was nothing living 
on our planet,” and a temperature at which no life was possible. 
Huxley affirms that whatever there is in the living being there is in the 
dead, and he calls it protoplasm, and tells you that living protoplasm is 
never produced except under the influence of living protoplasm, I think 
we have a right to ask how the first piece of protoplasm acquired life. On 
his own showing there was therefore a time when life was not in action in 
matter; and all the assumed eteinity of matter, and all the “inheritance of 
laws,” &c., will not enable those men of science who deny the existence of a 
Creator, to account for the phenomena that they themselves assert to have 
been produced in the inorganic world. Tyndall speaks of the atoms that 
were eternally falling, and that when they ceased to fall they began to think ; 
but without life there could be no thought. Again, there must have been 
a beginning of the atoms, of their motion, a beginning of the process 
whatever it was, out of which the inorganic generated the organic. Science 
at present knows nothing of this beginning. Writers admit the material on 
