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of faith in some absurd dogmas, the threatened penalty for 
refusal being that of being numbered amongst the fools, the 
bigots, the orthodox, and the like. 
Some who accept fancies of the most conjectural character 
as new articles of belief, which involve the abandonment of 
old truths as well as the sacrifice of firm bulwarks of belief, 
seem to reluctantly yield a regretful but conscientious ' 
submission to the stern dictates of truth, and pose as if 
they were exercising a self-denying virtue, possibly not 
unalloyed with pity, nor quite free from contempt for those 
who still hopefully cling to the beliefs of their fathers. Never- 
theless, if you will take the trouble to thoroughly investigate 
the principles of the new faith, you will be convinced that all 
that can be obtained by the most careful analytical examina- 
tion of the foundations upon which different forms of new 
materialism rest, are dogmas about forces and properties, 
hypotheses as to what may be, or might be, or must be, and 
a robust faith, which you are requested to have, in wonderful 
discoveries which are to be made after the lapse of some time 
by privileged spirits who, it is asserted, will make their 
appearance in the future. 
That a materialistic and antitheistic view of things may pre- 
sent itself to some minds, and assume what seems to be a 
reasonable form is, however, possible; but the pretentious 
vapourings in philosophical phraseology familiar to us, and 
which are supposed to tend towards that by not a few much- 
to-be- desired consummation, are often but a poor parody on 
materialism, and a real disgrace to the critical and reasoning 
power of our time. Some of the assertions which have been 
made about the properties and potencies of matter, and which 
are repeated even in text-books, would not survive candid 
answers to the questionings of a curious schoolboy. 
The popular scientific doctrines of the last few years all 
seem to admit some vague, imaginary, non-existing first cause, 
of which neither the nature nor the attributes have been 
defined, and which is placed at such a remote distance in 
time from the present era, that in us it can hardly excite more 
interest than the possibility of a shadowy phantom in an all- 
pervading primitive mist. There seems to be a fanciful con- 
ception of material atoms being evolved from the void; but it 
is, of course, useless to ask why, when, or how ? By one 
supreme mysterious fiat, or efibrt, beyond, above, and inde- 
pendent of all law, eternal forces and properties were conferred 
upon these atoms, I suppose, at the moment of their evolution 
from the nothing, by virtue of which they restlessly gyrate. 
The vibrations communicated to atoms by the first impulse then 
