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came mulerlaw,, andia obedience to laws supposed to Have been 
enacted in the first beginning, still continue their movements, 
and being acted upon by, and acting upon other atoms, actions 
of the most complex character are established. Gradually 
these actions are supposed to take the form of life, and as the 
ages have rolled on, living forms have assumed a higher 
character until, at last, the evolution of man himself was con- 
summated. Of all things the farthest removed from the re- 
mote cause of his existence, man, the only being in nature 
longing to know of law, of cause, of consequence, is commanded 
to see grandeur, and more than grandeur in the fanciful sugges- 
tion of a creator of molecules of cosmic vapour out of which 
earth and air and water, and every form of matter, non-living 
and living, were, according to the hypothesis, gradually formed, 
or evolved themselves in obedience to some compulsory arrange- 
ment, or not to be accurately defined necessity, or law,^^ 
supposed to have been enacted for once and for all by the 
Creator in the first beginning, and still causing everything 
and operating on everything up to this very day. 
The materialist needlessly, and without reason — or, rather, 
against reason, as it appears to many — sneers at the want 
of enlightenment of past generations, and in his own 
dogmatic, and self-confident, infallible way expounds the 
materialistic views of the existing order of things; extols 
the tendencies of what he calls the thought of his time, 
by which he seems to mean materialistic dogma, and 
prophecies concerning the proofs of the truth of his teach- 
ings which are to be discovered by unborn materialistic 
investigators. His hearers listen with wrapt and unquestion- 
ing reverence to his vague and extravagant utterances. They 
cannot doubt; they dare not think. Have not gifted me- 
chanisms of the highest culture spoken ? have not privileged 
spirits of transcendent power prophesied ? Who, then, fit to 
survive, can doubt — who dares to disparage the glorious 
grandeur of the universal, ever-moving molecular mechanism? 
How often are we enjoined with austere solemnity not to 
resist the influence of the cold logic of materialistic science ? 
We shall be spurned by many, but we must be encouraged by 
the conviction that we are acquiring material truth, and 
sustained by the consolation that, though we may be looked 
down upon, we may feel certain that we alone are right. We 
are not only told how we must look at nature, but precisely 
what we are to see is most accurately described, exactly as it 
has been discerned by the materialistic intellect and caused to 
assume a form fit to be received by the people at large. The 
moving forces and molecular mechanisms have been revealed. 
VOL. XVI. p 
