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is it even conceivable that property which is unalterable 
should determine movements and the formation of structures 
which change from time to time, and the form and exact 
character of which last must have been foreseen and prepared 
for from the very beginning. The act of construction, the 
arrangement of material particles according to a definite and 
pre-arranged plan and for a special purpose, can no more be 
attributed to the properties of the matter in the case of a 
living being than in the case of a watch. 
The advocates of materialistic doctrines do not offer a sug- 
gestion as to the precise changes which occur when what they 
deem to be merely a compound substance containing oxygen, 
hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon, and, possibly, one or more 
other elements, passes from the living to the non-living 
state. The new materialists stand alone among all the sects 
known to history in not being able, nay, in not attempting, 
to establish their views by arguments or to support their 
doctrines by appealing to facts and reason. They content 
themselves with authoritative declarations of the most positive 
and solemn kind, but which, from a scientific and philo- 
sophical standpoint will be pronounced by dispassionate critics 
absurd and contrary to fact, and, therefore, not creditable to 
science. They command people to believe, and encourage 
them to have robust faith, but as for evidence in support of 
their materialistic tenets they have literally none. If people 
generally were acquainted with the facts revealed by the 
microscopic examination of living matter, and would allow 
their minds to be influenced by what they observed, they would 
no more believe in the dicta of the materialist than give their 
faith to an authority who declared that the earth was flat. 
The general acceptance of materialistic doctrines is, in 
itself an indication how little thought is given by most 
people in these days to the importance of inquiring into 
the nature of the evidence upon which far-reaching con- 
clusions they too readily receive are supposed to rest. 
People have been misled in times past by false teaching, 
and large numbers have become steeped in ignorance, bigotry, 
and fanaticism. But I do not believe that the most lamentable 
instances on record have led to results more disastrous, or 
more likely to prove injurious to the interests of individuals 
and possibly to nations than this attempt in our own time to 
establish the weakest and worst form of materialism ever ad- 
vanced, is calculated to produce in the future. It is bad 
enough when numbers of people become converts to a system 
founded on truth more or less perverted, or misinterpreted, 
owing to the ignorance or mistaken zeal of its exponents ; but 
