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no Human investigation could ever reach. He especially re- 
minded us that the final cause of death that is, the rea ® 0 ^ 
whv death has come into the world and seemingly invaded 
the" Creator's work— could never be possibly arrived at by 
mere natural science; but that revelation does profess to 
account for it. But he might have gone some steps beyond 
this, both backwards and forwards, and told us that neither 
as to the origin of things visible, animate or inanimate, nor 
as regards the end, and what is to be when life is past, can 
natural science teach us aught. Nay, he might as a natural 
philosopher, have used the pregnant words of Sir Charles 
Lvell in his address as President of the British Association 
at Bath, in 1864, and said, “ I will not venture on speculations 
respecting ' the signs of a beginning/ or c prospects ol an 
end' of our terrestrial system, — that wide ocean ot scien- 
tific coniecture on which so many theorists before my time 
have suffered shipwreck,"— inasmuch as such speculations 
go beyond the scope of mere natural science. And yet we 
know, as thinking men, that we cannot rest satisfied a 
knowledge merely of the present. I may cite another scientific 
witness to prove this. According to Professor Huxley, 4he 
question of questions for mankind— the problem which 
underlies all others, and is more deeply interesting than any 
other, is the ascertainment of the place which man occupies 
in nature, and of his relation to the universe of things. 
Whence our race has come ; what are the limits of our power 
over nature, and of nature's power over us ; to what goal we 
are tending ; are the problems which present themselves anew, 
and with undiminished interest, to every man born in the 
W °But may we not ask, How could there possibly have been a 
({ beginning of our terrestrial system at all, without the 
Great First Cause, Himself without beginning ? or, How can 
we conceive of what we call “ nature, or t e universe >- 
things,” without presupposing the prior existence of the God 
of nature— the Omnipresent Deity? Then where do we fi 
the answer to these inquiries clearly enunciated except in 
Holy Scriptures ? Natural science on these questions ^ acknow- 
ledged to be dark or dumb. And, if we take any other book 
known in the world, where else have we such a revelation, 
either of the beginning of things or of our own ^fves 
or of the end that shall be hereafter, as in the Bible . It gives 
the answer to “the question of questions for mankind; it 
solves the great “problem which underlies all others It tells 
us “whence our race has come; ” if tells us the place man 
occupies in nature ; ” it tells ns “ the limits of our power over 
