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which I dare say you, sir, will favour us with some observations bye and bye. 
In the organic world, however, there is this remarkable fact, that even in the 
smallest seed there is an enormous power of vitality and of growth, from 
which the building up of the solid wood of the strongest trees may result. 
It is a pity to force the language of any writer beyond the point to which he 
himself meant to go. Dr. Odling is talking of physical science, — his book is 
on chemistry, — and I do not see that in the words quoted he at all denies, or 
intends to deny, the divine origin of life. If, however, he or any other philo- 
sophers do venture, as some of them have no doubt done, to argue seriously 
that the inorganic processes of nature have a sort of life-originating power 
attached to them, then I say that this is very much like attempting to prove 
that two and two might make five. If they first deny that there was any life 
at all on the earth at one time, and assert that life was afterwards produced 
by some fortuitous combination of material atoms, or some extraordinary 
power in the elements themselves, then I cannot conceive anything more 
opposed to all their own principles as to force and matter than this. They 
tell us that force and matter are both indestructible, that neither could have 
had a beginning, and that they are both eternal ; and yet their whole notion 
of producing life out of organic combinations is that something in time should 
begin to be. Now, that is just what we hold who believe in creation — 
namely, that there was once “ a beginning to be ; ” but then we hold also 
that this proceeded from the Great Invisible First Cause, the existence of 
which is clearly manifested to us by the visible things around us, whether to 
the eye or through any of the other senses of man. Another argument may 
also be used if our opponents will admit that life is a thing at all,— if they 
do not deny an actual existence to that most potent power in nature. You 
are aware that the dogma of the immortality of the soul has been a question 
of continual discussion and debate ; but I do not think that any of the 
religious philosophers — if I may use such a term — who have been anxious to 
prove the immortality of the soul have ever ventured upon such a strange 
argument as that which these mechanical philosophers have ventured upon 
with reference to the existence of force. For if force be indestructible — I do 
not grant it, mind — but if you grant that, and grant that life is a reality, and 
something analogous to force, then why should not life be also considered 
indestructible ? Those philosophers who maintain the eternity of matter and 
force cannot consistently, when they come to that force which of all others 
is the most powerful in the world, argue that it may have come into 
existence by accident, and vanishes into nothing the moment dissolution 
takes place in an organic structure. And yet they really profess to believe 
that that most potent thing called life, — by the power of which, indeed, I 
now speak to you, and you are enabled to hear and understand, — they argue 
that that, the most potent force in nature, is destructible, and after a time 
vanishes into non-existence. (Hear, hear.) 
Mr. Waddy. — I have been very much delighted with the first paper which 
has been read to-night. It is not, indeed, an exhaustive paper, but it is very 
suggestive. There is one part which appears to me a little weak in its 
