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ever drew either the one or the other ? Given the fairest con- 
ceivable surface and the finest conceivable instrument, and 
who needs the aid of the microscope to detect breadth as well 
as length, and endless divergences to the right hand and the 
left ? Side by side with these, and in the light of the same 
created universe, its history and its course, read “ the Lord 
God omnipotent reigneth and when has this ever been dis- 
proved, and what single witness really brings it into doubt ? 
For myself, I am not prepared to give up even the dicta of 
mathematics, sufficient for mental processes, even though 
contradicting the senses ; and the dicta of our Sacred Books 
I hold to be utterly irrefragable, sufficing for both mental 
and spiritual processes, though materialism would ignore and 
rationalism emasculate them. 
Again, I may be charged with applying this apparatus in a 
case where it is inadmissible. We know where it does avail; 
in the instance already given, geometry. And we know how 
far it avails, to absolute demonstration — demonstration accord- 
ing to the requirements in each given case, direct or indirect. 
Now, accepting the necessity for demonstration herein of one 
or another form, either such evidence of the reason as esta- 
blishes the proposition beyond doubt, or as clearly exhibits 
the contrary proposition to be untenable and absurd, surely 
there is no unsuitability of the process or apparatus to the 
subject. It is admitted by all who stop short of actual Atheism, 
that the created universe exhibits positive demonstration of 
the existence of the Deity, and therefore so far the ground is 
secure. And this secured, the proposition assumes a different 
character : it passes from exact science as to argument, and 
from experimental science as to observed phenomena, into 
purely ethical science— ethics, in the largest sense, as teaching 
man not only his relation to his fellows — social duties generally 
— but his especial relation to his Creator, and the duties grow- 
ing out of the record which his Creator has given him. Now, 
if our process and apparatus hold in pure mathematics — mental 
science, — and if it hold in ethics proper, is it to be excluded 
from and held to be inapplicable to the purest and highest of 
all mental science, and the broadest and most comprehensive 
ethics, both bound up in Theology ? There is not, perhaps, a 
term in the whole vocabulary of science more prostituted than 
the word 'proof. Too often the merest hypothesis, the most 
slipshod generalization, even an individual dictum passes 
current for proof. Not that really scientific men are thus 
deluded, or delude themselves ; but such counterfeits are 
allowed to circulate (alas ! that they should ever bear the impri- 
matur of honoured names), and that for which science should 
