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have had to do with his own fingers, to the material detriment and con- 
sumption of his own protoplasm. (Laughter.) Professor Huxley laughs 
at the man who “ scorns the materialism of the jack,” and attributes its 
motion “ to its meat-roasting quality.” But does its motion come from its 
materialism, or would it have had that motion if something immaterial had 
not in the first place been brought to bear upon it ? Here too, however, we 
are brought back to “ human politics ” not “ lunar politics.” (Laughter.) A 
man boasts that he can send his thoughts through the depths of the Atlantic, 
and communicate with a continent thousands of miles away by means of that 
“ity” — electricity. But we do not speak of that as being a matter of 
materialism — we talk of it as one of the greatest achievements of the human 
intellect. But if I admit that this is one of the grandest achievements of 
the human intellect, what must we say of those wonderful electric cables, the 
nerves of my body, which convey such marvellous sensations to my brain ? 
They are analogous to the electric apparatus which man makes, but they 
were not made by man — they were not formed by human wisdom. When 
man discovered how to make the electric apparatus he found that the 
electric-eel had already a galvanic battery in its body which no human 
science has ever been able to imitate. He finds an eel containing a battery 
sufficiently powerful to convey men’s thoughts from the Old W orld to the 
New. There it exists in a living form, made by a living protoplasm in the 
eel. But is that electricity the work of the protoplasm in the body of the 
eel ? No more than the meat-roasting quality of the jack, or the time- 
keeping quality of the watch, is the work of the brass and iron and other 
materials of which they are composed. But surely it is not lunar politics 
which induces us to inquire into these things ? What does Professor 
Huxley’s own branch of science — physiology — teach us ? Has that been 
advanced by materialistic formulae ? I maintain that it has not, and that 
the whole progress of that science gives the lie to what he says when he tells 
us that the materialistic formulae alone, and not the spiritualistic formulae, 
will make advances in scientific discovery. It was not the materialistic 
formulae which led Newton to discover gravitation, for he was searching 
after the first great cause — after that wisdom displayed in God’s works which 
always worked in the simplest and most beautiful way possible. It was not 
the materialistic formulae which led Harvey to discover the circulation of the 
blood. He told that Christian philosopher, Boyle, that he derived the hint 
that led to the discovery, from the fact that he found veins had valves in 
them. He argued that those valves would not have been put there except 
for use, and their position taught him in which direction the current would 
flow. Take all the greatest discoveries in physiology ; point out one, if you 
can, which has been discovered by those materialistic formulae, which would 
reduce all the works of the Deity to the mere dead operation of mechanical 
laws. All the greatest discoveries in the mere material world have been 
made by those who have searched for perfect wisdom in all God’s works. Sir 
Isaac Newton thought it was impossible to make an achromatic telescope, 
and therefore all that he made were reflecting telescopes ; but he was misled 
