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microscope by what means it discloses a world of wonders, 
undiscoverable by the natural sight ? Our examination of its 
separate parts elicits no reply. Intelligence bestowed the 
power ; the instrument knows nothing of it ; neither can it 
bring that power into operation without the further exercise 
of intelligence from outside : hence, a superintending power — 
mind, the active agent. 
A serious question here arises — Can we control that creative 
mind ? If we discover a means of producing life from the 
inorganic, we do control it ; for we can then exhibit life at 
our will. Putting the impiety aside, will any man of science, 
acknowledging that life-power was granted primordially to the 
material, give us a scientific explanation how the human 
mind has acquired, or can acquire, intelligence at the least 
equal to that of its Creator ? This were to deify humanity. 
Yet more than equal to Deity must we be to discover and to 
apply that which it was the appointed duty of matter to 
manifest under certain material arrangements ; for if we 
extract life from what matter was created to effect, we are 
counteracting the original decree by the superiority of our 
own interference. 
There is another view. Suppose power to produce life under 
certain concurrent circumstances of natural combinations, was 
bestowed on the material world, and then all left to take the 
stipulated course, there would be progressive motion according 
to the primeval impress. Wherein does physical science teach 
such progressive motion ? The extent to which it goes in 
this direction is simply that of the original impulse communi- 
cated to masses as masses, and the regulated action of natural 
forces. In these we have nothing progressive; the masses 
move as they ever did; the great and the small phenomena 
of nature are to-day what they were thousands of years ago ; 
nor have we reason to doubt but they will so continue as long 
as materiality shall be. Independently of this, see the absurd 
working of it - 
The processes of nature have been co-extensive with the 
almost infinity of distinct existences with which we are ac- 
quainted. Grant a single combination to have happened : — 
we have one life, say the lowest form of the algae. How many 
thousands of combinations must have happened, to produce 
the number of species already counted of living things below 
animal life ? And what a crowd, after the first animal life ! 
Stranger still, each of these life-giving chemical unions of 
matter must have been varied in a fixed, peculiar, and deter- 
minate manner, for the elaboration of each one of the multi- 
tudes of distinct known existences. One combination must 
