176 
they bind it to the horns of the mountain ; they chain it to 
earth ; they force it to minister in the temple of the rocks. 
Where science ends, faith begins. As the unseen cannot be 
brought under the influence of human skill, it is either alto- 
gether rejected, or an influence conceived delegating life- 
production to inanimate nature. This latter has become a 
not very uncommon notion. A power is acknowledged, supe- 
rior to the material creation — out of the sphere of science — 
in the domain of that which evidences things unseen. Why 
does their faith stop at the restriction of life to subsequent 
conditions of matter ? The followers of this creed acknow- 
ledge faith up to the point they think their own peculiar views 
require. Having any amount of faith themselves, why should 
they try to break down that of another, whose belief is a 
little more than theirs ? If they have any, they admit the 
principle. It is only in degree we differ, not in kind. They 
are talking contradictions when they would put down the 
Biblical believer, whose creed is the most extensive and 
truest continuity ; for it counts back from all our surrounding 
organisms, till, lost in the earliest inorganic formations, it 
recovers them in eternity. On the border-land we meet face 
to face the question, Where now is life ? The index points 
— beyond. 
“ Those who do not adopt some view of continuity are 
content to say, Grod willed it.” By what view of continuity 
can we account for the arrival of the elephant on our planet ? 
There are many, like the humble individual now speaking, 
who can only track the elephant of to-day to the first ele- 
phant on earth. Is there a monad for the elephant, a monad 
for the condor, and a monad for the pampas grass ? or do 
all these originate in one monad ? If each of them have 
separate and distinct origins in matter, may we expect a 
recurrence of the combinations which produced them, and 
consequently a fresh supply of elephant, condor, and pampas 
grass ? or why, if all have one origin, should the thing 
springing therefrom, even in millions of ages, get split up 
into these distinct forms, which, when assumed, become per- 
manent ? and why it should not have stopped at various 
intermediate forms, making these the culminating points ? 
In short, why was form arrested at all ? The law of its 
arrest, derived from unconscious matter, presents us with a 
truly miraculous uniformity ; for which, neither the develop- 
ment, nor any other system with which I am acquainted — 
• — save that of the Bible alone — can account. 
The last quotation is part of a commentary on a freely 
translated passage of Lucretius, which ends thus : — “ If he ” 
