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only the carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, but we find it 
contains lime, ready to make the bones of the future chicken. The 
white and the yolk of the egg contain within them every material 
constituent and ingredient which goes to form the material body of 
the future chicken. If we wish the chicken to be formed, we have 
only, by a well-known law of science relating to the inorganic elements, 
to apply a sufficient amount of heat in order to hatch the egg. It 
may be solar heat, or heat from combustion, or even heat from the human 
body ; for I know an invalid lady who has lately herself been hatching eggs 
for her husband’s scientific pursuits. (Laughter.) The heat evolves the 
chicken, but does that heat produce the chicken ? Is the heat in any way 
the producer of the chicken ? I say emphatically, no. You might just as 
well say that the mechanical force used in turning the handle was the power 
of making the calculation in the calculating machine. But I will go further. 
It may be said, “ Yes, your argument suits us very well. Your machine 
contains nothing else but inorganic particles, and nothing but inorganic force 
is required to act upon it. All we would say is, that the egg contains certain 
combinations so beautifully arranged that they will go on working until they 
evolve a chicken, in a manner similar to the working of the arrangements 
which you have made in your machine.” Well, I should not quarrel with 
you so much if that were your view, but what is the object of Professor 
Huxley and Dr. Odling ? Their object is to eliminate all idea of design — to 
eliminate in some way or another all idea of a Creator. You find that lying 
at the bottom of their views. That is why we put on our “ theological war 
paint,” and protest against such views, and inquire whether they are scientific 
or not. Now, truly scientific men cannot be but observers of the facts of 
nature. Now we learn by observation that certain forces, called inorganic 
forces, and belonging to the inorganic world, are capable of producing certain 
results. We find, however, that they are comparatively limited in their 
action, and we can never get them to combine so as to produce a living soul. 
Professor Huxley has never grappled with that point ; Mr. Darwin even did 
not venture to go with his theory further than to that moment when life was 
furnished by the Creator. Supposing we go with Darwin, why are we to 
limit the Creator’s power of furnishing that life to one single monad ? 
But let us go back to our egg. I find that that egg has certain powers as a 
living egg which distinguish it from a dead one. Place it in a freezing 
mixture, and if it is alive it will resist an amount of cold that a dead egg 
cannot resist. That is a fact of nature — a fact brought forward originally, I 
believe, by J ohn Hunter, and confirmed by Mr. Paget in a paper read before 
the Royal Society. There is a power in the living egg of resisting cold which 
distinguishes it from the dead egg. If you increase the temperature in an 
incubator, you can destroy the life in the egg as surely as by increasing the 
coldness in the freezing mixture beyond the point which life can stand. We 
know, as a fact, that living matter can withstand degrees of cold that dead 
matter cannot withstand, and in the same way it can withstand degrees of 
heat which dead bodies cannot sustain. That was proved by the celebrated 
