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experiments undertaken by John Hunter, when he went into an oven heated 
to such a degree as to fry a piece of beef placed in with him, and which he 
and his friends afterwards ate. That dead matter consisted, like himself, of 
protoplasm, but that experiment showed the difference between living and 
dead protoplasm. But when we come to the structure of our chicken, we 
find it is a most marvellous structure. We find much more wonderful things 
in it than in our calculating machine. We find it has an eye, a heart, a 
skeleton ; and that the heart is placed in connection with the arteries, and 
circulates the blood throughout the system. All those things are formed 
with a knowledge of the laws of mechanics, of hydrostatics, and of optics, 
which it takes all man’s wisdom imperfectly to find out. Now, I want to 
know whether all that comes out of the inorganic dead matter, or whether 
we must refer it to some other power, not even produced by the power of 
vitality, for vitality is of but little account in doing that. We must at last 
confess, with Newton, that the eye was not formed without skill in optics ; and 
I do not believe that that skill is contained in innumerable particles of carbon, 
hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, or that those things can produce such a 
marvellous piece of mechanism as my eye or the eye of a chicken. But, 
supposing all this is admitted, and that you say that any amount of proto- 
plasm has in itself the power of reproducing its own species. You have yet 
to come to the marvellous fact that there are certain beings in the world 
which require the conjunction of two agents for the production of their 
species ; while there are others which evolve their kind from themselves with- 
out such co-operation. Why does not the egg evolve chickens without this 
aid, when the acorn has in itself the power of producing an unlimited number 
of forests of oak trees ? We find, as a scientific fact, that there is something — 
you may call it force or what you like — that there is a power of structural 
formation possessed by organic bodies which you do not find existing in in- 
organic bodies. Nowhere yet have we perceived in nature any instance in 
which the inorganic w*orld has been able to acquire that power without 
coming in contact with that power previously existing. We may go back for 
an almost infinite series, but we must come to the time when that power was 
first given, and then the Bible reveals to us one great fact, not only that there 
is a Creator of all things but a Sustainer of all things. The modem so-called 
philosophy, which is endeavouring as far as it can to ignore the Creator, to 
push Him farther back, and to hide from us the knowledge of the wisdom 
which we can read in His works ; that same philosophy is totally and 
entirely ignorant of this ; that all these things require not only an Almighty 
Creator, but an Almighty Sustainer ; and the Bible shows us how all these 
things are perpetually under the eye of the Heavenly Father. Two sparrows 
may be sold for a farthing, but not one of them can fall to the ground with- 
out His knowledge. That is told to me as a proof of that Heavenly Father’s 
power and care and love for me ; and I protest against this so-called philo- 
sophy not only as unsound, not only as unscientific, as I most thoroughly 
believe it to be, but also as ungodly, denying God’s sustaining power, and it 
would also deny, if it could, His creating power. That is the reason why we 
