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greater antecedent probability that that congeries of atoms, or any piece 
of inorganic matter which, before the evolutions commenced, had been 
eternally stationary and isolated, existing without motion, life, or power of 
development, should have been capable of this development afterwards by 
evolution ; or, on the. other hand, that those atoms should have been them- 
selves created by an intelligent and designing mind. (Hear, hear.) Mr. 
Reddie s paper shows that the antecedent probability is far more in favour 
of the latter view than of the former. The paper proves that, as I take a 
stone and throw it into the air, a motion is induced by the effort of my will ; 
so, when the moon moves round the earth or the earth round the sun, there 
is something analogous between the two cases. As the stone would never 
pass through the air without my design, so the moon would never go round 
the earth or the earth round the sun without there being some corresponding 
design, and it is more antecedently probable that the dead inorganic matter 
should have been evolved from a designing mind and an overruling and 
supreme cause— in short, from what we call the Creator— than that it should 
have been eternally self-existent and have had some force applied to it with- 
out rhyme or reason. Assuming the other theory to be true, and that these 
evolutions of nature have had no definite starting-point, but have been them- 
selves eternal, and, like matter, self-existent, let us see how that would 
operate. -Is there any antecedent probability that there should have been 
an active law regulating inorganic matter eternally, so that you can never 
conceive a time, however remote, without that active principle and law going 
on evolving and disintegrating and evolving again ? Is that more antece” 
dently probable than that these moving powers should have been produced 
aboriginally, as we all as Christians believe, by our great Creator with design 
for the grand moral purposes he had in view in forming intelligent creatures 
on the earth, and it may be in other worlds also ? If these forces of nature 
have not been brought about by intelligence, they must have been brought 
about by chance or by necessity. That they were not brought about by 
chance has been well shown in the Bridgewater treatises and by Paley in his 
Natural Theology. All the evidences of design such as that mentioned by 
Mr. Row in comparing the formation of the eye and nose with the Alban 
Lake are very full and very satisfactory. I will not occupy your time there- 
fore with that point, for it has already been dealt with satisfactorily ; but with 
reference to necessity, some of the old heathen philosophers believed in the 
eternal existence of force as a matter of necessity, having an impersonal deity 
m the shape of an eternal necessity of force. But if the physical forces of 
nature existed eternally as a matter of necessity, I ask this question : What 
about the forces of mind and morals ?-what about mental and moral forces ? 
Have I not as much right to assume that they existed of necessity from 
eternity, as any one else has to assume that the physical forces should have 
existed of necessity from eternity ? (Hear, hear.) I know that that is a 
weak point in Mr. Reddie’s argument, for if Mr. Darwin were here he would 
not^smipki to say that mind has been evolved from matter, and he would not 
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