87 
and it acts, and can only act, according to laws, many of 
which are discoverable by science, and which are absolutely 
invariable. I am not here concerned to point out how much 
of this is pure and absolute theory, accepted for the present 
by leading chemists as best uniting into one view the facts 
yet known to them. Nor can I do more than refer in passing 
to the admirable paper recently read before this Institute by 
Professor Kirk, in which the whole of this molecular system 
of matter, and this misleading notion of force, is passed in 
searching critical review. It might be all true, and yet one 
thing more potent than all these has been omitted, and that 
is the will of an intelligent Being.. It may be that the agency 
of the sun stored up those magazines of carbon in the depths 
of the earth. But the intelligent will of man extracted the 
iron and the copper from the rock — -fused, purified, and 
shaped them into the mighty but yet inanimate engine. 
The intelligent will of man brought forth those stores of 
carbon, and kindling them generated the heat, which, 
passing into the water, became the power which from the 
expanding steam caused piston and crank to move with 
obedient energy. Yes, if the will of man cannot create 
force, it can accumulate it, and direct its action in modes 
beyond the imagination of former ages. And shall this 
mechanical success blind our minds to the action of something 
infinitely higher ? That Divine will which is the origin, and 
not only the guide or transmuter of all force, is this to be 
accounted less potent or less active than the poor human 
will, which leads us to understand something of what that 
Infinite Energy must be ? Surely we may dismiss this 
unworthy thought of God, which shuts out alike, on the same 
ground, all miracle and all prayer. A child may wind up its 
top and send it forth on its gyrations, pleased with its 
musical hum, and anxious that it may spin out its utmost 
course of revolutions unchecked and untampered with by the 
longing finger of the intruding infant. But man, who has a 
will of his own within his breast, cannot readily believe that 
the Almighty launched forth this revolving orb on its exqui- 
site ellipse, and then withdrew to watch it, so delighted with 
His own mechanical arrangements that no finger of His own, 
or of any creature of His, should on any occasion interfere 
with, or anywise modify the direction of the forces which He 
appointed to guide the course of the Universe. 
Professor Tyndall* has rightly said that “the physical 
* Fragments of Science, p. 92, 
