In physical science we know the vital force exists which builds the germ and sperm cells, but we do not comprehend it. If you ask physical science to explain this invisible force or power, she will say, Gentlemen, I have given you an introduction to this wonderful builder; you see it is there at the threshold of organic being, but I can not tell you why it is there, nor what its properties are; if it has any, they are outside of my domain. I deal with matter. You must ask at the gate of the unseen, ask the science of the spiritual, the mental and vital. I am in wonderful contrast with mind, with life also. I am inertia. Some of my votaries have tried to give you the answer which you so much desire. They have said, "It is the all-pervading force which was lying away back in the antechambers of eternity." Have said, "It was burdened with a universe of worlds." Have said, "It was destitute of personality." Have said, "It was not, and is not, an intelligence." Have said, "It was without will, purpose or desire." Have said, "All beauty, harmony and order were its results." Have also said, "It was," away back in the ages past, groaning and heaving, travailing, in great anxiety to be delivered. Speaking of it in the light of "natural selection," they have deified it, giving to it all the mental operations of an intelligent, living God. On this account some of my lovers are Pantheists. They deify nature; deify everything, and call it all God. A few ignorant Christians, on this very account, are ready to give up their warfare with Pantheists. But the battle is not won because the word "God" is pronounced; for sober reason says, If nature is _all_ God, she is _a_ God, who is no God; or a nature without a God, just as you choose to express it. After all, it remains an axiom, that "you can not get more out of a thing than there is in it." So, of necessity, there must be, somewhere in this universe, _Eternal life and mind_. Reader, "how readest thou?" BLIND FORCE OR INTELLIGENCE, WHICH? In the discussion of this question I think it proper to submit a few axiomatic or common-sense truths which are universally admitted by the unbiased mind. _First._ "Every effect must have a cause." _Secondly._ "Every series must have a unit lying at its base." _Thirdly._ "In every beginning there must be that which began." _Fourthly._ "Something is eternal." _Fifthly._ "There can not be an endless succession of dependent things." _Sixthly._ "There must be that upon which the first dependent link in the chain of dependent things depended." _Seventhly._ "That thing, whatever it may be, upon which the first dependent thing depended, must be eternal." Was it blind force or intelligence, which? The existence of a supreme intelligence is the first great leading thought made known in the Bible. The first that is made known in unbelief, is the existence of "the unknown."