What is force and what matter, whether the one is the essence of a self-conscious Creator and the other his handiwork, or whether both are the offspring of a blind chance or fate--which latter hypothesis is simply unthinkable--it is not my purpose here to consider. I propose in this analysis to take things as I find them, to study the operations rather than the origin of phenomena, to determine what man does rather than what he ought to do, and to drop the subject at the confines of transcendentalism. When, therefore, I speak of force as the life of matter, it no more implies a self-existant materialism in man, than the soul of man implies a pantheistic self-existant soul in nature. Omnipotence can as easily create and sustain a universe through the media of antagonistic and interdependent forces as through any other means, can as easily place nature and man under the governance of fixed laws as to hold all under varying arbitrary dispensations, and can reconcile these laws with man's volition. Wells of bitterness are dug by disputants under meaningless words; scientists are charged with materialism and religionists with fanaticism, in their vain attempts to fathom the ways of the Almighty and restrict his powers to the limits of our weak understanding. It has been said that, in the beginning, the sixty and odd supposed several elements of matter were in a chaotic state; that matter and force were poised in equilibrium or rioted at random throughout space, that out of this condition of things sprang form and development; regular motion and time began; matter condensed into revolving masses and marked off the days, and months, and years; organization and organisms were initiated and intellectual design became manifest. The infinitesimal molecules, balanced by universal equilibrium of forces, which before motion and time were but chaotic matter and force, were finally supposed to have been each endowed with an innate individuality. However this may be, we now see every atom in the universe athrill with force, and possessed of chemical virtues, and, under conditions, with the faculty of activity. As to the Force behind force, or how or by what means this innate energy was or is implanted in molecules, we have here nothing to do. It is sufficient for our purpose that we find it there; yet, the teachings of philosophy imply that this innate force is neither self-implanted nor self-operative; that whether, in pre-stellar times, infinitesimal particles of matter floated in space as nebulous fluid or objectless vapor without form or consistence, or whether all matter was united in one mass which was set revolving, and became broken into fragments, which were sent whirling as suns and planets in every direction; that in either case, or in any other conceivable case, matter, whether as molecules or masses, was primordially, and is, endowed and actuated by a Creative Intelligence, which implanting force, vitality, intellect, soul,