the existence of her God. At that time miracles were performed with the
most astonishing ease. They became so common that the church ordered
her priests to desist. And now this same church--the people having
found so little sense--admits, not only, that she cannot perform a
miracle, but insists--that absence of miracle--the steady, unbroken
march of cause and effect, proves the existence of a power superior to
nature. The fact is, however, that the indissoluble chain of cause and
effect proves exactly the contrary.

Sir William Hamilton, one of the pillars of modern theology, in
discussing this very subject, uses the following language: "The
phenomena of matter taken by themselves, so far from warranting any
inference to the existence of a god, would on the contrary ground even
an argument to his negation. The phenomena of a material world are
subjected to immutable laws; are produced and reproduced in the same
invariable succession, and manifest only the blind force of mechanical
necessity."

Nature is but an endless series of efficient causes. She cannot create,
but she eternally transforms. There was no beginning; and there can be
no end.

The best minds, even in the religious world, admit that in material
nature there is no evidence of what they are pleased to call a god. They
find their evidence in the phenomena of intelligence, and very
innocently assert that intelligence is above, and in fact, opposed to
nature. They insist that man, at least, is a special creation; that he
had somewhere in his brain a divine spark, a little portion of the
"Great First Cause." They say that matter cannot produce thought; but
that thought can produce matter. They tell us that man has