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272 the stepping stone to other mortal conditions of belief; it never procured Life, for this is God, and God must become our practical Life, before man is found immortal. We see in the vegetable kingdom that the seed must rot to propagate anew, and the poor germ is doomed to this same experience also; it must rot again, according to material law. The answer to the ancient question, which is first, the egg, or the parent that takes care of the egg? is given when you admit the parent is developed from an egg, for that is first which produced the parent; but an egg never propagated man.

“We have no right to assume that individuals have grown, or been formed under circumstances that made matter conditions essential to their maintenance and reproduction, or important to their origin and first introduction, unless we dismiss reason and revelation utterly. That earth was hatched from the egg of night was anciently argued, and this absurdity is less than to conclude Spirit produces matter, or that it is in matter. Pursuing the varied hypotheses of man, we think as a child, but putting away childish things and asking more earnestly after God, we shall be answered from Soul, and not sense, and Spirit, instead of matter, will guide our conclusions. Heathen philosophy, modern geology, zoology, physiology, anatomy, etc., deal with other or different phenomena from those proceeding from the Supreme Being. The first proceed from belief only, but the latter are reflections of Spirit; these are the ideas of God coming to the understanding, but the former are beliefs of matter. The proof requisite to sustain assumptions diametrically opposed to personal sense,