But we are. This is a matter of fact; and it is a very momentous fact. How to go about proving our existence I do not exactly know. We do not doubt it for a moment, but for any one to furnish the logical proof of it is no easy thing. The philosopher René Descartes once determined that he would not believe he existed until he could prove it. He also thought he had found the proof. His argument was, "I think; therefore I am." But if he had not begged the question by smuggling into his premises the very "I" which was to be proven, he never could have gotten it into his conclusion, and if faithful to his resolve he must have lived and died without logical evidence whether he existed or not. Of course he believed that he existed, and when our minds are turned to it we all feel quite sure that we exist; but I know of no one who has been able to reason out a conclusive logical proof of his own existence.

I mention this to show that we can be quite sure of certain truths without proofs of reason, and which reason is at a loss how to prove. We know them without reason, and we feel perfectly safe in accepting them without proofs. There is something in man which is deeper, clearer, and more certain than logical reasoning. There is in us a primal soil of thought and belief, precedent to reason, and from

which reason proceeds-something which serves as the basis, starting-point, or original cell of thought and conviction-something which asserts itself to itself with a force and certainty as convincing as demonstration. We call it consciousness or intuition. It may be the result of reasoning which leaves no tracks, or an inherent aptitude for spontaneous convictions, or some impress of the great Maker's fingers; but, however explained, there is something in us by which we realize the truth of certain axioms or assertions which do not admit of logical proof, and yet are so settled and clear to our convictions that no argument or processes of reasoning can make them. clearer than they are. At any rate, we are quite sure that we exist, although logic cannot prove it.

But our being is not mere existence. It is life. Rocks and clods exist, but they do not live. Philosophers and scientists have been much at a loss to tell just what life is. It is to a great extent indefinable, but it necessarily includes a power of feeling and motion not dependent on external causes. There is an animated nature as distinguished from inanimate, and that which is animate has the power of feeling and self-action. We live; therefore we are self-active factors as well as facts, and so possess a form of being which is of effective consequence to the world and to ourselves.

Here is

But, what is more, we know we live. self-conscious, intelligent personality. There is a word in our language consisting of one letter which is of intensest significance, and always written and printed in capital. That word is "I;" and our ability to perceive and realize what we utter when we say "I" differentiates us from all the visible creation around us. We call it the personal pronoun, because it stands for a rational personality. Brutes live, but they do not know they live. No mere brute has the rational self-consciousness to say "I," even if it had the vocal powers to do so. Brutes follow and obey what we call instinct, which serves as their wisdom in what relates to their welfare, but they know not what they do and follow. They are living machines, led and driven by instinct, about which they know nothing. They do not think. They may act wisely and shrewdly in emergencies, and sometimes show dim signs of what we class among faculties and operations of mind; but it is the impress of mind outside of them. There is no proof that it is the product of self-conscious thought. Man is a being with life to its own life, having the high and mysterious endowment understandingly to say “I.” In other words, man possesses a self-conscious spirit, intelligent, capable of directing his thinking and will, and so a moral being, subject to moral government,

and responsible for his actions. We each possess an inner selfhood, or self-conscious individuality, by which we severally distinguish ourselves from all other beings, to which we refer all that we think, feel, do, and say, and by which we stand related to God, akin to God, and quite apart from mere brute creatures.

Some would teach us that man is only a more highly-developed brute. If they mean that the dust out of which Adam's body was fashioned was first used to make monkeys, we may let them amuse themselves with the fancy, although they cannot prove it true. If they mean that man possesses a complete physical organization, embodying the perfection of what was less perfectly forecast in the animal kingdom preceding his creation, we find no cause for dispute with them. But if they mean that man as man is nothing but a more advanced animal, the same throughout in origin, nature, and destiny with the brute, they take issue with the best wisdom and teaching of all the known ages, contradict the common instinct and conviction of our race, go against all the holy books, put forth an all-conditioning doctrine on a mere inference of faulty philosophy, without a single fact of demonstration on which to rest it,* and assert what, in its very terms

"All the facts which have fallen under our observation fail to sup

and alleged conditions, is utterly incapable of proof. No matter by whom broached or accepted, it is only a naked, unverified, and unverifiable theory—a mere inferential speculation from certain unwarranted generalizations, captivating to some lively imaginations, but conceived in unbelief and loaded with perplexities which admit of no rational explanation. The implications are also so momentous that it would be very irrational to commit ourselves to a mere inferential and hypothetical conceit such as this is.*

ply a single species certainly derived from another. Consecutiveness falls far short of logical proof of descent."-Winchell's Science and Religion, p. 172.

* Prof. Louis Agassiz, to whom the world has paid homage as a scientist, says: "I wish to enter my protest against the transmutation theory." ... "It is my belief that naturalists are chasing a phantom in their search after some material gradation among created beings by which the whole animal kingdom may have been derived by successive development from a single germ or from a few germs.” .. "The development assertion does not bear serious examination. It is just one of those results following the disclosure or presentation of a great law which captivates the mind, and leads it to take that for truth which it wishes to be true."

Max Müller says: "It becomes our duty to warn the valiant disciples of Mr. Darwin that before they can claim a real victory, before they can call man the descendant of a mute animal, they must lay a regular siege to a fortress which is not to be frightened into submission by a few random shots—the fortress of language, which as yet stands untaken and unshaken on the very frontier between the animal kingdom and man.”

Darwin himself says: "The most eminent paleontologists, Cuvier, Agassiz, Barrand, Pictet, Falconer, E. Forbes, etc., and all our great geologists, as Lyell, Murchison, Sedgwick, etc., have unanimously