in the Bible, at the expense of their credit for science, forgetful that science without common sense is without its soul, and analyses the elements to little purpose if unable to detect the spirit of a word, and what is meant by 'ground.' Since the body is formed of earthelements having no life in themselves, their combinations could not produce life. Supposing, however, that an organised body be capable of living, just as a combustible substance is capable of burning, yet to kindle it into action the living flame must touch it. We have no idea of life but as an imparted power, an inspired energy, inducing the especial operation of the body upon the outward elements, and of these upon the body, which, while effecting mutual decomposition, shall yet conduce to the composition and conservation of the body. Life is, then, a conveyed principle-an especial motive-force begetting an especial motion. Life must have been breathed into matter by its Maker, or matter could not vitally be moved. Hence, too, a living thing is truly a living soul—an individual being, for the life-power which makes the body one is itself one, and pertains not to the body which has no life, but to the soul, of which life is an essential element. It is the soul, then-man himself-that lives and breathes in the human body. But the inspiration of man, as a soul, is still due to the Spirit-Creator; and we feel that we breathe not only air, but spirit that connects us with the life of God-for human soul-life, when most manifest, is not mere animal effort and enjoyment, but a sense of fellowship in life and will with the Source of

K

life and thought. What are worship, faith, the hope of immortality, the power of thinking of the Infinite, the urgency of a felt need beyond our visible resources, the unavoidable outcry of the heart in prayer for help in misery, but the higher breath of the soul by which we are perpetually connected in our expiring life with the power of an endless life? Life and death, dust and Deity-these, if we can see what the words signify, are the ideas included in man's being as fed and furnished on earth with what he needs. Death is his by grace, as well as is his life; the body and the soul, as well as their inspiration, are God-given and God-sustained. If by any means, from without or from within, man loses consciousness of having his being in God, he loses the sense of his soul's life and life-breath. What else are we but dust, mere elementary matter, if not souls whose conscious life is God-life? When thinking of himself without God, man collapses and dies, the death; for of himself he then sees only the body. But, glory be to God! as we live and breathe without trying to breathe and keep alive, so our happiness depends, not on our efforts, but on the most free gift of God, only to be received with a will as a want. We may use any gift without fear of wearing it out, in obeying the Giver. As what man calls dead matter is the sustenance of life, because he lives in using it, so whatever we do and think becomes subject to our life according to the nature of our life, whether good or bad. The good is whatever is in keeping with the moral congruity and ordinances of the universe; the bad is whatever will

not consist with universal love, and is of a nature formed to die out, because inconsistent with the law of progress, which is that of happiness. The bad is bounded by self-love, as mere love of self, which is a lonely, solitary state of heart—a deadly state, because alone; but neighbour-loving is self-expanding, godlike, because God loves my neighbour as much as He loves me, and that, being God-like, never dies, but becomes more like God as it grows on for ever. We have no right to pray for ourselves if we have not charity, which alone inspires us to say, 'our Father, forgive and give as we forgive and give.'

Not to believe in the relationship of the human soul, by some direct and especial mode of derivation from the Creator, is to feel ourselves without kindred with spirits, and left to the desolation of a purposeless existence, the sport of the elements; a part of nature appearing for a while to be reabsorbed in the inexorable play of physical affinities, to be as if we had never been, or as unconscious atoms in the revolving universe. It is because we are conscious beings, living souls, inspired by the Divine breath, in some especial manner, that we are shocked by such philosophies as that of Dr. Büchner, who would have us believe in a world without a Maker, and in man but as a passing form of physical accident, in whom love to God and man is but a pleasing mockery and delusion. With the licence of an inebriated eloquence, aiming only to be impious, and with a mad logic, without any but false premises, Dr. Büchner discourses loosely as if he comprehended Force and Matter; and while unprepared

or refusing to account for his own personality and his power to question heaven and earth, he purposely excludes God and the human soul from any place in the universe, and multiplies words only to persuade us that nature is an endless consequence without a cause, having a destiny without design, and governed by laws without a will that may revoke them, or a wisdom that enacted them. A possibility of change for higher purposes towards perpetuated beings is a conception beyond such philosophers. The cant of false philosophers is deeper than the cant of common hypocrites. They pretend to bow to materialistic destiny-should this exist-forgetting that, if it do, they can never know. They are so extremely impartial, so sublimely self-denying, as to assume their own value as equal to zero, and of less significance than a grain of sand in the universe.* Truly, the way of such proud prostration is equally hard and hardening.

* Reich in Anthrop. Rev. No. 13, p. 135.

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CHAPTER XI.

MAN NOT ANATOMIC.

As Science affords us no help in our endeavours to account for the original derivation of man's body, so neither does it approach to an explanation of the existence of man's mind. We can only say that the human soul, by manifesting mind, asserts its own attributes as not due to physical formation, and that reason demands our belief in the fact that both body and soul stand connected in a direct line with the first human pair, who could have no parentage but in the will of the All-father.

Our arguments in relation to the especial endowments of man's body will be strengthened and sustained as we proceed to consider the prerogatives of man himself, the soul, the ipse ego, the individual, the being who is self-conscious, and consists not of dissoluble parts. The nature, attributes, and requirements of the man himself are not matters of bone and brain, but are altogether out of the reach of the anatomist and the chemist. The question, Is there such an entity as a soul, a whole being in itself, a man not one with the human body? is too absurd to deserve reply. It assumes as possible