Beside his awful throne, at God's right hand, When he the clouds established; bid the sea How beautiful that first of mornings broke, When the green earth was glad; and her young hills Poured, fertile, o'er the plains their thousand rills; Then was I present with him; his delight; Beside his throne-rejoicing in his sight. Now, therefore, hear me, children! blessed are they— THE RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD OPPOSED TO THE DOCTRINE OF THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL.—ESSAY II. Or all the subjects which divide the philosophical and religious world there is scarcely one in which the contending parties have made less advances towards each other than that upon which we are now writing. This arises from the general absence of some mutually admitted principles of argument-one party being content to fix their abode in the regions of fancy, without being guided either by an observance of nature or a reliance upon revelation; the other, availing themselves of one or both of these sources, feel fortified in their conclusions by experiment, by experience, and by scripture. Ranging ourselves, as our reason compels us to do, with the latter class, we design at once to proceed to the subject, by endeavouring to demonstrate THAT LIFE AND MIND ARE THE RESULTS OF ORGANIZA TION; and if we are successful in establishing this position, the controversy upon the immateriality and immortality of the soul will terminate. Here, then, we take our stand; and we are boldly we will not say judiciously-met, by no less an authority than the representative of Cambridge University, in the person of their "Christian Advocate." This writer, seeing that a middle course could not be pursued without certain discomfiture, and being driven to what the more wary supporters of this system have hitherto cautiously evaded, is compelled to admit, that "if the point of life being dependant upon organization be once admitted, the immortality of the soul, and every thing which distinguishes "man from the grass on which he treads, is utterly annihilated." (Rennell 89.) We receive this concession with perfect satisfaction, and will make it the starting post of our argument. If we succeed in proving, that "life and mind are dependent upon "organization," our adversaries admit that the doctrine of the soul's immortality is "annihilated." 66 We adhere to Newton's well known principles of philosophizing, which were quoted in the former Essay, that to every effect there must be a cause, but that that cause must be an adequate one, and that when such is discovered, causes must not be multiplied. Now we look at man, of whom we read in the scriptures that he is made of the dust of the earth; that his Maker “ breathed into him the breath of life," or, by causing respiration, put his lungs into motion; that, having done so, this machine became a soul or person; and that, finally, he will return unto the dust from whence he came. 66 We observe man at his birth, and during the first months of his existence, and we perceive the first faint dawnings of his mind; but they are as weak and infantile as the body: "As the senses acquire their power the cerebral jelly "becomes firmer; the mind gradually strengthens, and "advances with the body from childhood to puberty, and "becomes adult when the developement of the frame is 66 completed." (Lawrence.) When the organization, which we have thus traced in its progressive advancement, becomes perfected, then the mind, as it regards its vigour and its natural powers, is also perfected. We observe this machine in infancy-in manhood-in second childhood; we see its thinking powers grow, mature, and decay-with the growth, the maturity, the decay of the organization. We see the * See the note to page 141 of the present Number. 66 affections of the mind influencing and controuling the actions of the body; and we observe, on the other hand, the diseases of the body controuling and influencing the affections of the mind. We attend "this quintessence of dust," this "paragon of animals," to the awful termination of his worldly career, and we there witness an extinction of being, not in body only but also in mind; not of a part but of the WHOLE MAN: we view him who had, perhaps, once delighted the senate or governed nations, rapidly undergoing disorganization, and literally returning unto the dust from whence he came. We know that during his life the able exercise of his mental powers have been either encouraged or repressed, as education, correct principles, and mental and bodily activity may have been promoted or neglected. We perceive that the possession of full vigour is but of short duration either in mind, or in body; and that with the decay of organization, the mental powers decline, both being extinguished by death; and, finally, we know that life-nay more, that mind-never has been known to exist, except in connexion with organization. What do we infer, or rather what does our reason compel us to conclude, from all this succession of phenomena ? The existence of an immaterial soul, having no quality in common with, while it acts upon, the body? Or rather that all these never-failing effects can only be explained by organization? Such facts, supported as they are by constant experience, have driven the defenders of an immortal soul upon the horns of a dilemma, either to admit that life and thought result from the modification and organization of matter, or that matter can, by no possibility, be made capable of these manifestations. They have chosen the latter: and, upon their own conditions we are prepared to meet them; conscious that this attempt to degrade the capabilities of matter is inseparable from their system. Yet-we are tempted to exclaim--what human being has ever existed who could discover to us what matter can, or what it cannot, be rendered capable of, by the great Architect of the universe! Mr. Rennell, certainly, may be regarded as an exception, for he makes short work of the powers of omnipotence, by fearlessly asserting, the total "impossibility of thought "being the result of any organization." Yet Locke (an immaterialist also) does not appear to have entertained such a low estimation of matter; or, at least, he exercised greater caution in pronouncing relative to it-of what it was and what it was not capable. "Solidity constitutes the essence "of matter: whatever modifies solidity is matter: if God "cannot join (or, as we would say, organize) portions of "matter together by means inconceivable to us, we must "deny the existence and being even of matter itself." These are inconsistencies, as to the capacity of matter, which we leave its detractors to reconcile. Still we have before us another instance, furnished by a modern Scotch writer (Barclay) who, although a believer in an immaterial spirit, yet is compelled, from philosophical experiments, to allot to matter no mean capabilities:-" Could it have "been thought that sulphur, which is an inflammable sub"stance, and oxygen, so necessary to the maintenance of "flame, could have formed an acid which actually lowers "the temperature of snow; or that particles of heat could "have been concealed in the coldest bodies :-let us not, "therefore, presume that the living qualities of animals are different from the qualities of matter." (26.) Here are these supporters of the same system, one of whom denies to matter of itself the possibility of manifesting life, even in its lowest and most degraded form; the other that it is capable of modification and organization; and the third admits precisely the point for which we are contending for it is, in truth, presumption to assert "that the living "qualities of animals are different from the qualities of "matter." A concession to this extent is what we did not anticipate; for it more than compromises, by distinctly committing, the immaterial hypothesis; yet it is, perhaps, the only rational conclusion at which an observer of nature could well arrive. 66 This conviction, we find, has been so strongly operative, that in a work, not by an official agent, but by a member of Cambridge University, the writer, Mr. Macleay, (an immaterialist) defines" life," to be expressive of that faculty" which "certain combinations of material particles possess; like gravity and elasticity, we know life only by its effects; by them we conclude that it has not a distinct (or separate) "existence; it is to the organized body what the expansion "of steel is to the watch, or that of steam to the engine; "but if we ask what is expansion? what is life? WE CAN GET "" NO ANSWER BUT A RECITAL OF THEIR EFFECTS.' These views of matter, and also of life, as proceeding from, and depending upon, organization, must be seen to be destructive of the doctrine of an immortal soul; for the strong-indeed the only-argument in its support has hitherto rested upon the total impossibility of matter possessing life and thought without the residence of an immaterial spirit. And so essential to the system is this extreme position seen to be, by its more acute defenders, that we find in a Review of the works of Lawrence and Rennell, the following undisguised statement of immaterialism :- "Wherever we see life, we "will at once admit the existence of an immaterial principle, "whether in the European, the negro, or the oyster." Here we close upon our antagonists; and we ask them, in the name of Christianity, of what " peculiar," and of what high value, as motives to moral and accountable agents, can a futurity be which rests upon the same basis, and which is shared in a proportionate degree by the flea and the oyster. Still we hail this concession as a grand point gained in the controversy; the more so, from its being one which the older immaterialists would rarely admit; they were pressed with the contradictions inseparable from their system, as demonstrated by the inferior parts of animal creation, in which it was shown that if their own definitions of matter were correct, then, as a consequence, a mouse or a mackerel must be composed of something more than matter; that if the mental powers of man could not, by possibility, be the result of organization, then, by analogy, the sagacity of the dog, the camel, and the elephant, can only be accounted for, from their also possessing immaterial souls. 66 This open avowal of the Reviewers is of the more importance, because it enables us to concentrate the argument, and to demonstrate that, if their position be a correct one, we must confer immaterial souls even upon comparatively more degraded parts of creation, than that of their own selection the oyster; and even proceed, if not quite, yet almost, to the vegetable kingdom: for, according to the naturalist, Lamark, the passage from the most perfect plant, to the least perfect animal, is quite insensible; and “where organization is the most simple, animals approach nearest "to plants;" and but little superiority to the vegetable can be discovered in those aquatic animals which are described by Macleay, as masses of homogeneous and sensible pulp, through which there is a sort of nervous system. There are atoms too of such an ambiguous nature as to be difficult to account for on the principle of animal life. The animalcula, also, which exist in myriads, even in the vegetable part of creation; the intestinal worms which are said to grow in the liver of sheep; the thousand species of lice, and such peculiar to some plant or animal; yet all these have life, and the means of existence; thus placing the consistent |