Mr. Rennell, who, in a spirit hardly befitting a " Christian "Advocate," and apparently little conversant with the writings of the most eminent men in his own church, denounces the believer in materialism as an Atheist; a convert of the "French Encyclopediaists;" a supporter of the " German "Illuminati;" an admirer of the system of Gall and Spurzheim," that masterpiece of empiricism;" and who performs the illogical-the daring-the almost sacrilegious act of committing the argument for the existence of a God, upon a belief of a spiritual essence in man. "Atheism and

"materialism go hand in hand; for when we have argued "ourselves out of the existence of our soul, which is a spirit, by the very same process, we argue ourselves out of the "existence of the Almighty, who is a spirit also."

The above conclusion of the "Christian Advocate," with the equally novel Christian argument of Mr. Abernethy, who adopts a singular mode of defending the Christian doctrine of future immortality, by glorying that he entertains the same "opinions as Pythagoras, Plato, Socrates, and a host of others," together with Mr. Lawrence's supposed concession also to the Christian believer in a future state, that the doctrine of the soul's immortality, as taught in the Bible, is" a sublime doctrine, and has existed in all places, and all ages, and appertains to all religions;" these several writers, each of them the representative of a class, when opposed upon the philosophical arguments relative to the nature of man's intellectual powers and future hopes, seem, in an equal degree, profoundly and singularly ignorant of the kind of evidence, upon which the scripture doctrine of a future life rests-a doctrine depending neither upon the ignorant ground of hope of Mr. Abernethy, nor upon the misconception of Mr. Lawrence, but upon the resurrection of a man like ourselves from the dead, and the consequent assurance that the creator of man will again call into existence beings who had had life before-who had died (entire and not in part)-and who can only live again by the exercise of God's almighty power, and who will then, standing before the judgment seat of Christ, be judged according to the deeds done in this life. This is the doctrine of the New Testament-this is the gospel which Jesus proclaimed-this is the philosophy which he and his apostles were commanded by Deity to teach—a gospel, it will be seen, radically opposed to the assumed natural immortality of the mental powers; for were they, by nature, immortal they could not die-and where there has been no death there can be no resurrection from the dead.

This being the foundation of the Christian's hope, grounded on the promises of God, and confirmed by the resurrection of Jesus-of the man himself, and not of his immortal and immaterial soul-from the grave, the Christian is ignorant of the scheme which represents his percipient and active parts in one place, and his body in another; he is incapable of perceiving that the arguments in support of a resurrection, can be aided by a system not adduced as a part of the same thing, but an essentially distinct hypothesis; he can find little difficulty in tracing some of the most serious corruptions to which Christianity has been subject, to the source of Mr. Abernethy's cause of glorying-the embodying the system of "Plato, Pythagoras, Socrates, and a host of "others," with the sublime, yet simple, doctrine of a future state of righteous retribution, through the means of a resurrection from the dead. He can discover, in the corruptions of Christianity, an adequate cause for this unphilosophical and unholy union; and he can, with Dr. Priestly, assert that, "as a Christian and a protestant, he is an enemy to the "doctrine of a separate soul, and that one who disbelieves "that doctrine cannot be a papist. Almost every thing which "has been represented as absurd and mischevious in the "faith of Christians, and what has been the cause or pre"tence of a great part of the infidelity of the philosophical world, must be laid to the door of this one article; it is evident, therefore, that the Christian has no reason to be "biassed in favour of the doctrine of a soul, and may, "without concern, leave it to philosophical discussion;" and finally, the Christian knows that his religion distinctly informs him of a future life-that the scriptures put him in possession of the most important truths which man can know; but they no more teach him metaphysics than they do astronomy or medicine; they, in despite of the "Christian "Advocate's" anathemas, and Mr. Abernethy's "glorying," no more compel him to believe that his living and thinking powers are immaterial, than they do that the earth is the centre of our system. History too informs him that there once were churchmen, and judges, and "advocates," and "Christian Advocates" who contended, "That to main"tain the sun to be immovable, and without local motion "in the centre of the world, is an absurd proposition"false in philosophy-heretical in religion-and contrary "to the testimony of scripture ;" he can, therefore, feel that he may differ from all such personages, and yet agree with Jesus and with Paul.

Having thus shewn some of the inconsistencies into which certain of the advocates of this doctrine, in the present day, have fallen, I shall now proceed, according to the arrangement before laid down, to the first division of my subject -THE HISTORY OF THE DOCTRINE OF ΑΝ IMMORTAL SOUL.

The belief of an immortal principle in man stands connected, under some modes of explanation, with all nations, at all periods of history, and under every state of society; forming an important part of all systems of theology, except, as Mr. Lawrence states, the Jewish, and he ought to have added the Christian. But as he, in common with his opponents, has not done this, but places the Christian doctrine of a future life upon the same ground as the Platonic or of Egyptian, it will be my peculiar object to demonstrate the fallacy of their assertions; and to prove, in the first place, that the future state of the Christian is as inconsistent with, and opposed to, Mr. Lawrence's " sublime doctrine of "all ages," as his able Lectures are to the puny production of Mr. Abernethy; and, in the second, to demonstrate the vital injury which Christianity has sustained from the attempt to incorporate its truths with the heathen schemes of futurity. These latter naturally enough originated in the speculative powers of the human mind, when engaged upon the inequality of human conditions and the gloomy contemplation of an extinction of being: as death was seen to terminate our bodily existence, it was a natural step to set about devising the means by which it might be possible that man should survive this event; experience demonstrated that our bodies, when dead, were resolved into dust, and incapable, as it appeared, of reanimation, yet notwithstanding this inevitable inference, the case was, fortunately, not hopeless; for since the existence of shadows presented the symbol of a form without a body, and yet exhibited the form of the body from which it sprung; it was not, perhaps, difficult to conceive some yet finer and more subtile composition, in which might consist that life to which men clung even in death. Thus these immature efforts, aided by the speculations of what was called philosophy, were nurtured by the learnedvenerated by the vulgar; and, being suited to the quackery of the schools, and the selfish interest of the priests, they became venerable from age, and formidable in authority-from Plato to Aquinas, from Descartes dawnward even to Abernethy and the "Christian Advocate;" but history has ever shewn us that speculation upon man's future hopes and condition,

however venerable from antiquity or imposing from authority, have, when not derived from the Christian revelation, been wild, extravagant, and generally immoral-giving a sanction to practices which debase our nature, and sink men to a low degree of ignorance and depravity.

The Indians, the Chaldeans, and the Egyptians-but more generally the latter-are supposed to have originated, not, as will be shewn, the immaterial soul as defined in modern times, but that to which this hypothesis is mainly indebted. The Greek historians say "that the Egyptians were the first "who maintained that the soul of man is immortal; that "when the body dies it enters into that of some other "animal; and that when it has transmigrated through all terrestrial, marine, and flying animals, it returns to the "body of a man again." The funeral rites of the Egyptians are supposed to have aided their speculation, as they embalmed their dead bodies, which they deposited in subterranean grottos, where they were supposed to live thousands of years. The Persians, according to the oracles of Zoroaster, believed that all souls were produced from one fire, and therefore partook of the nature of the element from which they sprung. The Chinese consider the soul to be air-to be material, but highly rarified.

The Stoics taught the soul to be a hot fiery blast. Other sects of heathen philosophers a hot complexion. Others the harmony of the four elements. Democritus contended that the soul was made up of round atoms, incorporated by air and fire. Some believed that the soul was aërial-some that it was earthy. Zenophon held that it was both watery and earthy. According to some of the eminent men among the Greeks, the soul of the universe was a vapour, or exhalation from the moist elements; so the souls from animals were vapours from their own bodies. Of those among them who considered the soul incorporeal, some asserted that it was a substance and immortal; whilst others believed that it was neither. Thales taught that it was always in motion, and itself the origin of that motion. Pythagoras contended that it was a self-moving monad, or number. Plato that it was a substance conceivable only by the understanding, and moving according to harmony and number. Aristotle "that it was the first continual motion "of a body natural, having in it those instrumental parts "wherein was possibility of life." The Manicheans taught that there is but one universal soul, which is distributed, in portions, to all bodies. Plato believed in the existence

of this universal soul-supposed that all things lived by its influence, but that those only were living creatures that had separate souls and it was generally held by the Greeks and other heathen nations, that man was composed of three parts, his body being derived from the earth-his soul from the moon-his spirit from the sun; and that, after death, each of these returned to its proper origin. Even Pythagoras and Plato, to follow whom Mr. Abernethy, as a Christian, thinks it a great honour, taught, that there were two souls-one of a celestial nature, or the rational soul-the other the material soul, being the seat of the passions, and that both these souls were united to the body; whilst Aristotle (another pillar in Mr. Abernethy's creed) taught that there were three souls, all distinct, as to essence and substantiallity, yet in one body, viz. a rational, a vegetative, and a sensative soul-two of which act, before the rational soul is induced into the body; and, after that event has taken place, then those two cease to act at all.

Mr. Stanley, in his Lives of the Ancient Philosophers, places souls in the next rank to demons-but under three classes: first, souls separate from matter, called supercelestial intelligences; secondly, souls inseparable from matter; thirdly, rational souls of a middle kind, immaterial, incorporeal, and consequently immortal, having a self-generate and self-animate existence-proceeding from the paternal mind, seated in the moon, and sent down to the earth, either by the reason of the flagging of its wings, or in obedience to the will of the Father. He believes that the soul of man will clasp God to herself; that the paternal mind soweth symbols in the soul, and the soul being a bright fire, by the power of the Father, remaineth immortal, and is mistress of life.

The PRE-EXISTENCE OF SOULS, and their transmigration, form the prominent features in these several hypotheses; although, in relation to the latter, some variety of explanation occurs: some believed in only one species of soul, making it to pass indiscriminately into the bodies of plants and animals; others two kinds, and others as many as there are species of animals. Jamblicus confined his transmigration to those of the same species, contending that every soul had a species of structure exactly suited to its own faculties. Plato divided souls into three classes, and assigned a separate residence to each, placing the first in the belly, the second in the chest, the third in the head. Some considered that the soul, after its separation, remained without a body. Others gave it a body, and sent it to the