Other later representatives of the mystical thought and spirit are Walter Marshall, author of The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification; Bishop Jeremy Taylor, who in the Holy Living, and in the chapter "Of Meditation" in his Life of Christ, teaches the standard mystical theology of the Roman Catholic ascetics, especially their three degrees of mystical ascent, first stated by "Dionysius the Areopagite," viz., Purification, Illumination, and Union, using, says Dr. Pusey, "their very words and turns of expression, giving their advice and their cautions;" Bishop Fowler, who called down Bunyan's Lutheran indignation by asserting that sanctification is the sum and substance of Christianity, but received the qualified approval of Richard Baxter, whose bete noir was Antinomianism; Edward Polhill, who maintained the truth and reality of the mystical union of Christ and believers as fundamental to all Christian theology, against Stillingfleet and other rationalizing divines, who inclined to represent it as a trope; and Samuel Shaw, the much enduring Dissenter, whose Immanuel-a book still read-insists that religion is nothing unless it be "a living principle in the minds of men."

As Puritanism lost its masculine, public, and political character, by becoming non-conformity and dissent, as it ceased to be the creed of soldiers and statesmen, of armies and of parliaments, it also ceased to provoke any reactions of the sort we have been describing. Its sharp lines and definite distinctions became less distinct, because of the new influences of a new age, so that the theology of Owen and of Manton has little more than a formal kinship to that of Watts and of Doddridge. The later representatives of English mysticism are to be found chiefly within the Establishment and among the Nonjurors, until in Methodism there arose a type of Protestantism with many points of contact with mysticism itself.

ARTICLE II.-AN ARGUMEMT FOR MAN'S IMMORTALITY ON RATIONAL GROUNDS.

MATERIALISTS claim that the human soul, or the spirit of man, is not spirit at all, but the product of organization. Hence, when that organization is dissolved, as it is at death, the soul itself has vanished into non-existence. It cannot, therefore, be immortal. On the other hand, Immaterialists claim that the soul, though for a time linked to an earthly body and dependent upon that connection for its early discipline and its knowledge of the material world, is yet, in its interior nature, a distinct spiritual entity, and a persistent unit of being; that in its higher relations it is independent of organization, as under the dominion of spiritual laws, and belonging to a higher sphere of existence. Hence, when the earthly body is dissolved, the spirit retains its own integrity, unharmed and indestructible.

These inferences both stand upon the assumption that we really know what is the essential nature of the soul; in the one case that it is a dependent, vanishing product like the perfume of a flower, or the life of a plant, with no existence independent of the material organism of which it is the outcome; in the other, that it is a distinct independent existence, indestructible in its nature. But we cannot infer either the mortality or the immortality of the soul from its essential nature, and for two reasons. First, we cannot know the essential nature of either matter or spirit but only their phenomena. And second, if we could, we cannot infer from that nature alone, the soul's total destruction, or its proper conscious immortality.

Granting that the soul is here dependent upon a material organism, and that its present body is to be destroyed; may not its essential personal life take on some other organism, by metamorphosis, or metempsychosis, without extinction? Possibly it may be clothed upon with a body more subtle, like the invisible ether, its life passing on into a different stage of being, changing the form of its activities, but preserving its identity.

Or, supposing the soul to be an indestructible entity independent of a body, does this necessarily involve its conscious immortality as a self-active, responsible being? "The simple elementary atom," says Sir Balfourd Stewart, "is an immortal being." But such an immortality, whether of the ultimate atom, or of an immaterial principle, is not what we are seeking for, but that of the conscious personality, the Ego, with its reason, affections, memories, and will centered within them all, and directing them, under the government of God.

But the soul, like any other object, cannot be properly known, by itself, independent of its relations. Who can understand the human eye, except as related to the light without and to the soul within? Who can comprehend an ultimate atom, independent of the laws of chemical affinity and of those forces which build it up into structures of crystalline beauty and of manifold life. We know a single thing perfectly, only when we know all things; for each object has relations to every other, and to the whole. God, only, knows any single thing perfectly.

Hence, man's immortality must be learned, if at all, not from the study of matter by itself, nor of spirit, nor of the lifeprinciple as related to organization; but either from Revelation, or from finding the place man holds in the creation; in other words, from a just view of his relations to the great system of which he is a part. The physiologist does a most welcome service in throwing light upon brain structure, and upon its functions as related both to the body and the mind. He may demonstrate that the living organism is directed, played upon, like an instrument of music, by an intelligent agent invisible and outside the instrument; and since this agent may have existed before the organization began, it need not perish with the organism. But his demonstration of man's immortality, on physiological grounds, must certainly fail. Not only is the argument too effective, as involving equally the fellow-immortality of all the Rhizopods and Trilobites of the geologic ages, but, to the searching, fundamental questions concerning this invisible agent, What? Whither? the physiologist at once takes the attitude of the sphinx and answers not a word. As the destination, or the whither, of this agent, is the very thing to be proved, we cannot turn silence into proof.

But on the other hand, so profound is the mystery of the life-principle in any form, and especially as endowed with rational and moral intelligence, that the materialist in denying its possible immortality, only shows that he would have been wiser to turn sphinx, than to make answer without any possible data in present human knowledge.

It is conceded to be a doctrine of the Bible revelation. Some assert that they know their own immortality by intuition, another form of revelation. This I neither affirm nor deny. My present argument is based solely on man's place in the system of creation; and my proposition is, that consistency and unity in this, as a rational and moral system, involves man's Immortality.

This argument bears directly only on the immortality of the righteous; leaving the immortality of all, probable, but on grounds which this argument does not compass.

I assume what every scientist will readily grant, that creation is a rational system; in other words, that in its connections and dependencies throughout, each part works for the whole, and the whole for each part, so as to constitute a rational and consistent unity. Every scientist assumes that there is system, and therefore unity, in Nature. Otherwise science is impossible. The conviction is firm in every intelligent mind, that one truth never conflicts with another truth. It is a demand of our rational nature; and this means that what this rational nature, within, demands, exists in fact, without. In other words there is a correllation, or a complete correspondence between perfect reason and the system embodied in creation. True, the system is vast. We cannot comprehend the whole. But we know in part. In the science of Numbers, there are many relations we cannot grasp, yet, knowing some of them and the ground rules for calculating all numbers, we are sure that nothing in the whole range of numbers can contradict those rules which we do understand. So in the great system of Nature, there are facts, laws, and principles which are plain, giving us, so to speak, the general rules of calculation. On this basis, we are sure that what we do not know as yet, must be consistent with facts and principles which we do know. A system of Geometry that is good for our Earth is good for Neptune. A treatise

on Optics or Gravity that is true here, is true in the far-off Pleiades. So the ground facts and central laws of God's moral government and the fundamental relations of moral creatures to it, which we clearly see, here and now, are essentially the same in all worlds.

I will now state certain facts and principles as the basis of my argument, using within the domain of physical science only those which are held to be established by scientists themselves; and beyond this domain, only what all fully receive, who believe in a personal God and in the moral nature of man. And these are here assumed as truths that can be firmly established on similar grounds.

First. The system of creation has been progressive in its formation. Whether formed by successive creative acts, or by the process called evolution, we need not determine. The fact is acknowledged; the world has been brought to its present state through unknown, but countless ages, whatever the pro

cess.

Second. Its formation has been according to a law of progress. It has not been by successive additions and extensions, the same in kind, but by progress from lower to higher forms of being. Dead, inorganic matter preceded organic; the lower forms of vegetable and animal life preceded the higher, the ascending series taking, as characteristics of the advance, greater complexity of structure, a finer organization, and higher intelligence.

Third. With this progress toward higher and higher forms of life, there has been in the advancing grades, a conserving of all excellence previously attained, so that the highest of the series combines essentially all that had been gained, with additions, not found in any grade below.

Fourth. At the same time other changes have been going on in the earth's structure and temperature and in its surrounding elements which made this progress possible. The air and the water have been precipitating their noxious elements; continents and mountain ranges have been thrown up; rich valleys with their water courses have been formed, and wide plains have been extended; even those strange monuments of the dead, the great chalk and coral formations in the sea, and the