that his mind, that by which alone he can approach the divine likeness, is "the functional power of the human brain."*

I forbear making quotations from the writings of Mr. Lawrence, of a similiar tendency to those on which I have been commenting; since he has not only done his utmost to withdraw them from circulation, but manfully to avow, in a Letter, dated College of Surgeons, April 16, 1832, “Further experience and reflection have only tended to convince me more strongly, that the publication of certain passages in these writings was highly improper; to increase my regret at having sent them into the world; to make me satisfied with the measure of withdrawing them from public circulation; and consequently firmly resolved, not only never to reprint them, but also never to publish any thing more on similar subjects.”—Letter to Sir R. C. Glynn, Bart.

* If nothing more were contended for than the dependence of the mind upon the brain, as its material instrument, there need be no dispute, for that is admitted, as I have said in the text, by all. But what does the author of the above quotation say more?

"Seeing that the brain thinks, and feels, and wills, as clearly as that the liver has the power of producing bile, and does produce it, and a salt the power of assuming a certain form, and does chrystalize, a physical inquirer leaves others at liberty to fancy an hypothesis of its power, being a subtil, immaterial, immortal substance, exactly as they fancy life to be a subtil fluid, or, perhaps, though very extraordinarily, the same subtil fluid (if subtilty is immateriality and immortality), elucidating the subject no more than in the case of life, and equally increasing the number of its difficulties; as though we were not created beings, or not altogether ignorant what matter is, or of what it is capable, or incapable; as though matter exhibited nothing but extension, impenetrability, attraction and inertness; and as though the Almighty could not, if it seemed good to him, have endowed it, as he most evidently has, with the super-addition of life, and even of feeling and will."-ELLIOTSON'S " Human Physiology," p. 41.

It is likewise my intention to make but a very few more remarks on Dr. Elliotson's "Human Physiology," lest the language of criticism, in a manner forced upon me by the nature of his subject, should bear the semblance of disrespect for the learning and talents of that justly distinguished physician. Suffice it therefore to add, that he has endeavoured to fortify his views by extracts from the works of many eminent divines and Christian writers; such as Jeremy Taylor, Butler, Watson, Law (Bishop of Carlisle), Locke, Dugald Stewart, &c.; some of which bear him out in maintaining that there is no solid foundation, either in physics or metaphysics, for the doctrine of the immateriality of the soul, and to this extent, and no farther, they may be said to be on his side, versus Abernethy. What, for instance, can be more strong than the following quotation from Locke, in his second reply to Bishop Stillingfleet, who, not without good cause, considered some of his writings as tending to materialism? "All the difficulties that are raised against the thinking of matter, from our ignorance or narrow conceptions, stand not at all in the way of the power of God, if he pleases to ordain it so." "The faculties of brutes prove,' ""either that God can and doth give to some parcels of matter a power of perception and thinking, or that all animals have immaterial and consequently immortal souls as well as men; and to say that fleas and mites, &c., have immortal souls as well as men, will possibly be looked on as going a great way to serve an hypothesis." Opinions such as these

might fairly raise alarm in the breast of the pious Bishop of Worcester; and it is much to be lamented that Locke, who knew so well how to vindicate the truth of the Christian religion, should not have better understood the sceptical drift of his argument against the immateriality of the soul. This I cannot illustrate better than by reference to another author quoted by Dr. Elliotson, namely, Dr. Rush, of America. He says that "the writers in favour of the immortality of the soul have done that truth great injury by connecting it necessarily with its immateriality. The immortality of the soul depends upon the will of the Deity, and not upon the supposed properties of spirit. Matter is in its own nature as immortal as spirit. It is resolvable by heat and moisture into a variety of forms; but it requires the same Almighty hand to annihilate it, that it did to create it. I know of no argument to prove the immortality of the soul but such as we derive from the Christian revelation."*

Now, however unobjectionable the latter part of this passage may be, it is certainly most incorrect to affirm, whilst admitting the veracity of the Scriptures, that matter is in its own nature as immortal as spirit; for, freely as

* Dr. Priestly supposed" that the whole man becomes extinct at death, and that we have no hope of surviving the grave but what is derived from the scheme of revelation." First Introductory Essay to his edition of Hartley, quoted here from Dr. Elliotson.

Does not the Bible tell us that our bodies shall return to dust, but that our spirits shall return to God who gave them?-Eccl. xii. 7. How then can the whole man become extinct?

we allow that the same God who made the world can annihilate it, yet, if we know anything at all of matter, it is in nothing more distinct from spirit than in the very circumstance of its capability of annihilation. And, is it possible, that any reflecting Christian can seriously assimilate anything capable of annihilation to that Being who inhabiteth Eternity-the Creator of all things, whose very essence is Spirit? "For God," the Bible tells us, " is a Spirit ;" and they that worship him must worship him spiritually; which implies, if words can be supposed to have any precise meaning, that he must be worshipped by us as creatures having rational and imperishable souls, as well as material and perishable bodies.

Bishop Watson, who is somewhat too great a favourite with the modern school of materialists for his own fair fame, expresses, in his autobiography, his surprise at having ever supposed that there is a separation of soul and body at death; affirming, at the same time, his belief of the resurrection of the dead on the sole authority of Scripture, as if we did not derive from the same authority, the assurance that man is a compound of soul and body-the one spiritual, the other material.

When Locke pronounces, either that the faculties of brutes lead to the necessary conclusion that all animals have immaterial, and consequently immortal, souls as well as man, or that some parcels of matter are endowed with a power of perception and thinking, he goes far wide of the mark; for the future state of man is not the necessary result

of his spiritual endowment. The sentient principle might have left him at death, and he might have been like the beasts that perish, but for that fiat of Omnipotence which has appointed that his imperishable part, the soul, shall be re-united to the body at the last day. The question, as to what becomes of the soul at death, is one to which neither natural nor revealed religion has given any precise or explicit answer. That in some manner, incomprehensible to us at present, our souls will remain in the safe keeping of God that gave them, there can be no doubt; and my own belief is, that there will be no individual consciousness till the last trumpet shall sound, and all mankind, both quick and dead, be alike summoned to appear before their Saviour and their Judge. The vegetable seed dies, its germ of reproduction remains, and upon that, whatever it may be, the growth of the future plant depends. The whole race of man dies, and, at the sound of the last trump, will revive and have to give account of the deeds done in the flesh; but does it, therefore, follow that death implies annihilation of the spirit? Certainly not. As well might it be said that the vital germ dies together with the grain committed to the earth.*

* It requires to be carefully noted, that this is nothing more than illustration. The vitality of the seed survives the decomposition of its grosser material parts; therefore, a fortiori, it may well be credited, that the soul, when it quits the body at death, is not annihilated; being so much better than mere vitality-that the latter may, or may not, be material, and, under certain conditions, perishable; whereas the sentient spirit is in some affinity or other with the Eternal Father of spirits Himself.