certain, that when he rose from the grave, and still more, when he finished this, his supplemental work, as it were, upon earth, he exchanged his mortal habiliments for a body analogous to that glorious body which is promised to his faithful followers, when their mortal likewise shall put on immortality? Without the revision of our Articles, is it then likely to expect unity in our Church? No faithful member can wish to see her portals straiter than they are required to be by the strictest conformity with the sacred Scriptures; and it ought not, therefore, to be deemed inconsiderate or querulous detraction from the matchless per

ness of sin, on the condition of faith and repentance, through the sole merits of our crucified Redeemer.

To him, on the contrary, the testimony of whose conscience is the opposite of this, the agony of despair corresponding with the recklessness of guilt, is rendered doubly terrible, from the knowledge of the predestined and irrevocable doom pronounced against sinners-not against any particular sinner, from predetermined necessity, a supposition at which reason and Scripture, rightly interpreted, equally revolt.

fection of our Prayer Book, to deal with it nevertheless as a human compilation, which is not, like the Ark of the Covenant itself, intangible without impiety.

The arguers with whom Abernethy had to deal never abdicated the Christian name; and the great danger arising from their writings sprung less from their facts than from their inferences. These led them to maintain, not merely that our minds and bodies were so associated as to be mutually dependent, but that, growing up, flourishing, and decaying together, they were virtually identical. This, Mr. Abernethy considered heresy; heresy against philosophy equally with religion. He saw that such opinions led to incalculable evil; and he flattered himself, that if he could establish the credibility of Mr. Hunter's theory of life, he should have the better chance of leading the Materialists to admit the existence of a spiritual principle in man. For himself, he used to say, he could never believe that the last words of Nelson-"Hardy!

a

tell Collingwood to bring the fleet to an anchor"had not a deeper source than the material compages of the brain.*

Much good must have resulted from Mr. Abernethy's views; since it is no unimportant step in advance, to be brought from the barren doctrine of materialism to the admission that the soul is not a mere function of the body, but something essentially different in its nature, and of a far higher order, superadded to it.

My own object, both here and elsewhere,† has been to show that there is no sure fulchrum for the argument, either of the soul's immortality, or of the resurrection of the body, but the Scriptures; and I have done this the more earnestly from perceiving that some excellent and learned Divines have

* In Southey's Life of Nelson, his words are said to have been, "Anchor, Hardy; anchor." Hardy, upon this, hinted that Admiral Collingwood would take upon himself the direction of affairs. "Not while I live, Hardy;" said the dying Nelson, ineffectually endeavouring to raise himself from the bed; "Do you anchor." + See "Scripture Notices and Proofs," passim.

thrown unnecessary obstacles in the way of the Materialists, by laying far too much stress on the metaphysical assumption of a distinct and individual spiritual principle, independent of the body, through life, in the exercise of its faculties. They have maintained, that the soul has been known to continue clear and intelligent under all manner of bodily lesion; which is by no means the case; for although, as in the instance of Lord Nelson, the spirit may exhibit its wonted powers at the very point of death, yet, in order to this, the brain must have preserved its healthy state up to that point. Had the fatal ball lacerated the fabric of the brain, life might have been prolonged; but the probability is, that there would have been a proportionate defect of intellect.

Does this show that the intelligent principle becomes extinct at death? Not a whit more than does the incapacity of a defective musical instrument, to respond to the touch of the performer, indicate that his powers as a musician have ceased.

The cases may not be strictly analogous, but they are sufficiently so to illustrate the present question.

As it is not, therefore, at all surprising that the Materialists should have drawn their own conclusions from the false reasoning of some of their most powerful religious opponents; so, we may hope, that when the false physiology on which this reasoning was founded shall have been given up, they may be induced to admit, that although in this life there is an entire dependence of the mind upon the brain, for the manifestation of its faculties, all the precise knowledge we possess of the nature of the soul, and of its future existence, is derived exclusively from the Bible. From thence we learn that God made man a living soul; and that as we are here living souls, so we shall be hereafter; with this grand distinction, that the bodies in which we shall then live will be imperishable.

When we see men devoid, it is reasonable to hope, of any evil intention, yet losing themselves in the labyrinth of a vain philosophy, can it be