AN ADDRESS*.

TO THE PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE TRUSTEES, MEMBERS OF THE FACULTY AND FELLOW-STUDENTS:

I have selected for my subject the philosophic and historic truth, that science is essentially influenced by religious belief I can consider this topic in a partial and imperfect manner only, within the compass of a single discourse; but a useful purpose will have been accomplished if I succeed in prompting some of my audience to further reflection in regard to it.

I shall best treat the theme by viewing it, first, in the light of a philosophic, and secondly, in that of an historic truth.

1st. It is a philosophic verity that science is essentially influenced by religious belief. Man is a composite being. As a descendant of Adam there is united in his merely human nature a soul, spirit and body, or, as they are termed in the original Greek of the New Testament, τὸ πνεῦμα καὶ ἡ ψυχὴ καὶ τὸ σῶμα. The apostle Paul recognized this trinity of nature when, in his first epistle to the Thessalonians (1 Thess. 5 c., 23v.) he writes: "I pray God your whole spirit, and soul, and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus "Christ." The same truth is impliedly taught in very early scripture. In the first chapter of the book of Genesis it is written, "The Lord God formed man of "the dust of the earth, and breathed into his nostrils

66

Dr. Bradford was prevented by a severe attack of illness from fulfilling his appointment, and this address is now selected from several others for publication. It was written after he had passed threescore and ten. H. E. D.

“the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” And again, "God said, Let us make man in our own image, "after our likeness." "So God created man in his "own image; in the image of God created he him."

The inspired word of God also fully reveals the fact of the trinity in unity of God. In pursuance of this analogy it may be safely affirmed that man's soul is the seat of his moral emotions and affections, and is immortal; that man's spirit is the indissoluble motive force of his soul, and that it possesses faculties suited to personal existence, after its separation by death from its earthly casement; that man's body is his earthly tabernacle, and is endued with faculties fitted to the purposes of terrestrial existence; that the intellect is a faculty influenced and exerted according to the respective requirements of volition, each intellect acting in its distinct and allotted sphere. "For they that are "after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh, but "they that are after the spirit, the things of the

66

spirit." Hence belief is the result of an intellectual process from the testimony of the senses, aided by the sensibilities and will, which all spiritual beings can exercise, for "devils believe and tremble." While faith or confidence in God as revealed in Christ is the result of a process, as we are taught by revelation, of the intellect, sensibilities and will in the new creature in Christ Jesus, "born of God,” and which "cannot sin," given to the believer by the regeneration of the Holy Ghost, when he, by a spiritual and new birth, is made a partaker of the nature of Christ, acquires "a life hid with Christ in God," and is made "one with Christ." Religious faith is, in such peculiar and appropriate sense," the gift of God," an expression of the

SCRIPTURAL VIEWS OF THE TRUE BELIEVER. 257

It

regenerate nature, primarily, eventually and all the time, through sanctification, of the entire man for "such faith works by love, purifies the heart, and overcomes the world." When thus exerted, evangelical faith is not merely an intellectual perception, but is the loving trust and confidence of the believer in the promises by God of salvation and ultimate glorification, through Christ his spiritual head Sanctification is an assimilating process, whereby the simple Adamic nature is completely purified and brought into entire accord, sympathy and harmony, through the Holy Ghost operating upon the soul, spirit and body of the natural man. is usually a progressive work, consummated by the dissolution of the body, and its resurrection as a spiritual and glorified body. By such ultimate sanctification and glorification, the dual nature, borne by the believer on earth, is made wholly "one in Christ," so that the redeemed of the human race are perfectly fitted for the heavenly state, for eternal felicity, and are made "kings and priests unto God," and "live and reign with Christ forever." Such scriptural views of the state of the true believer, before his complete sanctification, as bearing a dual nature, namely: as a child of Adam, inheriting a wholly depraved nature, and as "born of God," possessed of a nature which "cannot sin," and, in respect to each of his natures, in one being, is not contradicted by human consciousness and reason. From such premises it follows that man, before regeneration, as respects his intellect, is so organized that he can understand moral truth, and, after regeneration, is so endowed that he can properly realize, love and trust religious truth, while at the same time, by the aid of his bodily senses, he can make

258

LIFE A MYSTERY TO MATERIALISTS.

scientific acquaintance with the moral and material works of God, in order that he may grow in grace and in the knowledge" of his Creator and Redeemer. Our being has been often termed "a mystery;" without a knowledge of its purpose, it is undoubtedly a mystery. The man who is ignorant of any great religious and moral purpose for his existence, is certainly in the dark. He who thinks that the shadows of death will soon encompass him forever, and that annihilation will, in a brief period, be his hopeless end, must indeed be an inexplicable mystery to himself. All the light of his science is but the glimmering of a weak taper soon to be extinguished forever. His animal wants supplied, his sensual appetites gratified, for a few fleeting and dimly remembered years, and the whole purpose of being is accomplished for him. The domestic and social virtues and every moral and religious emotion and sentiment, of which his soul is capable, is wasteful extravagance, a copious overflowing of the waters of an inexhaustible fountain, upon a barren and sterile soil.. They beautify and enrich nothing. The dark, dreary and unknown abyss of nothingness will quickly swallow them up. He sustains no relations, of any moral and religious import to himself or others. Oblivion will speedily cover all with its dark pall. The wave of ocean, which is spent upon the shore, is not more evanescent or devoid of moral and religious meaning, than is his existence. Life, to him, is a flashing and a sound of material motion, which is hardly seen or heard, before it is gone forever. But, aside from the contradiction given, by self-consciousness and divine revelation, to such a view of human existence, such is not the teaching of

HISTORY A PROOF OF IMMORTALITY.

259

truly scientific philosophy. If much is not to be learned from individual experience, more is to be learned from the collected experience of the race, as preserved in its annals, touching the so-called mystery of human existence. If the action of a single life, or even of a generation, be not adequate to its explanation, the records of many generations suffice to furnish some moral and religious idea of man, if he be indeed a reality, and not, as some theories of rationalism assert, an illusion. That the race possesses annals, a perpetual record transmitted from age to age, and from generation to generation, of the events and attainments of human life, is a strong proof of the moral and religious character of human action, and of the immortality of man. Individual life may not be enough developed, in the short space allotted to it in time, to evince its immortal destiny; some evidence thereof, however inconclusive, is furnished, by successive developments of the human intellect, through many generations and ages, and a more adequate conception of the everduring and increasing vigor of the immortal principle of plastic life within us, is obtained, by a consideration of the mighty intellectual achievements and attainments of our race, during the long succession of ages, whose continued action is depicted in the world's annals. These annals demonstrate that science is progressive, that generation after generation has succeeded to it, as an inheritance received, from the remotest antiquity, and increased by the labors of illustrious progenitors. The action of successive generations of men, in reference to science, thus illustrates the action of a single man, if existent, during the same space of time, under like circumstances. It is, in a