the soul's immortality, drawn from the assumed non-extension › and indestructibility of spirit, (Baxter, Drew, &c.) must now, we think, be abandoned, along with the far-fetched and inconclusive doctrines of Plato, as well as the more recent argument taken from the notoriously false assumption of the progressive improvement of man from infancy to old age. There never has been, indeed, to our knowledge, any rational argument brought to prove the soul's immortality; and for us to trust to Plato, or to hunt after such argument, is to renounce or to oppose the scripture declaration, that "life and immortality were brought to light by the Gospel." Yet it is one of the heaviest charges brought against Mr. Lawrence, that he has made a similar statement. Those who accuse him of this on a religious score, must certainly be very ignorant of the religion which they pro fess, when they would prefer the very inconclusive arguments of Plato, or Cicero, or Baxter, or Addison, or Drew, to the plain announcement of the Bible, on which announcement alone we can ground any hope for our future existence.

Having thus disposed of the qualities which spirit does not possess, and found that from this evidence at least, spirit can have no existence, we must now examine whether thought and thinking, the assumed essence of spirit, give it any better right to a station in the universe. We say that this is an assumption, in so far as thinking cannot be proved to belong to any being except man, and even the theorists will not admit man to be spirit any more than they will admit iron to be matter. God is said to be a spirit; and angels are said to be spirits. But where is the proof that God, as a spirit, thinks, or that angels, as spirits, have thought. All human thinking consists in perceiving, remembering, judging, and feeling; but we dare affirm no such thing of God, nor of angels; neither dare we affirm the contrary. Yet here do our theorists most daringly assume that because they think themselves, and because this thinking is assumed to be the essence of spirit-therefore God, as a spirit, also thinks. This is certainly going out of their depth into the empty and pathless void. Independent of God, man, and angels, there may be, for aught that can be shewn to the contrary, millions of spirits in the universe which think no more than a stone thinks; but the theory is absolute and peremptory, that thinking is the essence of spirit.

We have already proved essence, in this sense, to be a mere phantom, and if our arguments be examined, (we hope they are at least intelligible,) the spirit of the theories will appear equally unreal. For it is to be remarked, that thinking is not said to be spirit, but the essence, or a quality of spirit. It is

NO. XIV, VOL. IV.

C c

the old story of the kernel and the shell of the nut. Thinking is the shell, and spirit is the kernel; but nobody has ever seen or felt this kernel, and can say nothing about it but that they are sure it is in the nut, if it were once broken. We demur to this; for the nut may be empty, and we have as good a right to maintain this, as the theorists have to maintain the contrary; that is, we have no right at all to affirm any thing of this kernel, or phantom called spirit, till we have good evidence to support our affirmations.

But while we reject the theoretical thing called spirit, we can affirm, on the highest authority of testimony, that God is a spirit, and that the soul of man is a spirit, and that these two orders of spirits have attributes peculiar to themselves in the same way as upon the evidence of our senses and of reflection we can affirm that iron is hard and water fluid, while we reject the existence of the phantom called matter. Our Saviours's account is, that "a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as you see me have;" and this is the best answer which can be given to those who puzzle themselves and others with idle and abstruse speculation about the essence of spirit and the essence of matter. It shews very gross ignorance in the religious persecutors of Mr. Lawrence to object to what he says on these points; if his language, indeed, did not, in some places, bear a strong ironical construction, nothing can be more just,-nothing can more strongly support Christianity than his remark, that we are indebted to the testimony of revelation alone for almost all we know about the spirit of God, and the spirit of man, and but for revelation he justly thinks we might never have surmised the existence of either. The opponents of Mr. Lawrence, though they must feel the force of this, are exceedingly loath to agree to it. Their pride of heart will not allow them to confess themselves indebted to the Bible for their knowledge. It is not, indeed, so much for attacking religious opinion, that the cry of persecution (in this case at least) is raised against him, as for pulling down the strong holds of human pride and self-sufficient dogmatism. We would ask those proud persecutors, who dictate so tyrannically to others, what they imagine revelation was intended for, if not, as in this case, to enlighten mankind on subjects which were beyond the unassisted powers of reason to discover, and which foiled all the learning of Egypt, Greece, and Rome?We beg that these our remarks be applied only to the doctrines of the spirit of God and of man, and to the soul's immortality. We cannot, and we are sorry for it, speak so favourably of niany of Mr. Lawrence's other doctrines, nor of his irony and

jeering. These are every way out of place in the lectures, and detract much from the force of his reasoning.

The theorists go on with their series of assumptions and say, unconditionally, that all things in the universe are either matter or spirit, are either passive or active. Now granting them, for a moment, that the things which they call matter and spirit do exist, how do they discover or prove, even from their own shewing, that all things are either the one or the other? May there not be ten thousand, and ten thousand more beings in the universe, all different the one from the other, and not one of the whole possessing one of the properties which they ascribe to their matter and their spirit? This is, at least, conceivable and highly probable. We ask, for example, whether light be matter or spirit? Our theorists are puzzled at the question; but unwilling, as they always are to confess ignorance, one says it is material, and composed of particles which have no momentum, but which can easily and rapidly penetrate the hardest known substance, the diamond; another justly concluding this to be unproved and absurd, affirms that light is nothing but a peculiar motion of he knows not what. The same nonsense is affirmed concerning heat.-We ask again, whether electricity and magnetism are matter or spirit? And the fancy of the theorists being thus again prompted to say at least something on the subject, one tells us his tale about certain auræ or gas of inconceivable tenuity, and another talks as undoubtingly of the electric and magnetic fluids as if he had specimens of them bottled up in his cabinet. We should like extremely to hear the theoretical proof of the fluidity of electricity or of magnetism; it must be exceedingly amusing. We are certain that, so far as we know, they have none of the properties of water, oil, and other fluids; and we do not see that any object of utility is gained by talking of a fluid sui generis. The sui generis, to be sure, is an excellent screen for ignorance, and is always had recourse to in puzzling cases; for a theorist would much rather say "sui generis," than "I do not know.".

We think also that we are entitled to ask whether gravity, space, and time, are matter or spirit? Our theorists will not pretend to say that these do not exist; and according to them every thing that exists is matter or spirit ;-whether then is time to be ranked with matter or with spirit? Whether is space matter or spirit? Whether is it active or passive? The theorist answers not, for he will not abandon his theory, and so long as he abides by it, he cannot answer. It is a mere evasion, to say that space is nothing but distance. This evasion

will not apply to time; and we ask whether time is active or passive?

We venture with diffidence upon another illustration. We know, though very imperfectly, a number of the attributes of God, such as his goodness, his wisdom, his providence; but is it not highly probable (for ourselves we have no doubt, though we cannot prove) that God possesses numberless attributes of which we never heard at all,-which we could not understand if we did hear of them, and which, besides, might be of no use whatever for us to know. If it had been necessary for us, they would undoubtedly have been revealed to us in the Bible. Is not the very same highly probable of numberless beings in the universe? We know not one millionth part of the properties of our own bodies, or of the changes going on in them; and in numberless cases,-we might say, perhaps, in all,-we cannot tell whether the operations and changes taking place among the Bolids and fluids of our bodies are to be referred to an active or a passive state, or, in the absurd language of the theorists, whether they are to be referred to matter or to spirit. We take an example. The great difference of the bones, the muscles, the blood, the skin, the hair, &c. in infancy, youth, manhood, and old age, are obvious and remarkable to all. Now, we ask the physiologist who advocates the fanciful doctrine of matter and spirit, by which of the two, the passive or the active agent, is this change from infancy to age effected? We must be answered, or we must renounce both his matter and his spirit. To fly off into unintelligibles, and tell us that it is by the course of nature, by the gradual drying and shrivelling of the solids-the contraction and obliteration of the capillaries, and the like, will not do. He must tell us whether it is matter or spirit which has been the operator, and if he say both, he must assign to each their proper share of the task. The advocate of matter and spirit is in this case completely non-plussed. He recognises no other thing in the universe but these two-the passive matter and the active spirit, and of course he cannot fail of being puzzled at every step which he takes among the works of God.

We ask him whether it is matter or spirit which makes a stone fall to the earth; which makes the earth revolve in her orbit; which makes plants grow; which makes dead bodies putrify? He again goes off to his magazine of unmeaning words, and tells us it is by the laws of Nature, or (if he is a pious, religious man) by the laws of God that all these are effected. But he must not be suffered to escape thus; and we ask him whether this law of God or of Nature is matter or

spirit? Whether it is active or passive? Does God himself put it in immediate execution, or is it a something which acts by its own powers and by its own intelligence? To a theorist who talks fluently of Nature, and the laws of Nature, we put the question-what is Nature?is it matter or spirit?-active or passive? He is silent. He has been questioned into a dilemma.

The advocate of materialism, upon perceiving the dilemma into which these questions have put the matter and spirit theorist, may probably fancy that we have been strongly corroborating his peculiar views. He is much mistaken. We are as far from being materialists as from being abettors of the untrue, because unproved, doctrine of matter and spirit; and we put precisely the same question to the man who can discover nothing in the universe but matter. We ask him if time or gravity is matter? If life is matter? If heat is matter? and if God is matter? He has also, as well as the other, his magazine of words and arguments; and he tells us, that all these must be material, even from the very language which we use in speaking of them, which is all material; and he refers us to Horne Tooke and his followers for numerous examples of his position. A very complete answer to this doctrine will be found in our preceding number, (page 98.)

We take the materialist on his own ground. We allow the fact, that all the language which we use concerning God and concerning the soul of man is material; but we deny that it is directly so, for it is uniformly employed metaphorically, and by figure. The more strongly we speak, indeed, concerning God, the more material become our figures and our metaphors. We say that God rides on the whirlwind; that he measures the sea in the hollow of his hand; that he makes bare his arm against the wicked. All which are clearly metaphors, derived from human nature. We even say that God is angry with the wicked; that iniquity grieves his spirit; that he loves the good; that he hates sin; that his wrath is upon the children of disobedience; all which are clearly metaphors taken from the passions of men ;-but this is as far from proving that God is influenced by wrath, hatred, grief, and other human passions as that he is fashioned like a man, with a human body and human members. In the same figurative way St. Paul speaks of a spiritual body: if the expression be literally taken, it is inconceivable; as a metaphor, it is easily understood. Every body knows how greatly Milton failed, in trying to reconcile our notions of spirit with our notions of body. We give one extract. In speaking on the attack on Satan by Michael, he says, his sword