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does the objector assert that brain and intellect are identical, and yet that the brain is made up of two distinct parts, each fully capable of performing all the functions usually attributed to mind? then must he admit that the person who has both these parts-that is, has a whole. brain-possesses two minds! Such are some of the absurdities into which men fall when, refusing the revelation from God, which only can solve the problem and the mystery of human life, they attempt to carve out for themselves something more congenial to their own pride and self-complacency than the simple yet sublime philosophy of the Bible.

VI. THE CONSCIOUS INDIVIDUALITY OF SPIRIT DEMONSTRATES THAT IT IS NOT A FUNCTION OF MATTER.

No department of our knowledge is more positive than that which is founded in individual consciousness. Indeed, take away or even invalidate the authority of consciousness, and you undermine the foundations of all knowledge.

Nothing that is certain will remain. But the very idea of consciousness is that it is not a function of matter. "I appeal to the consciousness of every individual that he feels a power within him totally distinct from any function of the body. What other conception than this can he form of that power by which he recalls the past and provides for the future; by which he ranges, uncontrolled, from world to world, and from system to system; surveys the works of all-creating power, and rises to the contemplation of the eternal Cause?

"To what function of matter shall he liken that principle by which he loves and fears, joys and sorrows; by which he is elated by hope, excited by enthusiasm, or sunk into the horrors of despair? These changes, also, he feels, in

many instances, to be equally independent of impressions. from without, and of the condition of his bodily frame. In the most peaceful state of every corporeal function, passion, remorse, or anguish may rage within! And, on the other hand, while the body is racked with the most frightful diseases, the mind may repose in all the tranquillity of hope." We pause here to inquire, What do all these things teach? Evidently that "there is a spirit in man."

VII. THE FAILURE OF ANY MATERIAL AND CHEMICAL COMBINATION TO PRODUCE LIFE IS FURTHER EVIDENCE THAT MIND IS NOT A FUNCTION OF MATTER.

It might be reasonably expected that if life was a mere function of matter, somewhere in the history of human observation instances of its spontaneous and original production would have occurred. Science records no such

instance, and, indeed, is compelled to acknowledge its failure to produce life by any combination of merely material elements. Nay, it is compelled to go further, and, from its best lights, confess that it has found life no where without evidence of its antecedent germ. This is predicated of life even in its lowest forms. How much more certain, then, the failure of every such experiment to produce the higher manifestations of soul or spirit!

The science of chemistry has succeeded in analyzing man's physical nature and ascertaining its composition. It has discovered the elements and the proportions in which each is mixed to form the various parts of the body. It can compound these elements again, but man it has not formed and can not form; nor can it, by even the most refined and delicate process, create the smallest organic existence and impart to it animal life.

Abercrombie's Intellectual Powers.

In this direction the experiments of philosophy and all its research have been utterly fruitless. Who can snatch from the altar of the living God the Promethean fire that breathes life and animation into the inanimate clod of clay? Let foolhardy infidelity blush at its empty boasting, and cease its clamorous self-applause, till it has solved the mysterious, awful problem-"What is life?"

VIII. THE STATE OF THE MIND IN DYING ALSO AFFORDS PROOF OF THE SOUL'S SUPERIOR AND INDEPENDENT BEING.

We have already noticed that, often when the body is in the last stages of weakness and decay, the mind is left in full possession of its intellectual and spiritual force. This of itself is a proof of man's spiritual and immortal nature. But our attention here is directed to another point. We have carefully studied the state of the mind in dying by actual observation and intercourse with persons up almost to the last moment of earthly being, and we have uniformly found that instead of any consciousness or expectation of the soul's being actually extinguished, the expectation of its living on was as strong and as invincible as in the morning flush of life and health. The dying and decay of the body are expected events; the premonitions of physical death are calmly observed and conversed upon freely. Yet the idea that the soul is going out of existence never once seems to be entertained. Thus, in the very act of dying. the soul asserts its claim to an independent spiritual being, and snatches from the jaws of death the proofs of its immortality.

Let us notice a few cases in point. The Rev. Alanson Reed, who had been wasting away with consumption several years, said to me, only a half-hour before his last breath,

"I know full well that I am at the point of death, but the idea of the spirit being extinguished in death is utterly inconceivable. The soul is going forth, but it has no consciousness of dying; rather the consciousness of living on rises above every other feeling, and it is impossible for me to doubt." The soul seems to possess a sensation of vitality-correspondent to its nature. Thus Mr. Pope, when in a dying state, said, "I am so certain of the soul's being immortal, that I seem to feel it within me, as it were, by intuition." The celebrated Boerhaave contemplated the perceptible difference between his mind and his body, in his last illness, as being like a philosophical experiment to him, that his intellectual self would not perish with his bodily dissolution. The celebrated Haller, as death advanced to the mastery over his bodily system, could only measure its progress by keeping his fingers upon his own pulse. "The artery, my friend," said he at length, "ceases to beat," and almost instantly expired. The Rev. Mr. Halyburton, when dying, said to a brother minister, "I think my case is a pretty fair demonstration of the immortality of the soul. My bones are rising through my skin. This body is going away to corruption, and yet my intellectuals are so lively, that I can not perceive the least alteration or decay in them."

These and kindred facts are in harmony with the sublime idea that man possesses a "living soul." But they are utterly irreconcilable with the idea that the soul is a function of the material nature. An element that can thus remain unaffected by physical decay, that can triumph amid the very ruins of the material man, gives mysterious and wonderful demonstration that the roots of its being are not planted in material soil, but that it possesses a higher life.

IX. CONCLUDING SUGGESTIONS.

Germain to the points we have made and the principles we have sought to establish, are suggestions of deep, practical import. But our discussion has already been protracted so far, that we barely glance at a few of them.

1. The soul and the body are mutually adapted to each other. They are mutually adapted just as the telegraphic wire and the magnetic fluid. This does not imply sameness, or even similarity in nature, but simply that they aro adapted to co-work for the accomplishment of specific ends. The telegraphic wire and the magnetic fluid co-work for the transmission of knowledge to points far remote. The soul and the body are united for the production of humanity, with all its inconceivable relations to the universe and all the varied purposes of its being. For aught we know, the Creator might have invested any other kind of being with a soul as well as man. But had the soul been connected with the material mechanism of a beast or a bird, how limited in number, and how restricted in use, would have been the organs it could have controlled! But, in the human organism, what multitudes of parts, and what diversity of limbs and organs wait to do the bidding of the soul! We can scarcely doubt that the human body was formed with special reference to the soul by which it was to be inhabited and controlled.

2. It is obvious, also, that man was a special device of the Creator. He is unlike any other being upon the globe. The worlds that people the amplitude of space are no doubt the abodes of life. But their analogies are so remote to ours; their differences in structure, motions, temperature, and surrounding fluid are so great that their peopling must be by something very different from human

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