truth, liberty, science, and trade? Not to the changeless roll of the sun, the never-varying return of the seasons, the gorgeous pilings of clouds, nor the steady ebb and flow of tides, but to the indomitable energy of mind. Mind employs the sunbeams as its artist, analyzes the properties of matter, measures the depth of the sea, reckons the height of the atmosphere, makes the electric fluid its servant, discovers the laws by which suns, moons, and stars, are kept in their orbits and prevented from running into confusion, commands the fire and water and rushing winds to do its will, predicts with unerring certainty the solar and lunar eclipses and the return of comets, and marches beyond the boundaries of suns and systems to the milky way, and brings back truthful intelligence of the existence of suns and stars where our sun and planets are invisible.

Let me, therefore, point out some of the distinctive elements of this wonderful thing-MIND.

1. Immateriality is a distinctive element of mind. Mind and matter make up the universe of existences. Some deny the existence of mind as distinct in its nature from matter. They maintain that mind is nothing more than organised matter. They deny the immaterial nature of the mind because they cannot see it, handle it, smell it, weigh it, measure it, and tread upon it, as they can earthly substances. The five senses have been summoned to bear their testimony against the existence of an immaterial substance. It has been asked by materialists, who ever saw, or heard, or touched, or smelt, or tasted an immaterial substance? It has been sarcastically asked by the same parties, what is the size, or shape, or form of an immaterial substance? To such inquiries we ask back again, what is pain? Is it thick or thin, big or little, round or square, liquid or solid? Pain, like mind, has no shape nor form. The eye cannot see it, the ear cannot hear it, the smell cannot inhale it, the hand cannot handle it, and the palate cannot taste it. All we know of the existence of pain is supplied by our consciousness. We feel pain, and although it has neither height nor depth, length nor breadth, hardness nor softness, shape nor form, we are conscious of its existence. So it is with mind; it is not cognisable by the eye, the ear, the hand, the smell, or the taste. We are conscious that we think, feel, compare, remember, judge, and will. We also know, from repeated experiments, that however minutely and carefully we analyze matter we can find no quality or property that can think, feel, compare, remember, judge, and will; hence, we naturally conclude that that which can do so must be distinct in nature from matter, and that something we designate mind. If mind and matter are one in nature, then stones and trees, soils and flowers, air and water, light and heat, gold and silver, must be able to think about themselves, to reflect upon and

look into their own natures, to feel love or hatred, to rejoice or mourn, to hope or fear, to remember the changes through which they have passed since they came into being. Hence, we might expect the rock occasionally to remonstrate with the quarryman when about to blow it up with powder, the tree to reason with the woodman on his folly to cut down with his axe such a beautiful thing, and the flower to cry out shame on the careless fool that crushes it in the dust; for if matter can think, feel, and reason, then every part of matter can do so; therefore, all the particles of iron, wood, silver, gold, coal, lime, water, air, and stones, are thinking, feeling, reasoning, rational, conscious, and voluntary things. All this may look absurd, but it must be as we represent it if thinking, feeling, and reasoning are properties of matter, and if mind is not distinct in nature from matter. The distinctions betwixt matter and mind are obvious. Mind is self-conscious, matter is not. Mind acts from itself, matter does not. Mind can examine matter, but matter is incapable of examining either itself or mind. The operations of matter are known to mind, but the operations of mind are never recognised by matter. Mind knows itself, its companions, and the faintest resemblance to itself. Matter knows nothing of itself or of anything else. Matter affects matter only. Stones have no sensations; but it is not because no effect is produced on them by the contact of other bodies, it is because they possess no mind to note their changes of temperature and the rud shocks to which they are exposed. Matter being unconscious it is devoid of feeling as well as thought; but mind gathers thought from matter, though matter is unable, consciously, to present thought to the mind. Though mind is thus intimately connected with matter, it never converses with matter. No sympathy exists between mind and matter, it takes note of the changes in matter, gathers instruction, and receives pain or pleasure from matter, but matter sympathises with matter only. Its elementary particles unconsciously act and react upon each other; hence, though the mind may thrill with emotion as we gaze on nature's beauties and sublimities, the eye, a material organ, partakes not of that mental enjoyment. And though the mind is pained when it looks upon disorder or misery, the eye suffers not. Hence there is no sympathy between matter and mind, notwithstanding the intimate connection between them. The mind, in its mental ecstacies or distresses, can so affect the material body which it inhabits as to waste it to a skeleton; but while the flesh is being consumed by the fire of the mind, the body is unconscious of the cause of its own decay, and can afford no sympathy to the mind.

2. Thought is a distinctive element of mind. Mountain cannot think about mountain, nor one rock think about the properties of another. Flowers cannot admire the beauties of flowers, nor one

star measure the distance of another star. But whatever affects the eye, the ear, the smell, the touch, and the taste, awakens thought in the mind. The mind listens in the ear, inhales in the smell, tastes in the palate, feels in the touch, and looks out through the eyes upon the vast and wide domain of the universe, to catch glimpses of the vast, the beautiful, the majestic, the sublime, and the wonderful. In the absence of mind, creation with all its wonders is a blank. The king of day comes out of his chamber and rejoices as a strong man to run a race, the queen of night walks forth in her silver plumage, the stars bedeck the skies like sparkling gems, the mountains lift up their heads and cleave the clouds, the flowers send forth their beauty and fragrance, the streams gurgle amongst the valleys; but without mind there is nothing to observe, compare, admire, and adore. Stones and soils, trees and plants, seas and continents, suns and systems, hills and dales, cannot think about nor comprehend each other. Mind alone can think, investigate, compare things that differ, and judge of their respective qualities. It is only mind that can discover worlds, measure their distances, weigh their component parts, and point out their paths. Mind breaks the silence of nature, and makes it vocal with intelligent praise. Mind uses up the vast materials of earth and heaven to raise its edifice of thought and reflection, as the builder uses stones, lime, and timber to raise his magnificent structure. Like the painter that steps on to some commanding eminence to sketch on his canvass the woods and rivers, the flocks and herds, the bridges and buildings, so the mind takes its stand in the midst of God's beautiful creation, and as hills and vales, forests and waters, pass before its gaze, it paints them in detail on the canvass of memory, and for its use and pleasure looks at them from time to time.

3. Feeling is a distinctive element of mind. You may take a stone, break it, throw it into the furnace and melt it, the woodman may cut down a tree and saw it to pieces, the lightning may strike a ship and split it from stem to stern, the foot of man may tread the flower till its fragrance fills the air, but in all these there is no feeling, for the stone, the tree, the ship, and the flower, feel nothing. But what can come in contact with mind without creating feeling? Mind quivers with sensibility; like a well-tuned instrument it has only to be touched, and it instantly vibrates with the sweetest joys or deepest sorrows, with the most poignant grief or the most exquisite pleasure. The mind is a fountain of feeling sealed up, and a word, a look, a sound, or a touch, instantly breaks the seal, and the copious floods of feeling will flow out in tears or smiles, gladness or grief. What a wondrous effect feeling has on the health and life. The mind will brood over its feeling till the face becomes pale, the flesh consumes on the bones, the appetite

fails, strength gives way, and the body droops like a withered flower into the grave. The mysterious hand-writing on the wall changed Belshazzar's countenance, and his thoughts troubled him, so that the joints of his loins were loosed, and his knees smote one against another. I need only name such words as gladness and sadness, pleasure and pain, hope and fear, joy and sorrow, and you instantly recal the feelings that have stirred your mind to its depths, and made your days pass along in sunshine or in gloom, in happiness or in misery. "Who can tell the melancholy and sadness the mind feels under the horrors of war and of famine, pestilence and bereavements, disappointments and losses?" And "who can describe its joys and pleasures under smiles, prosperity, abundance, and peace?" What exquisite happiness is felt from loving and being loved, and what misery attends hating and being hated. How important and necessary to our own and others happiness that our feelings should be good, kind, generous, benevolent, disinterested, and pure. Then we would be centres of attraction, drawing the destitute, the sorrowful, the forlorn, the discouraged, the lonely, and wretched to us, to feel the warmth of our sympathy.

4. Power of choice and action is another distinctive element. Mind is the only thing that acts from itself. The sun moves at the same speed and in the same path as it did when God first fixed his place in the heavens and set him in motion. The bird builds

it.

its nest and lays its eggs as it did the first year Adam was made. The horse when irritated will use his heels without inquiring whether he is about to strike his master or the wall. But man has power over his thoughts, feelings, and actions. He can fix his thoughts on truth or error, good or evil. He can put himself in the way of good or evil company. He can receive advice or reject He can learn wisdom from his failures, improve upon his past experience and plans, and cut out a new path of action for himself. He can either imitate the plans of others or make new ones for himself. The sea, the air, and the earth, act as they are acted upon; but man resists outward influences, and bends circumstances to his will. You would not proceed at law against a fox which enters the farmer's farm-yard and runs off with part of the poultry; but you would against a man who did so. Experience teaches you that mind makes you selfacting beings, that when you act you choose to do so, which means you may refuse to do so, unless some superior force to your own force you to act, then your freedom of action ceases. If a stone falls from a house-top and injures you, you do not think of blaming the stone; but if a man threw it you would blame him and have him punished. Hence the reason of all laws, moral, social, political. God has made laws to govern us, and demands obedience. To obey is happiness, to disobey is misery. When we

wish an animal to do differently to what it does we use the rod or the whip; but when we wish a man to do different we talk to him, try to persuade him by supplying motives to induce him to a new course of action. We may fine him, imprison him, but unless we can implant new principles of action he is the old man still. We advise, entreat and warn, for we know he is influenced by considerations bearing upon his interests, and upon his happiness or his misery, his losses or his gains.

5. Power to distinguish between right and wrong is another distinctive element of mind. The grand tribunal of conscience has its seat in the mind. A man may do wrong and hide it from others, but he cannot conceal it from conscience. He may deceive, defraud, or injure another man in his property or character, or take life by the dagger, the pistol, the gun, or by poison, without mortal eye or human law detecting him. But he is a law unto himself. Within, the judge has been seated examining the motives and passions that induced him to act, and he has been all the while either receiving happiness or misery from self-approval or self-condemnation; and this approval or disapproval becomes terrible for good or evil to him when he turns for a moment his eye to God, and thinks of the approval or disapproval of him who made him. His consciousness of good or evil is greatly affected by the opinions that his fellowmen form of his conduct. At times the mind will writhe under the deepest mental agony, while no eye sees or ear hears its groans and sighs, when it brings to remembrance crimes long since committed. How often the guilty wretch has been obliged to confess his guilt rather than bear the terrors of an accusing conscience. As the poet says, "Conscience makes cowards of us all." It is only mind that can thus act and feel. Hence man's conscious responsibility and obligation to law. He is made for law, and law is made for him. His purest delight is in obedience; his greatest miseries are in disobedience. Hence, truth can appeal, however depraved he becomes, to his sense of right and wrong. And there is always hope of his mental and moral improvement while there is conscience to appeal to. Gain that element of mind on your side and there is a friend in court to back and reiterate your appeals. This is the reason why masses of men the most unlikely to be reformed have been brought over to the side of virtue. They yield under the pressure of conscience to the moral influence of love and fear. And there can be no permanent improvement to any class of men unless we carry the approval of the moral sense with it.

6. The power of faith is another distinctive element of mind. It is an undeniable fact, that man believes some things and doubts or disbelieves others. This proves he has the capacity to believe. Without the capacity to believe he could no more believe than be could see without eyes, handle without hands, and walk without