BRUTE ANIMALS HAVE MIND.

cipally on their employment in the government of God. We have reason to suppose that there are two kinds of immaterial existences which are united to material bodies in this world; I mean those which belong to brute animals, and those which are peculiar to the human race.

To deny that brute animals have souls, is virtually to allow that matter can think; and to put an argument into the mouths of materialists which it will not be easy to rescue from them. To ascribe all the actions of brutes to the principle which we call instinct, is to attempt a distinction between that principle and reason, where no essential difference can be pointed out; for the resemblance is so strong that it is impossible to say at what point instinct stops and reason begins. To deny that brutes think, that they possess powers of recollection, and that they have a variety of passions, would be to deny unquestionable facts. If matter can do all this, why not, under a more refined modification of it, do all that we discover in the human race? But when I allow that brute animals possess mind or spirit, I by no means grant that they are immortal:-no; for after all that has been said to demonstrate that spirit must in its own nature be immortal, I am convinced that the reasoning is inconclusive. While I conceive that there is a suitable adaptation to an immortal existence in the structure of mind, it appears to me that it is immortal because it is the will of God that it should be so. I am therefore of opinion that the souls of

MAN POSSESSES AN IMMATERIAL PRINCIPLE.

brute animals perish at death, whilst those of the human race exist for ever,-not because their nature is essentially different, but because God has decreed the destruction of the one, and the immortality of the other. This I imagine to be the legitimate basis on which immortality rests.

My object at present is, to describe the structure of the human soul. It is not intended to enter into a minute and metaphysical analysis of its nature; but only to consider it so far as it is illustrative of Divine Wisdom. The intelligence which is discoverable in the structure of the human mind, is indeed not so obvious as it is in the formation of organized matter; we cannot see the mechanism of its parts, nor their adaptation to a given end, so clearly; for it is difficult for us to turn our attention so forcibly upon our own minds as to give them such a kind of imaginary visibility to our perceptions, as to obtain accurate ideas of them. Yet it is probable that mind contains as great a discovery of wisdom as any other object of creative power whatever, of which we should be thoroughly convinced, if it could be examined in the same manner; but this is impossible from the nature of the thing.

That Man possesses a something besides, and really different from natter, can never be questioned, except by those whose minds are under the influence of a skepticism which leads them to doubt of the most certain truths. Whether the Creator could or could not give matter such a modification as to make

MATTER NOT CAPABLE OF THINKING.

it think, is not the question:-but have we any reason to suppose that he has done it?-I know but of two methods of answering this inquiry; the one is by appealing to our knowledge of matter, and the other is by referring to the testimony of divine revelation.

From our knowledge of the nature of matter, have we any reason to suppose that any part of it has been so modified or organized as to produce thought, a capacity of reasoning, recollection, and other effects, which we usually call mental? I am of opinion, that our present knowledge of matter will not justify us in saying that it does think. Hence, to maintain that matter thinks, without pointing out and demonstrating such qualities in matter, and such an arrangement of its particles as justify the conclusion that thought will be the effect, is begging the question, and is false reasoning in philosophy; for it furnishes a conclusion which there are no data to warrant. Such a mode of reasoning would not be allowed on any other philosophical or metaphysical subject. To assert it as true, merely from the POSSIBILITY of the thing, is a kind of presumption which cannot be admitted. The persons who have maintained this theory, from a conviction that the seat of reflection is the cranium, have asserted that the brain is that species of matter which thinks; but as the nervous system is of the same nature as the brain, taking its rise from it either in the cranium, or in the spinal marrow which is only an elongation of the brain down the vertebrae, extending over the

THE SOUL OF MAN IMMATERIAL.

whole animal frame,-why not think as well at our finger's-ends, or at our toes, as in the head? Besides, have any of the materialists ever attempted to demonstrate an organization in the brain, which we should at all suppose capable of producing thought as the effect of its operation? By no means. And yet, being determined to believe that there is nothing but matter in the human being-and as they can discover nothing but matter in the cranium, the seat of thought, therefore they infer that matter thinks,a kind of reasoning which, were it referred to any other subject, would be treated by these philosophers themselves as sophistical and illegitimate.

As our present attainments in philosophy, and our knowledge of matter, by no means enable us to prove that matter thinks, let us appeal to divine revelation as the only authority capable of affording a decision. If we place that confidence in the testimony of the Scriptures which is worthy of a divine revelation, our conviction will be complete. In multitudes of instances, this revelation speaks of soul, spirit, and mind, as existing in man. To quote these passages would be to crowd my pages with a string of Scriptures which must be in every one's memory who has read the oracles of God. But there are many other passages which are of a more decisive character, and speak of spirit, soul, and mind, as being of a nature different from body, and existing separate from it; as, for instance, Acts vii. 59. "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit."--Eccles. iii. 21.

SPIRIT ESSENTIALLY DIFFERENT FROM MATTER.

"Who knoweth the spirit of man?"-xii. 7. "The spirit shall return unto God who gave it."-Gen. ii. 7. "Jehovah breathed into man the breath of life, and man became a living 'soul." The apostle speaks of "spirit, soul, and body;"-of being "absent from the body, and present with the Lord."-What was it of Lazarus which angels carried to Abraham's bosom? not surely his body,-that died and was buried. It must have been his soul, or nothing. What was it in the thief which Christ promised should be with him that day in Paradise? not surely his body, for that died on the cross. "Fear not them which kill the body; but rather fear Him, who after he has killed the body, can cast both body and soul into hell." I might add many other testimonies equally clear and decisive. If these prove any thing at all, they prove that man is a compound being, constituted partly of body which is material, and partly of mind which is immaterial.

When I have demonstrated the immateriality of the human soul, I by no means conceive that I have proved its immortality. It no more follows that the soul of man is immortal, because it is immaterial, than that the souls of brutes are so, allowing them to be spiritual. To establish this, we must refer to other data; and the only data on which we can rely are such as are afforded by divine revelation. The ancient philosophers remained in a state of entire uncertainty on the subject; their various speculations and reasonings could carry them no higher than