"other that we cannot from present experience realize the

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possibility of the soul existing separate from the body." Now here the existence of the human mind or soul as an entity per se, apart from and opposed to a material organization, is confessedly a fact that transcends human consciousness. The conception of preter or supernatural existence is derived entirely from sacerdotal and metaphysical barren abstract speculation. Where it is that the Bible says that the human mind can exist apart from the body the lecturer sayeth not. In one sentence it is said that man can conceive the separate existence of mind and body, and in another it is gravely asserted that man cannot realize or feel, from natural evidence, any such preternatural monstrosity.

The lecture is thus continued,"The body has no life per se.

When the soul goes the

body ceases to live; but it does not follow that the soul ceascs to live, the soul is independent of the body.

"In present life, the body although only an instrument "does colour all the decisions, feelings, thoughts, and actions "of the soul. The body is so far the exponent of what the "mind thinks that the will resolves what the mind feels."

The priests assert that man is immortal because he thinks; thus postulating mind as a self-existent absolute entity. Man, say the priests, is immortal because he exists as the image of God, who in turn is hypothesized as a solitary uncaused immaterial mind, whose existence precludes the possibility of any other being but this mind. This, however, is plainly contradicted by the evidence of natural phenomena, which prove clearly that there must necessarily be two, not one, uncaused self-existence, and that the union of these two is essential for the generation of everything; which universe or whole of everything constitutes the phenomenal revelation of material nature known to mind, mental manifestations being in their turn only reflex actions, or reflections of phenomenal effects. Therefore the absolute separate existence of either primary, self-existent, uncaused parent, be it imponderable force or matter, cannot be revealed to the human mind. And man, as the offspring, by the interaction of two great primary un

POSTULATED IMMATERIALITY OF MIND.

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caused self-existences, must necessarily have a material as well as an immaterial constitution. But as he knows that on the side of his maternal parent he inherits incessant change and final death, he tries to ignore his maternal, and acknowledge only one paternal cause of mind, shutting out the possibility of any material self-existence of any kind. He makes his mother an existence designed out of nothing, fabricated too by an existence totally opposed to it in every way, so that a self-existence, that had nothing in common, or was actually opposed to another existence, designs, fabricates, creates, constructs, manufactures, this other existence out of itself, or out of nothing, and it is hard to say which hypothesis is the most outrageously absurd or revolting to healthy, logical, and natural sense.

Deity, as a self-existent, immaterial breath, never was revealed to any man, and such revelation is absolutely impossible, for to demonstrate such an existence it would be necessary first to destroy another self-existence, that of matter. In the same way matter, as self-existence, is impossible to be revealed, for to make it, would necessitate the annihilation of imponderable force, by relation to which alone is it cognisable.

Then follows a curious comment upon the apostle Paul's declaration, that he found his own self-will, or inclination, antagonistic to the will of the eternal prepurposer. Paul says, that he found a law in his members, warring against that better nature or higher condition of being that he had inherited as an heir of the paternal estate of eternal life. The gloss or interpretation put upon this saying, is to the effect, that the apostle found a law in his arms, legs, and involuntary organs warring against his mind. If this rendering of the Greek text be strictly correct, than the apostle must have been a lusus naturæ or monstrosity, and, therefore, altogether out of the argu

ment.

At page 357 we are presented with a theological notion that for originality in conception, and absurdity in its relation to all known natural phenomena, is, beyond anything

yet discovered in this "Great Tribulation," astonishing and perplexing. The idea is this:

"It matters not where the body is deposited, for every atom "of its dust is in the keeping of the Son of God."

On the following page this singular theory is further discussed.

"It (the body) is raised not a spirit, but a spiritual body, "and yet it is the very dead dust, laid in the grave."

The lecturer will doubtless recollect the proverb, that every prophet or writer, instructed in the science of eternal life, called the kingdom of heaven, is like a householder who brings out of his stock, for the edification of admiring friends treasures that are both new and old. In this case, however, the goods handed out for inspection are very old clo' indeed, nothing more modern in fact than very ancient Egyptian sacerdotalisms.

The logical result of this extraordinary adaptation of Egyptianism to modern theology, is, as might have been foreseen, as difficult to comprehend as it is outrageous in conception. For speaking of this dead body of dust, we are told that, "every atom" is in keeping of Christ (Jesus of Nazareth?)" as closely watched, as thoroughly taken care "of, as if it were already glorified."

This is something new certainly, but it wants reliable and incontestible evidence to substantiate the positive truth of it. At page 370 the unlearned are requested to take note, that the author's philological studies have enabled him to come to the conclusion that the word "resurrection" being a compound one, derived from the two words, re and surgo, means literally, "rising again." The following exegesis on the resurrection is then attempted.

"If the bodies of all believers are not raised, but NEW "bodies are CREATED, then the language is misapplied; it "would not be a resurrection, it would be a new creation

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(theological creation?) It is no mystery at all to give us "new bodies, but it is a mystery that our dead bodies should "be quickened with new life. All science leads us to the "conclusion; that the resurrection is possible, nothing is "annihilated, only changed."

HYPOTHESES OF MAN'S REGENERATION.

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What science teaches this metaphysical mysticism? It happens, most unfortunately for sacerdotalism, that the change of condition alluded to above involves the final annihilation of man, as he exists under present conditional arrangements. The word creation, in theology, means construction of everything out of nothing. In science, creation means generation, and requires two self-existences to originate the flux of organic life in nature. Regeneration in theology means recreation, in science it means a second birth, or that birth from the womb of material process or gestation, that confines man within the limits of certain conditions analogous to fœtal life.

The modern theories of regeneration are in all respects the same as the one of old, taught by the Jewish Rabbis in the days of Nicodemus, which meant washing an immaterial spirit from the stain or defilement of original sin, with which the soul was infected as an hereditary disease or taint from Adam's transgression.

But Adam's breach cannot affect man in the theological sense ascribed. Its effect was to deprive man, for the time, of the mediatorial and connecting link between man and Deity, and until the broken link was restored by another personal mediator, there was no representative of the eternal Father in the Son of Man, to quicken by his vitality the other children predestined to share the same estate of eternal life.

It is contended that the analogies of the butterfly emerging from the chrysalis, and of seeds shooting up from the ground, are not correct illustrations of man's relation to that elevated material condition that is necessary for immortal life. Granted; they are defective, and the only incontestable evidence is by revelation of living representatives of the eternal in man himself. This is the revelation of God in the Bible, and no other, and there is not an instance recorded where any other revelation has been given, save in that dual form of existence that is constituted by the union. of two self-existent entities in one personality; the personality of the Son, which sonship is in man himself. Moses' shell of dust was found, but the living man, both body and

Q

spirit was revealed as one existence at a subsequent period. Every natural condition of existence is distorted by the ingenuity of immaterial speculators, who, by confounding the merely phenomenal mind of man with the great selfexistence power of Deity, have led their pupils into a labyrinth of blind alleys that deranges their minds in the effort to thread its metaphysical mazes.

The only safe issue out of this interminable debate, is to leave the proofs of immortality to reliable material evidences, which we may rest assured will be forthcoming in due and appointed time, if men will patiently submit to study those conditions of life that are given for their education and advancement here.

At page 373, the reader is presented with the following most extraordinary explanation of the apostle Paul's statement in the third chapter of his letter to the Philippians, where he speaks, in the second verse, "If by any means I "might ATTAIN to the resurrection of the dead."

Dr. Cumming asserts that the language of the apostle is very emphatic and peculiar, and he asks, "Why, how could "he escape it?" This is richly instructive. The apostle hopes that he may by any means attain to the resurrection of the dead, and this modern prophet says, why, how could he escape it?

"❝tion of the dead?'

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"We have just heard, (that is from theologians,) that all "rise, the just and the unjust. The greatest criminal and "the greatest saint shall equally rise from the dead in resur"rection bodies. Then what does the apostle mean when "he says, "If by any means I might attain to the resurrecThe only way in which we (theologians?) can explain it, (that is, explain it away?) is by "the supposition, or rather by the historical statement, "-impugned by some, but I think unequivocally established by others that the resurrection, while it is of the just "and unjust, yet implies an interval between the resurrec"tion of the just, and the resurrection of the unjust. In "other words it can only be explained (away ?) I conceive by admitting, what I cannot escape on impartial reading

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