and inanimate bodies; and on these facts I beg to offer an opinion to the world, founded on synthetical argument.

The cells in the brain may be compared to galvanic troughs, and as from these troughs electricity is excited by an acid, so, in the cells of the brain, we have an acid in the fluid which fills them, supplied by each breath we inspire from the oxygen of the atmosphere, capable of exciting the electric fluid, and acting on the nerves, as its conductors to the muscles, like the wires from the galvanic battery. That this fluid, whilst the body is in health and perfect organization, is always in abundance, and ready to produce whatever motions in the muscles an intelligent agent may will and direct, the power of the agent differing only in degree with the power of the Torpedo over the same fluid in repelling the attacks of its enemies. That this intelligent agent in man wills, and thinks, and embraces, in what is called imagination, the motions of

the spheres, and the immortality of his existence, and appears to be a portion of the great Immortal intelligence which pervades all space, but with a limited and confined power over the matter with which he is connected, and a progressively increasing command over nature, in proportion to the exertion and cultivation of his faculties.

To Christians, the idea of being animated by a portion of the spirit of God, cannot be discordant or displeasing. It is said in Scripture, "God breathed into man the breath of life." "There is one body and one spirit." "One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all." That by the cultivation of this spirit we become liberal, enlightened, and generous, feeling for our fellow-creatures, and imitating in our contracted sphere the beneficence and love of our Great Original. That, as 66 in heaven there are many mansions," every capacity, by the use of its talents, may have one-not in consequence

of opinions, but of actions, resulting from (enlightened religion) LOVE AND GRATI

TUDE TO GOD.

To Deists, the idea must appear rational, as there can be no effect, logically reasoning, without a cause, and that envy and avarice cannot proceed from the same source as liberality and generosity.

The atheists and bigots of all sects and denominations in religion, however, will agree in deprecating the principle I have been advocating. The atheist, who is generally a pretending philosopher, finds it more easy to doubt and assert than examine. He may acknowledge a favour, or the receipt of money, from a person at a distance whom he knew nothing previously about, without knowing how the person became possessed of the power of serving him, or the money he sent him, or who his father, grandfather, and great grandfather, had been; but he cannot feel admiration, love, or gratitude, to the great, good, and beneficent Father of the Universe, whose

blessings and favours he daily enjoys, because he cannot by possibility know how he became possessed of so much power, or who and what were his progenitors. It is not sufficient for him to know that there must be a cause, without understanding the nature of causation; and he might as well deny the existence of the sun, as deny the existence of a CAUSE which every examination into nature incontrovertibly demonstrates.

"I congratulate," says Voltaire, “the present age, on there being fewer atheists now than ever, philosophers having discovered that there is no vegetable without a germ, no germ without design, &c., and that corn is not produced by putrefaction. Some unphilosophical geometricians have rejected final causes; but they are admitted by all real philosophers; and to use the expression of a known author, 'A catechism makes God known to children, and Newton demonstrates him to the learned.'"-Some atheists, however, (in support of their opi

nions, which were produced from reflection in connexion with false premises, the result of education,) say, that if the being of a God is supposed from the mechanism and design evident in the formation of the world, that, from the same mode of reasoning, as He must be more wonderful than the world which he made, that He must have been formed by something more wonderful still, and so on, ad infinitum, arguing upon the principle of adaptation, from effects to causes. It will appear, however, upon a little reflection, that this argument, which has been considered incontrovertible, owes its origin and its strength to the opinion

THAT EVERYTHING WE SEE PROCEEDED

FROM GOD, and that as God was the cause, and the universe the effect, God must have been the effect of some other cause, and so on, from effect to cause without end, without ever reaching a first cause; and that, therefore, the argument of adaptation brings you no nearer the Deity than the goal from whence you started, and that you have

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