that coat, is only to say, that his coat will put on his coat; which is absurd. Therefore, to say, We shall be clothed with a glorious body, is to affirm that "WE" are something separate from that body; i. e. spirits.

It has been likewise objected, that the case of persons recovered from drowning, whose faculties were suspended for half an hour without consciousness, seems to favour the long insensibility of the soul. Nor was it necessary to travel so -far for this remark, since every night that we lay down our heads upon our pillows, the same temporary unconsciousness takes place. There is nothing to prevent the soul's repose, while it is weighed down by its earthly tabernacle; yet it often, in the midst of that repose, breaks forth into a flight of imagination and thought, which evinces its independence on the corporeal functions; and proves that its nature is not lethargy, but springiness and activity. But it is a poor analogy from such instances to the condition of man when the dissolution of his frame hath taken place. The spirit, set free from the burden of its earthly covering, will be entirely disenchained from the infirmities of that investment. "And they rest not day nor night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come."

But in the objection now stated, the main error consists in supposing, that the individuals

recovered from drowning were recovered from a state of death; whereas, they were only apparently in that state. The spark of life was not extinct: they had not passed the barrier which separates this world from the next. We might apply to them the language of our Saviour, "The damsel is not dead, but sleepeth." They were not in the state in which they would have been, had the death been entire. It is, therefore, not from them, but from our Lord alone, that we are to gather the secrets of the unknown world, or the history of our own spirits, when they shall have thrid the portals of the tomb. And we know that, even during the three short days of his entombment, HIS soul was not asleep, but travelling into the world of spirits.

What comfort, to the survivors of the dead in the Lord, to know that the souls of these loved friends are not now sleeping in the cold grave, but awake, and awake for ever, to the perception of ineffable felicity! What comfort to know that they are about our path and about our bed, to cheer our solitary moments, to rejoice over our successes, to sympathize with our griefs, to mourn for our losses, and to tremble amidst our dangers! What joy to hope, that, when our own last hour shall arrive, some one of that invisible globe and army of ministering spirits will be near; and that we may sustain

that fearful crisis, by listening to the whisper: Rejoice for thy passing knell; it rings and welcomes thee into life. There is but one short step from the dismal confines of earth to the threshold of happiness and of heaven. In a few moments, souls, sometime dissevered, will know the purest intercourse of unembodied existences. They will blend and mingle into one "To-day thou shalt be with me in Paradise."

In contending against Socinians, all the arguments in favour of an intermediate state, elucidate, by a reflex light, the doctrine of the soul's immateriality; for, if such a state be proved, then, since the body perishes at death, and is not rejoined to the soul, or resuscitated, till the resurrection, the intermediate state must needs be a mansion of conscious unembodied spirits*.

With the doctrine of materialism is likewise inseparably connected the principle of philosophical necessity. Thus, by a strange coincidence, Calvinism and Socinianism touch each other: as if every religious error should confound itself in its consequences. Calvinism is religious necessity; and necessity, philosophical Calvinism. It

Paine ridiculed St. Paul as a fool, for saying, the grain is not quickened except it die: though St. Paul only meant an allusion to its being put, like a dead body, in the earth. But Paine was the greater fool, in resting his hopes of futurity exclusively on the conversion of a worm to a butterfly; for the worm did not die first.

is impossible to be a materialist without being a necessarian; for mechanism is the inevitable

consequence of materialism. Organization is obedient to external impulses, and matter has no volition. If materialism be true; if medullary substance thinks; if the faculties be modes of the action of organic matter; it follows, that every physical change in the bodily organs, must necessarily and inevitably drag the servile intellect after it. Even the choice of applying certain causes of these physical changes (ardent spirits, for example), is, under this supposition, denied. For that power is in the mind subservient to its physical lord and master; and hence, option is overruled by temperament, and man is the slave exclusively of climate, blood, nerves, and external stimuli; without one independent internal effort to burst these ignoble bonds. Every accumulation of these physical influences serves only to brutalize the subject intellect more and more; and all hope, all chance, all possibility of the strong man's rising to shake 'off, in any case, the thousand cords which bind him, is utterly at an end. Now, here, as in Calvinism, all persuasions, all exhortations to virtue, to melioration, to redintegration of mind, all that recommends what is pure; that deprecates what is base; all that speaks to hope and fear, and honour and shame, is not only unavailing, but absolute nonsense,

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-If definite circumstances produce definite conduct, where is the praise of a good action, or the demerit of a bad one? Virtue and vice are names without a meaning. A fair analogy is opened from the natural to the intellectual world; and the soul, the moral principle, like the life of man, is as clay in the hands of the potter. But every such analogy is a fruitful source of error; by excluding spontaneousness, the distinctive feature of intellect, and the only ground of moral responsibility. Now, as our argument is with professors of revealed religion, our whole case might be rested on a production of the Bible, a reference to all its parts and all its passages; to its promises, its denunciations; its exhortations to duty; its calls to repentance; its praises of holiness; its assignment of rewards to obedience: all supposing a certain liberty in man, and all unintelligible, if he be driven by invincible necessity. Here the Socinian has not merely to apply his scissars to a few scattered paragraphs, but to obliterate the whole volume in a patent mincing machine, We might further refer to the moral attributes of the Almighty, and demand, whether his, goodness would be the cause of sin; whether his justice would punish where the transgression could not be avoided; whether his wisdom would first create man a creature of irresistible impulses, and then punish or reward