us, which often generates a restless desire in the mind to gain information concerning the causes and origin of those things perceived by them; now this is the result of thought, and thought is no body, and though the thinking essence inhabits a body, yet we cannot help feeling that our thoughts are an attribute of an immaterial substance. Thought, discursive and excursive thought, that is not confined to the contemplation of the things of earth, things that are immediately about us, but can elevate itself to heaven, and the heavenly bodies, not only to those of our own system, but can take flights beyond the bounds of time and space, and enter into the Holy of Holies, and contemplate Him who sitteth upon the cherubim, the throne of his Deity. Thought, that not only beholds things present, however distant and removed from sense, but can contemplate the days of old and the years of many generations, can carry us back to hail with the angelic choirs, the birth-day of nature and of the world that we inhabit; or looking into the abyss of futurity, can anticipate the termination of our present mixed scenechequered with light and darkness, good and evil-and the beginning of that eternal sabbath which remaineth for the people of God in the heavenly kingdom of Christ thought that can not only take these flights, and exercise herself in these heavenly musings; but accompanied as she is, in our favoured race, with the gift of speech can reason upon them with a fellow mind, and by such discussion often elicit sparks of truth, that may be useful to enlighten mankind. Who can believe that such a faculty, so divine and god-like and spiritual, can be the mere result of organization? That any juxta-position of material molecules, of whatever nature, from whatever source derived, in whatever order and form arranged, and wherever placed, could generate thought, and reflexion, and reasoning powers; could acquire and store up ideas and notions as well concerning metaphysical as physical essences may as safely be pronounced impossible, as that matter and spirit should be homogeneous. Though the intellectual part acts by the brain and nerves, yet the brain and nerves, however ample, however developed, are not the intellect, nor an intellectual substance, but only its instrument, fitted for the passage of the prime messenger of the soul, the nervous fluid or power, to every motive organ. It is a substance calculated to convey instantaneously that subtile agent, by which spirit can act upon body, wherever the soul bids it to go and enables it to act. When death separates the intellectual and spiritual from the material part, the introduction of a fluid homogeneous with the nervous, or related to it by a galvanic battery can put the nerves in action, lift the eye-lids, move the limbs, but though the action of the intellectual part may thus be imitated, in newly deceased persons, still there are no signs of returning intelligence; there is no life, no voluntary action, not a trace of the spiritual agent that has been summoned from its dwelling. Whence it follows, that though the organization is that by which the intellectual and governing power manifests its presence and inhabitation, still it is evidently something distinct from and independent of it. Mr. Lyell has so fully considered that part of Lamarck's hypothesis which relates particularly to the transmutation of species, and so satisfactorily proved their general stability, that it is unnecessary for me to enter more particularly into that subject, I must therefore refer the reader to that portion of his work.' Let us lastly enquire, to whom or what, according to our author, God has given up the reins; whom he has appointed his viceroy in the government of the universe. Nature is the second power who sits on this viceregal throne, governing the physical universe, whom we should expect to be superior in intellect and power to angel and archangel-but no-he defines her to be-" An order of things composed of objects independent of matter, which are determined by the observation of bodies, and the whole amount of which constitutes a power unalterable in its essence, governed in all its acts, and constantly acting upon all parts of the physical universe.”2 And again, Nature he affirms consists of non-physical objects, which are neither beings, nor bodies, nor matter. It is composed of motion; of laws of every description; and has perpetually at its disposal space and time.3 With respect to the agency of this vice 1 Principles of Geology, ii. c. 1, 2. 2 N. Dict. D'Hist. Nat. xxii. Art. Nature, 377. 3 Ibid. gerent of Deity, he observes that Nature is a blind power without intelligence which acts necessarily. That matter is her sole domain, of which however she can neither create nor destroy a single atom, though she modifies it continually in every way and under every form, and causes the existence of all bodies of which matter is essentially the base ;and that in our globe it is she that has immediately given existence to vegetables, to animals, as well as to other bodies that are there to be met with.2 From these statements, though he appears to admit the existence of a Deity, and that he is the primary author of all things, yet he considers him as having delegated his power to nature as his vicegerent, to whose disposal he has left all material subsistences, and who, according to him, is the real creator of all the forms and beings that exist, and who maintains the physical universe in its present state. It is not quite clear what opinion he held with respect to the creation of matter, as he no where expressly ascribes it to God; though, since he excludes nature from it, we 1 N. Dict. D'Hist. Nat. xxii. Art. Nature, 364. |