as of everlasting reward, is afforded us, not by the light of pure reason, but by the infallible testimony of Holy Writ.9 However, that there is congruity. in such unending punishment is seen when we reflect upon the infinite majesty and goodness of the Person offended, and the infinite claims He possesses over His creatures. The rebellion and ingratitude of a subject against such a Lord, constituting an offence under a certain aspect infinite, is not unfittingly punished by a penalty finite in intensity, but unlimited in duration.

OBJECTIONS ADVANCED AGAINST THE DOCTRINE OF A Future Life. The leading difficulties urged against Immortality are those based on the intimate dependence of the soul upon the body. As we have already solved these, we refer our readers back to our previous answers. We will here briefly examine some of the remaining objections.

1. Although the soul may be devoid of extensive quantity, yet it possesses intensive quantity, viz., a plurality of forces or faculties of different grades, but these may gradually diminish in activity, and so the soul would ultimately perish. Such in substance is an objection elaborated by Kant. We may answer, that even were the possibility of such a natural decay of the soul allowed, it would in most cases have to take place during the course of a future life, and so our primary contention for the fact of such an existence stands. The soul, however, does not possess an intensive quantity of the kind implied. It is not formed of

The student is sometimes disappointed on learning that we cannot demonstrate from reason alone the Immortality of the soul in the strict sense of the term. When, however, he remembers that we can prove the existence of a future life for at least some time, his anxiety and regret ought to disappear. The vital philosophical problem is: Does the Human Mind perish with the body? Few thinkers who once admit that it does not so perish find much difficulty in the doctrine of complete Immortality.

superimposed layers, nor of really distinct forces. It is merely one indivisible being, capable of energizing and being effected in various ways; consequently, it is not liable to dissolution in the manner imagined. Its faculties are not superadded agents, but essential properties of its nature. Since, therefore, its nature is incorruptible, its intellect and will cannot be destroyed. Moreover, it is absurd to suppose that God, even were it possible, would continue the soul in being devoid of all action.

2. A disembodied spirit, it is affirmed, cannot be pictured by the imagination. "A spirit without a body," Büchner assures us, "is as unimaginable as electricity or magnetism without metallic or other substances." Science also refutes our doctrine. "Physiology," says Vogt, "decides definitely and categorically against individual immortality, as against any special existence of the soul." Again Büchner: "Experience and daily observation teaches us that the spirit perishes with its material substratum." To remarks of this sort we may reply that (a) as far as imagination goes we cannot picture the soul with the body. Neither can we imagine God, nor the ultimate atoms of matter. (b) The comparison of the soul to bodiless electricity is a complete misrepresentation of our knowledge of mind. Electricity and magnetism, as we have already pointed out, are presented to us only through sensible movements, whilst we have an immediate consciousness of the simple nature of mental energy. (c) Vogt's assertion is simply as false as his other dictum, borrowed from Cabanis, that "thought is a secretion of the brain." Physiology can say nothing more than that the action of the soul during this life is affected by the condition of the brain. (d) The final statement cited from Büchner is equally untrue. We most certainly cannot observe or experience the death of the soul; and we trust our arugments have shown that we may infer the contrary.

3. "The soul is born with the body, it grows and decays with the body, therefore it perishes with the body."10 Modern science has added very little to the 10 Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, Lib. III. vv. 446, seq.

argument stated with so much power by the Latin poet. Now, we have repeatedly pointed out that in the Scholastic system the human soul is extrinsically. dependent on the body which it informs. Such a

condition would completely account for all the correspondence observed, whilst intrinsic or essential independence remains. The soul, however, as will be proved in a later chapter, is created, not derived, like the body, from the parents. It does not grow in the sense of being quantitatively increased, but, conditioned by the efficiency of the brain and sensory organs, it gradually unfolds its capabilities. It does not really decay with bodily disease, although since its sensuous operations are immediately dependent on the instrumentality of the organism, it must naturally be affected by the health of the latter. The argument can also be inverted. In many instances the mind is most powerful and active in the decrepit frame of the old, and at times, in spite of dreadful havoc from bodily disease, intelligence may survive in brilliant force to the last.11 Even Physiological science, taken without any reference to Psychology, is very far from pronouncing in favour of Materialism, whilst the science of mind, as we have shown, renders such a verdict impossible.

4. The activity of the intellect, it is objected, is conditioned by that of imagination and the external senses-organic faculties. Therefore, since the latter are extinguished at death, so must be the former. That

11 That the subject of the states of consciousness is a real being, standing in certain relations to the material beings which compose the substance of the brain, is a conclusion warranted by all the facts. That the modes of its activity are correlated under law with the activities of the brain-substance is a statement which Physiological Psychology confirms: one upon which, indeed, it is largely based. . . . All physical science, however, is based upon the assumption that real beings may have an existence such as is sometimes called independent,' and yet be correlated to each other under known or discoverable laws. If this assumption could not be made and verified, all the modern atomic theory would stand for nothing but a vain show of abstractions. Upon what grounds of reason or courtesywe may inquire at this point-does Materialism decline to admit the validity of similar assumptions as demanded by mental phenomena ?” (Ladd, Physiological Psychology, p. 607.)

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intellectual activity is extrinsically conditioned by the sensuous powers whilst the soul informs the body, is allowed; that the intellect is so conditioned when the soul is separate, is denied. And we have proved that the soul must be capable of experiencing reward and punishment after death. As regards the inferior faculties themselves, it is held that during the state of separation they are only retained radically or potentially by the soul, in such fashion that they cannot be awakened into life until reunion with the body.

5. Against the argument from the desire of happiness, it is urged: (a) That many natural desires are vain, e.g., man's longing for health, wealth, &c., the love of life in the brute, and the like. (b) That this desire will at all events be vain in lost souls. Premising that our chief argument is that from the moral law, it may be answered: (a) That the desire of happiness is distinct in kind from the impulses with which it is here compared. It is universal and necessary. It is the great rational tendency which manifests the end of man as a human being. The other impulses that can be cited, however, are all particular appetites towards some special form of happiness. No one of them is necessary, or an inevitable outcome of man's nature. Even the instinct of self-preservation is but a special form of the desire for happiness, and sometimes disappears, when the mind is convinced that happiness is to be gained, or misery avoided, by death. As regards the instincts of the lower races of animals, in the first place, they do in great part attain their end; and secondly, they cannot properly be compared with the rational desire of man. The brute has not an intelligent apprehension of what is meant by a continued existence. Consequently, though it is impelled to avoid pain or destruction, it cannot be said to desire immortality. Brute existence may attain its end though all the lower animals die, whilst if this all comprehensive desire in man is doomed to universal disappointment, it must be held that in the highest order of being upon the earth there is an enormous failure, anything like which is not to be discovered elsewhere in the universe. (b) The desire is undoubtedly frustrated in the lost.

But this is done freely by themselves, and the very essence of their punishment consists in this frustration. Such a fact, however, does not militate against our argument. All men are designed by God for happiness, but conditionally on their own conduct; its loss then through their own fault argues no want of wisdom or goodness in Him.

6. The argument from universal belief is attacked on the ground that some peoples, and many individuals, both philosophers and non-philosophers, do not judge there is any future life. It may be observed in answer, that whenever the proof from universal consent is invoked, it only presupposes a moral universality. As regards the nations or tribes who have been asserted to believe in no future life, advancing knowledge does not confirm such a statement. The greatest care is required in interrogating savages regarding their religious opinions. Inaccuracy in this respect has often caused the ascription of atheism to tribes later on proved to possess elaborate systems of religions and hierarchies of gods. Future annihilation, asserted to be a cardinal doctrine of Buddhism, is by the vast majority of the disciples of that sect understood to be not a return to absolute nothing, but an ecstatic state of peaceful contemplation.

7. Against the congruity of the dogma of eternal punishment with the Justice of God, it is often asserted that there is no proportion between an eternal punishment and a transitory offence. Now, in the first place, it should be remembered that we do not hold the doctrine of everlasting punishment to be demonstrable on merely philosophical grounds. It rests on Revelation, and so requires the whole scheme of Redemption, and the work done by God for man to be accepted before a satisfactory justification of the doctrine can be adequately made out. Adhering, however, to strictly rational considerations, we may reply: That there is no proportion in duration between the offence and the punishment, any more than between ten years' imprisonment and an attempt on a sovereign's life-granted; that there is no proportion in harmony and fitness