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the powers of gravity and heat, which, by their operation on matter, give rise to such different phenomena. The rule in philosophy is, to refer similar phenomena to the operation of the same power; and different phenomena to that of different powers. As a single illustration of what we have been here stating, on looking into Mr David Hume's essays, with the view of ascertaining his sentiments concerning human experience being a test of the truth of phenomena, we light upon such a nonsensical expression as "the fabric and constitution of the human mind." Where did Mr Hume learn that the human mind had a fabric or a constitution? Such an expression is utterly unwor thy of any man who has the slightest pretension to the character of a philosopher. In what year of the world was such a thing seen? Is the anatomy of the human mind registered in the chronicles of human observation or experience? No. It is an idle coinage of the brain of him, who clothed the witnesses of God in sackcloth and ashes, and pointed them out as liars to the world with a finger of scorn. In the annals of the pagan historian the miracles of Christianity are recorded; but what chronicle, either sacred or profane, tells of the "fabric and constitution of the human mind" having been either seen or felt? The real truth is, that in the nomenclature of Mr Hume, the word "mind" should have had no place. What would be said of the philosopher in physics, who should give a name to the combination of the two powers of heat and chemical affinity, because their joint action was employed to produce two different phenomena, with the view of accomplishing a certain end, and who should talk of that name as a real entity? Such men as Mr Hume would fain persuade the world that they have attained to conclusions by their own unassisted reasoning, which they have unwittingly derived from the revelation of Heaven.

Those powers, however, which, by their operation through certain different organs in his cerebro-spinal system of nerves, give rise to perception and thought in man, act by an intelligence of which he is utterly unconscious. He who operates a certain effect through the instrumentality of a machine, if he be ignorant of the structure and design of its several parts, knows at least the manner in which it is set in action; but man, when he perceives, and thinks, and moves, knows not even the locality, far less the structure and design, of his material organs of perception, thought, and loco-motion within him; and cannot, therefore, call these latter into action. With as much justice might a man say that he had fabricated an article of elaborate design, because he had the power of setting in motion at will the complicated machinery by which it was wrought, but which he had neither invented, seen, nor understood; as he could say, that, of his own power and knowledge, he could recall at will before the eye of his conscience the pictured story of yesterday, which the pencil of vision had traced upon the tablet of his memory. This is an operation of an intelligent cause upon matter in an unknown way, by which an effect is produced altogether beyond the knowledge and powers of man to accomplish. We add farther-without the operation in him of an intellect foreign to and higher than his own, man cannot even bend his fore-finger. Phy

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siology informs us, that before that simple act can be accomplished, a quantity of a subtile fluid must be developed in a certain part of the brain, and transmitted along particular nervous fibrillæ, destined, from their very origin, to be ramified upon the muscles of the little member to be moved, and which fibrillæ are bound up in their course into a bundle, alongst with a number of others distributed to other parts. Now, how or where that nervous fluid or aura is developed in the brain, and what is the origin and course of those nervous fibrilla, alongst which only it must pass to contract the muscles of the finger to be bended, man knows not. He is merely conscious of willing the deed, and, as quick as thought, it is done; but done by a power pos sessed of a knowledge of the structure and uses of the several parts of his body inconceivably surpassing human. Should it be urged that it is the human mind, whose intelligence operates perception, thought, and loco-motion in man; then we must reply, that the mind is possessed of knowledge, of which man is utterly unconscious. But again we do maintain, that to philosophy, without the light of divine revelation, the human mind should not be considered an entity; nor even, like gravity, a specific power; and that every argument, which goes to prove a mind or soul in man, goes to prove the same in the brute creation, as the intellectual agent by which their perceptions, thoughts, and motions are operated. Do not the actions of the sagacious elephant display in him, the operation of an intelligence altogether as high as those of an idiot in him?

Is it not clear, then, that man cannot exist independently and of himself, whose functions are carried on, and whose faculties operate, by some other intelligence than his own; and when the cause of his life, the circulation of the blood through his organs, is maintained by some power over which he has no control? Should it be inquired, how we come to ascertain that the powers of perception and of thought are capable of operating only through material organs, with a material fluid circulating through them; we answer, by the only method by which we can attain to the knowledge of any thing without divine revelation—that is, by observation through the instrumentality of our perceptive faculties and organs. Could memory, for example, be effected by a power capable of operating without a material organ, with a material fluid circulating through it; then the action of that power should neither be disordered, nor rendered entirely inefficient, by disorganization of any part of the brain where the organ of memory is placed, nor by disorder or deficiency of the capillary circulation of such organ. Yet what is the fact? In apoplexy or palsy, where memory is so far lost, that the patient's own name in some cases, and in others those of the letters of the alphabet, are forgotten, how often, after death, do we find some parts of the brain disorganized. In syncope and asphyxia too, when the circulation through the head, as well as other parts of the body, is either very deficient, or altogether suspended, do we not find that the power which operates memory through its material organs is altogether ineffective? A patient in one of the Parisian hospitals alternately lost and recovered the memory of past

events, as Richerand the physiologist pressed down his finger upon, or removed it from, a moveable piece of the man's fractured skull. A man, too, recovered the remembrance of the events of his past life, of which he had been unconscious for upwards of a year, by being trephined by the elder Cline in St Thomas's Hospital. Every body knows also, that when the brain is insufficiently supplied with blood, either from great losses of that fluid, or other evacuations, or from long want of nourishment, the faculty of memory, as well as every other, is greatly impaired or disordered. Even consciousness, which takes cognizance of all the other faculties, is utterly inefficient, when the structure of certain parts of the brain is destroyed, or when its circulation is impeded by pressure, or deficient or suspended, as in syncope or asphyxia: shewing most incontrovertibly, that that master faculty, too, depends for its efficient operation upon a material organ for who in asphyxia was ever conscious of perception, thought, or motion? Strange it is certainly, but not more strange than true, that the nervous system of man should be a material laboratory of perception and thought. It is impossible, indeed, for us to tell how this can be. It is rendered highly probable, however, from several considerations, that at every act of perception and thought, a certain stimulus is imparted to the organs of these within the brain, by means of which a greater quantity of red blood enters their capillary vessels: for we find that memory, as well as every other faculty of thought, is greatly improved by exercise, which we can scarcely conceive to happen, otherwise than by an invigoration of its organ in the manner we have just pointed out. The comparative superiority of the perceptive and thinking faculties of savage and of civilized man depends, perhaps, upon the greater developement and vigour of the organs of these respectively in each.

After what we have stated, how can any one think that the great intellectual cause, by which man lives, and moves, and has his being, can be regardless of the creatures which he has so fearfully and wonderfully made? Regardless of them it cannot be, seeing that by its intelligence they see, and hear, and think, and move. As infidels value their pretensions to the character of philosophers, let them cast away such foolish conceits from their minds, as lead them to imagine that the intellectual architect of animal life can be regardless of man. Does their philosophy not inform them, that that intelligence, by which all human perceptions, thoughts, and motions are operated, must needs know all these? How then, in the name of common sense, can it be regardless of them?-It cannot enter into the hearts of these men neither, it seems, to conceive, that, to serve some great purpose of his own in relation to the happiness of his creatures, or the display of his own high attributes, this great Intellect, whose agency in man they cannot deny, could unfold to the conscience of his creatures, either asleep or awake, a typical history of the acts of men, which he must know so well; and therefore they laugh to scorn the dreams and visions of the prophets, as the fanatic conceits of brain-sick superstition:—they might reflect, that in hallucinations of the senses, and seve

ral other diseases, ideas are present to consciousness in all the distinctness of reality, though no physical impression be made at the same time upon those parts of the material instruments of perception which lie without the brain, to produce them. Medical science will inform them, that such disordered ideas very often arise from an excessive or deficient supply of blood, giving rise to irritation in those parts of the material apparatuses of perception which lie within the brain. Now, are such men prepared to affirm, that it is impossible for the intellect which made man, and constructed his organs of perception, and by whose intelligence these organs are wrought to produce their effects,

to cause such a physical condition in them, as to give rise to such ideas as we are here speaking of, or to any other that might suit his purpose, although no physical impression were made at the same time upon those parts of the organs of perception which lie without the brain, to produce these ideas in the ordinary manner? They perhaps will not be disposed to call in question a power of the creator of man, which affords the only feasible foundation for the speculative doubt of the Bishop of Cloyne regarding the non-existence of the material world --a favourite theme with some of them, and a doubt, which, perhaps, without the light of divine revelation, could never have entered into the mind of man-that God is intelligence and matter both—that the Almighty is All in All-making his creatures perceive whatever his infinite conception pleases to create.

The infidel world, too, think that those individuals of exalted life, whom we read of in the Bible as having visited this earth on errands of their Maker, are mere creations of man's disordered brain, or fictions of the fabler, which are utterly unworthy of a place on the pages of their natural history. Is it so incongruous to reason, we would ask, that there should be higher grades of created intellectual beings between man and his Maker? Can the conception of these men not soar so high as to imagine the existence of many subtile conditions of matter, which man is unprovided with organs to perceive, but which the great Intellect who made him might inform with intelligence superior to human? What limit of creative power will they assign to that Being, who made the brain of man a laboratory of perception and thought, and who gave to a mass of matter the conscience of possessing a set of such wonderful powers as the faculties of man; to Him, who contrived the organs of human vision to see the almost immaterial, almost spiritual light? And, who knows, might not such beings of exalted life be able, with the permission of their creator, to serve some great purpose in his providence, to operate perception, thought, and motion in man? Or might they not, perhaps, be employed to do the errands of their Master among distant worlds, through the gloomy deeps of space? We have gathered a few pebbles upon the shore of the great ocean of truth, as well as some of these unfaithful men; and we can sincerely say, for our own part, that we see no improbability, far less impossibility, in any of the suppositions broached above. The disbelief of them arises from the heart, more than from the head.

Having loosely thrown forth the few foregoing observations, con

cerning the utmost extent of knowledge at which man can arrive of his own faculties, and concerning the possibility of all earthly phenomena not being chronicled in the natural history of the sceptic; let us bring forward the two witnesses of God, the Testaments of heaven, and hear their evidence. They say, that "it is not in man that walketh to direct his own steps;" + that God works in man both to will and to do of his good pleasure; that HE IS, and there is none beside him; that over the organic and inorganic world he holds sovereign sway and masterdom; that all the subtile agents, to whose operations we can trace the phenomena of the earth and the heavens around us, those hidden and mysterious, and, we might almost say, spiritual things, which, having a local habitation in matter and a name, take yet to man's perceptions no separate imbodied form,-|| the nimble rending fire of heaven, the stupendous power of gravity, that reins the planets in their impetuous courses,-** the quick-consuming heat of the seven times heated furnace,the wonder-working agents in the laboratories of animal and vegetable life;-all-all are his, and wait, the willing servants of his command. It is from the pages of our Bible we learn, †† that the thoughts and intents of man are all known to God; that man is the temple of God; that the spirit of God dwell*Jeremiah, x. 23. † Philippians, ii. 13-" For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure."

Isaiah, xlv. 6, 7—" That they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside me. I am the Lord, and there is none else. I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things."

The miracles of our Saviour prove this: his healing the lame, giving sight to the blind, raising the dead to life, and withering by his word the fig-tree, prove his commind over the animal and vegetable world; his changing the water into wine, and his stilling, by his word, the winds and the waves, prove it of the inorganic world.

|| 1 Kings, xviii. 38" Then the fire of the Lord fell, and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench." 2 Chronicles, vii. 1—“Now when Solomon had made an end of praying, the fire came down from heaven, and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices; and the glory of the Lord filled the house."

Matthew, xiv. 25—“ And in the fourth watch of the night Jesus went unto them, walking on the sea.'

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** Daniel, iii. 26, 27-" Then Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, came forth of the midst of the fire. And the princes, governors, and captains, and the king's counsellors, being gathered together, saw these men, upon whose bodies the fire had no power, nor was an hair of their head singed, neither were their coats changed, nor the smell of fire had passed on them."

+ Psalm cxxxix. 1-12-" O Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me. Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off. Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether. "Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it. Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee."

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‡‡ 1 Cor. vi. 19" What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God? and ye are not your own.' iii. 16"Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the spirit of God dwelleth in You ?12

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