of Browne, and of Mead; men unrivalled for their professional sagacity, and alike impressed with the deepest conviction of one great first cause of future being and of eternity, "that ancient source as well as universal sepulchre of worlds and ages, in which the duration of this globe is lost as that of a day, and the life of man as a moment." *

the light of a new luminary, emanating from the Divinity himself. Convinced of the reality of revelation, by diligently studying the Scriptures, he could not behold with indifference any attacks on this fundamental law, this strongest bond of society; and at a time, when other illustrious men prostituted their fame and talents in making dangerous attacks upon religion, he thought it his duty to enter the lists as her avowed champion and defender.”

His death was in conformity with his principles, for he met his dissolution "with the calmness of a philosopher, and, what is transcendently superior, with the lively faith of a Christian. His last words were addressed to the physician who attended him. My friend,' said he to M. Rosselet, 'the artery no longer beats,' and immediately he expired."

Vide General Biographical Dictionary, vol. xvii. p. 63, 64. * An excellent Defence of the Professors of Medicine against the charge of impiety, was written towards the close of the seventeenth century by Charles Drelincourt, Professor of Anatomy in the University of Leyden, under the title of "Oratio Doctoralis, qua Medicos Dei operum consideratione atque contemplatione permotos, cæteris hominibus Religioni astrictiores esse demonstratur: atque adeo impietatis crimen in ipsos jactatum diluitur.”

That organized matter, however subtile and intricate may be its arrangement, can ever, according to the doctrines of the fashionable school of French physiology, be productive, as a mere consequence of its structure, of thought, is a position in all its bearings and tendencies, alike impossible and absurd; for, setting aside the vis inertia, the hardness and impenetrability of matter, qualities perfectly incompatible with the properties of thought, its divisibility is alone decisive of the question. No one will venture to deny, that to an individual and thinking being, consciousness, and, therefore, unity of principle, are essential; and whatever forms the source and essence of individuality, cannot without a palpable contradiction in terms, admit of separation and division.

But, waving all further consideration of this branch of the subject, which might fill volumes, the question may be at once decided by an appeal to the ultimate result of the material hypothesis, which if it shall be found, not only clogged with difficulties beyond measure, greater than attends what may be called the religious view of the subject, but leading moreover to

absurdities bare and absolute beyond all paral, lel, must of course be dismissed with contempt.

If matter, as the necessary result of its organization, be capable of thought, spirit or an immaterial principle is at once annihilated, and consequently one first, eternal, and independent cause, one source of life and intellect, no longer exists. Here the sceptic triumphs, because he has gotten rid, as he conceives, of what he cannot perfectly comprehend. But mark the result of the expedient to which he is driven. In order to account for the origin and perpetuity of life, he is compelled to have recourse to the doctrine of successive and infinite generation, a theory which, when traced to its ultimate consequence, necessarily leads to the substitution of many thousand first causes instead of one. For as infinite succession can have no beginning, it must of course inevitably follow, that every species of existence, vegetable or animal, must have been from all eternity, a self-independent being, a first cause as to itself, without com mencement or termination!

In comparison with this substitution, the dernier resource of the infidel, and which, in: fact, converts matter into a million of indepen

dent deities, how simple is the doctrine of religion and of immaterialism! And this follows from refusing to believe in one Eternal spirit as the Creator of all things, merely because we cannot understand his essence, because eternity, and therefore infinity, falls not within the comprehension of a finite mind.

Not in this manner philosophized Sir Thomas Browne, who, speaking of the inadequacy of the human intellect in its efforts to comprehend the nature of the Deity, sublimely observes, "My philosophy dares not say the angels can do it; God hath not made a creature that can comprehend him; it is a privilege of his own nature; I am that I am, was his own definition unto Moses; and it was a short one to confound mortality, that durst question God, or ask him what he was. Indeed he only is; all others have, and shall be; but in eternity there is no dis-tinction of tenses; and therefore that terrible term predestination, which hath troubled so many weak heads to conceive, and the wisest to explain, is, in respect to God, no prescious determination of our estates to come, but a definitive blast of his will already fulfilled, and at the instant that

he first decreed it; for to his eternity, which is indivisible, and altogether, the last trump is already sounded, the reprobates in the flame, and the blessed in Abraham's bosom. St. Peter speaks modestly, when he saith, a thousand years to God are but as one day. For, to speak like a philosopher, those continued instances of time which flow into thousands of years, make not to him one moment; what to us is to come, to his eternity is present, his whole duration being but one permanent point without succession, parts, flux, or division.”

The doctrine of organization, as the cause and source of thought, appears to have arisen from confounding connection with identity; from inferring that, as in the visible universe, mind is found always connected with organic matter; it is, therefore, the result of structure, and has consequently no separate or independent origin.

A sound and correct view, however, of the attributes of the Deity, such as they appear, both from reason and scripture, would, whilst it pointed out the mutual connection of mind and matter, as clearly and as satisfactorily display their mutual independence.