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that the Omnipotent Being is immaterial; you leave little room to doubt that your opinion is quite the contrary; although you say somewhere, you would scarcely dare to surmise what the substance of the Deity is. You argue thus: "To appear is to be visible;" and what is visible must be material; ergo, (let me draw your inference,) whatever appears is material. Now let me make another syllogism based on this :— -Whatever appears is material; but God has appeared (to Moses,) ergo, (is not the conclusion irresistible?) God is material. *

Now, my Lord Warner, may I ask whether this, or the position of Lord Brougham be the more dangerous to Christianity? I admit that you have (or rather Mr. Wallace has) detected Lord B. dozing on a most important point. It is going too far to say, as his lordship does, that the soul must perish, if it be not immaterial. There is no vis consequentiæ in that inference; and I believe this to be the burden of your two erudite rambles,† as well as the two instructive and learned brochures of Mr. Wallace. I think you both right on the

*No: but whatever appears, is either usually arrayed in materiality, or has, in the particular instance, assumed materiality, in order to manifest-and render itself thus apparent."-Did not God, in the person of our Saviour, assume the materiality of body? Was He not made flesh? Was it not by means of that material body, that our Lord was apparent-and enabled to call on his disciples to handle hin? Yet who denies, (not my Critic, I hope,b) that our Redeemer was and is God? Or who, in admitting, that by means of material flesh He thus became apparent, and tangible, asserts that the Divine Substance is material?

+"Civil leer!"-which teaches, and is meant to "teach to sneer;" and which, aided (or even unaided,) by much of the deriding context, would give this lesson, though the " erudite Rambles "were not so studiously contrasted with what was "instructive and learned "

To Man.

I hope he does not mean to echo the exclamations of Jobert: "A God with senses, organs, brains! a human God! a monstrous God!"

point, and Lord B. wrong; but when you caution his lordship against the danger of such a position, and absolutely will not permit an inquiry on a fair subject of metaphysical speculation, (by no means necessarily a divine mystery,) because the Scriptures are explicit upon a great truth sought to be deduced from it as a necessary inference, I would respectfully beg of you to consider whether, with all your caution, you have not taken a stride calculated to inflict a deeper wound on Christianity.

I would also beg of you, should you be disposed to take "a third stroll," to consider whether there be any vis consequentiæ in your proposition-" Whatever is visible is material." You see the startling-nay, revolting inference I have drawn from that proposition—an inference calculated by no means to diminish the number of Deists and Atheists. I pray you also to consider whether the secondary qualities of substances, by which they are perceptible to the senses of seeing and hearing, may not in some sort belong to pure spirit, or at least that those properties in spirit which give rise to your doubts and hesitation as to their immateriality, are not, even on your own showing, essentially different from the parallel properties of those substances, to which we properly apply the term material.

A MASTER OF ARTS, T. C. D.

The above having appeared in the Freeman's Journal, the following defence made its appearance, immediately after, in The Packet.

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I have read your aigre-doux letter, in the Weekly Freeman, to W. Search. There is a great deal more of the aigre in it,

presume not; for you do But you say it follows that

than of the doux; and the aigre seems to be sincere: the doux anything but that. Search says, that "to appear is to be visible; and that to be visible is to be material."-Do you deny either proposition? On the contrary; you assent to both; as every rational man must do. But you complain that Search has asserted that God appeared to Moses. Do you mean to deny the truth of this assertion? not profess to disbelieve Exodus. God is material. You may say so; but Search has not said So. He has said the reverse. He has said that the Divinity occasionally used the instrumentality of matter, and, as it were, clothed himself in it, for the purpose of revealing himself to the senses of man. That he did so, in the burning bush. That he did so when he made himself audible in the still, small voice. And, lastly, that in the incarnation of our Saviour, he had manifested himself materially to man. Do you deny that he revealed himself to Moses in the burning bush? or do you hold that the flame which Moses saw was immaterial? Do you hold that the still, small voice, which struck the ear, was immaterial? And whether do you deny the Divinity of our Lord? or do you hold that He was not material?—that He was not man ?—that, in the teeth of his own sacred assertion, he was not capable of being handled?

All this explanation you had seen; for you had "got," you say, "to page 54;"-and in pages 53 and 54 it is to be found: yet the aigre portion of your motive induces you to charge Search with "bordering on materialism;—with leading to revolting inferences; with holding the Almighty to be material ;— (in the very teeth of what he has written,) and inflicting a deep wound on Christianity."

Mr. Wallace seems a favourite. Warner Search seems the reverse. Could a gentleman, whose surname has the same initial, and contains the same number of syllables as your own, -could he, think you, inform us, why, in the latter case, you

appear so "willing to wound," and not altogether "afraid to strike?" But, perhaps, you and Sir James Mackintosh may hold, that while matter, by much attenuation, often becomes invisible, utter immateriality is visible, audible, tangible, &c. How comes the soul to be invisible, even at the moment of its departure, when the body no longer veils it? How comes the invisible world to be so extensive?

Yours,

PETER PEERADEAL.

M.

EXTRACT FROM A LETTER TO W. C. S.

Paris, Dec. 23d, 1835.

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By way of adding to your animal anecdotes, Melissa desires me say, that she knew a lady at Cheltenham, who had a dog, that regularly accompanied her in her walks,-tendering himself as her companion, on every day except Sunday; but never attempted to do so on that day; seemingly aware, that his mistress was going to a place (Church) where his presence would be dispensed with.In La Martine's interesting work, (his Travels in the East,) is a beautiful description of the Arab horses; whose sagacity he represents as something quite wonderful. Apropos of soul and body, there is an entertaining book enough, 'Voyage autour de ma chambre,' the author of which lays the blame, not only of all his evil, but even of his awkward actions, upon the latter; which he calls his Bête. * * I think you have satisfactorily established that there is nothing con.

* Melissa is her "nom de guerre."

Gray; Long Story:

*

trary to religion, (quite the reverse,) in declining to decide the point, whether the soul is material or immaterial. How do you understand the expression of St. Paul, “there is a natural body; and there is a spiritual body ?"

ματος.

The text which I am called upon, by my correspondent, to interpret, necessarily partakes of the mysteriousness of its somewhat super-intellectual subject; and is mysterious. My conjectural, and laic, and imperfect explanation * might be, that the Apostle distinguishes between Yuxinos avng, and the man who, being spiritualized, possesses the govna to reThe natural body I take to be that of the former; the spiritual body that of the latter. O xixos avne, I consider to be the animal man; possessing, or possessed by, that Yʊx”, or vital spirit, which he has, in common with the beasts. This ought to be, but in this life will not be, quite subservient and ministerial to the spa, which seems to distinguish man from the beasts of the field; and perhaps is what The Deity "breathed into the nostrils" of the first human being; and thus caused him to become "a living soul."-Upon this subject, we may, perhaps, look with advantage to Hebrews, iv. 12, where 4x and μ are emphatically noticed and distinguished; and the Greek, as well as the English, might be consulted.+

* Which, however, would probably be still more imperfect, if it were not for some valuable and illustrative suggestions, contained in a letter, from a learned friend, which reached me on the 22d of the present month of December.

If to sacred I might append profane, I would perhaps refer to what Araspas is reported (or feigned) by Xenophon, to have said to Cyrus. Η και δυνήση, ἔφη, ἀπολιπέιν τὴν καλὴν Πάνθειαν; Δύο γὰρ, ἔφη, ὦ Κῦρε, σαφῶς ἔχω ψυχάς. Οὐ γὰρ δὴ, μία γε οὖσα,

a

a Said Cyrus.

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