laws? If we approach the ultimate truths of phenomena and life, we must come into the presence of a Power additional to and above nature. We may admit the reign of law in creation, without involving ourselves in materialistic fatalism. It may be stated strongly that man cannot believe either himself, or the universe, to be exclusively matter,-"one substance with two sets of properties;" and they who adopt the notion that the human soul is nothing more than an oxidation of particles, or a cerebral offspring, must surely, by the strong convictions and spiritual movements and cravings of their own spirits, be occasionally startled and impressed with the hollowness of their creed.

II.

ALIQUIS. It will be of service to look at the Scriptural account of the origin and nature of man. This account is challenged we all know, but it will be well for us to be aquainted with it. And further, we have a right, I judge, to ask the question; "What saith the Scripture?" On this subject it has certainly established itself as an authority. In truth it proposes the inquiry,-"What is man?" and it furnishes the answer by declaring him to be "the image and glory of God." In the Holy Volume man is represented as great above all creature greatness,

as

"made a little lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honour," all things terrestrial being put under his feet, and by him God is waging war with His adversaries, and restoring the shaken balance af His moral government. Inspiration never calls him "beast," for although insignificant in his flesh, and lowly in his origin, he becomes majestic in power, and is Deity's vicegerent on earth, and in law and mercy His ambassador. These are plain statements of Holy Writ. Can they be sustained?

NEMO. Man is in reality the marvel of marvels. If believers in Revelation, we must make a great account of him. His nature has been assumed by Divinity, for God was manifest in his flesh, and He has borne that nature to the throne of the universe. What

ever his debasements and saddening works of iniquity, we do not find on our globe any creature on a par with him. Indisputably he is the highest being of which we have any direct cognizance, and is the monopolist of religion. In appealing to the Holy Volume on the subject before us, it should be noted that some protest against this course, affirming that the investigation of the nature of man is a purely philosophical inquiry, with which the Scriptures have nothing to do. But with you, I trow, consideration is due to the established position of the Bible. Its historical prestige entitles it to a hearing, and it has vindicated its claim to be honoured as truth, until proved to be error. Some attempts have been made also to find materialism in the inspired pages, alleging that if at all, it but faintly, witnesses to man's possession of a principle or endowment dissimilar to his body. We concede that Holy Scripture is not a treatise on man's nature, but it every where pre-supposes the spirituality of the human soul, and multitudes of its statements would otherwise be unintelligible. Apart, however, from explicit declarations, the spiritual personality of man is implied in its constant appeal to his possession of an intelligent and ethical principle distinct from matter. Throughout its pages man is spoken of as a being who, although clothed in animal form, is essentially and in himself a spirit. In truth it is only as a personal spirit man can be the subject of religion. If If you resolve his thoughts, convictions, desires, and fears into mere sensations, and brainular influences, religion in its legitimate sense becomes an absurdity. You remove thereby the foundations of responsibility, of virtue and vice, and the significance of relationship to the invisible and the future. As spirits we are linked to the Living and Omniscient God, as spirits we can pray, and trust, and love, and hope. Our spirits alone hold the capacity for religious worship and service. It would truly be a marvellous discovery to detect that Holy Scripture denied or ignored an incorporeal essence in man. That discovery of itself would be direct proof of the un

necessary character of a Divine revelation.

If there be in man no principle of intelligence, no quenchless flame, separable from the elements of his body; an inspired code of doctrines and precepts is superfluous and unmeaning. But the Bible gives a certain sound on man's nature, as it does likewise on another point, the pre-existent life of the soul. It knows of no creation. of souls prior to the creation of bodies. The fanciful doctrine of metempsychosis is not countenanced, for it represents each soul as the immediate work of the Creator. A distinction is drawn between the "fathers of our flesh," and the "Father of spirits." A divine element is attached to man's nature, created and communicated by the immediate power of God. Behold," He says, "all souls are mine, as the soul of the father so also the soul of the son, is mine." Yet a word more here, we must not, with some of the sages of antiquity, and with others, aver of the soul that it is a spark, or beam of Divinity; or that it is a real and substantive emanation of God. In such statements more than folly is found, for the infinite nature is absolutely incommunicable, and many of its perfections cannot be shadowed by any creature excellency. The soul is made we state in the Divine image, not made Divine. God is a spirit, and the soul is formed an immaterial, intellectual, and immortal existence. In the soul of man therefore the "likeness" of the Divine intelligence, spirituality, and immortality, is found. The moral features of the Divine likeness have been lost,—that is, "the universal rectitude of all the faculties of the soul, by which they stood apt and disposed to their respective offices and operations," yet in natural resemblance to God the soul is not now fashioned in any other image than that of old. The soul of man is a mirror, defaced and broken, but still a mirror in which we see more of the Godhead, than in the starry heavens or the spreading landscape. Creation is eloquent for God; it is, as it were, His public orator, and its discourses are grand and subduing; but the soul is His child, the image of

His mind, the revelation of His infinitide. Abashed and ashamed by its conscious estrangement, it is still the child, retaining undeniable traces of its relationship to the Sovereign of the universe.

The body of man is represented in the sacred page, as a "frame" composed of "dust;" as coming up, and cut down, "like a flower of the field ;" as subject to waste, to fever, to dissolution; but ultimately as capable of being "fashioned like unto Christ's glorious body." Its various members and organs are depicted as instrumental to the holy or unholy agency of the secret and active spirit, which is represented as having dominion over all. "Neither yield ye your members," is the appeal of Inspiration to this inner agent, "as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin; but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God." To the soul, on the other hand, are attributed oneness, spirituality, varied prerogatives and relations, which carry it solemnly and sublimely beyond the nature and service of its material colleague. It is said to possess the knowledge of "good and evil," and of its Creator's "statutes and judgments." It is summoned to "delight itself in the Lord," to acquaint itself with Him." It can exercise a faith in things invisible, cherish a hope full of glory, use the power of prayer and adoration, and worship God "in spirit and in truth." It possesses the capacity of rising to the fulness of joy in the presence of Deity, and of brightening in everlasting splendours; or of enduring for ever the consequences of violated law, which in their terror exceed our power to conceive and know. It has been said, "that nothing but the circumstance of breathing made the difference between the animated earth and the living soul. Only that substance which was formed out of the dust of the earth became a living soul, that is, became alive by being made to breathe."* If there be in man no spirit separating him from the brute creatures, why is the account of his creation so

* Dr. Priestley.