102 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



fact that there is a futurity of consciouness, can be known only through God's 

 revelation of himself in the Person and the Gospel of his Son," p. 389. 



And now hear Priestley : 



" Man, according to this system " (of materialism), " is no more than we now 

 see of him. His being commences at the time of his conception, or perhaps at an 

 earlier period. The corporeal and mental faculties, in being in the same sub- 

 stance, grow, ripen, and decay together ; and whenever the system is dissolved 

 it continues in a state of dissolution till it shall please that Almighty Being who 

 called it into existence to restore it to life again." Matter and Spirit, p. 49. 



And again : 



."The doctrine of the Scripture is, that God made man of the dust of the 

 ground, and, by simply animating this organized matter, made man that living 

 percipient and intelligent being that he is. According to Kevelation, death 

 is a state of rest and insensibility, and our only though sure hope of a future 

 life is founded on the doctrine of the resurrection of the whole man at some dis- 

 tant period ; this assurance being sufficiently confirmed to us, both by the evi- 

 dent tokens of a Divine commission attending the persons who delivered the 

 doctrine, and especially by the actual resurrection of Jesus Christ, which is more 

 authentically attested than any other fact in history." Ibid., p. 247. 



We all know that " a saint in crape is twice a saint in lawn ; " but 

 it is not yet admitted that the views which are consistent with such 

 saintliness in lawn become diabolical when held by a mere Dissenter. 1 



I am not here either to defend or to attack Priestley's philosophi- 

 cal views, and I cannot say that I am personally disposed to attach 

 much value to episcopal authority in philosophical questions ; but it 

 seems right to call attention to the fact that those of Priestley's opin- 

 ions which have brought most odium upon him have been openly pro- 

 mulgated, without challenge, by persons occupying the highest posi- 

 tions in the state Church. 



I must confess that what interests me most about Priestley's ma- 

 terialism is, the evidence that he saw dimly the seed of destruction 

 which such materialism carries within its own bosom. In the course 

 of his reading for his " History of Discoveries relating to Vision, 

 Light, and Colors," he had come upon the speculations of Boscovich 

 and Mich ell, and had been led to admit the sufficiently obvious truth 

 that our knowledge of matter is a knowledge of its properties ; and 

 that of its substance if it have a substance we know nothing. And 



1 Not only is Priestley at one with Bishop Courtenay in this matter, but with Hartley 

 and Bonnet, both of them stout champions of Christianity. Moreover, Archbishop 

 Whately's essay is little better than an expansion of the first paragraph of Hume's famous 

 essay on the Immortality of the Soul : " By the mere light of reason it seems difficult to 

 prove the immortality of the soul ; the arguments for it are commonly derived either 

 from metaphysical topics, or moral, or physical. But it is in reality the Gospel, and the 

 Gospel alone, that has brought life and immortality to liyht." It is impossible to imagine 

 that a man of Whately's tastes and acquirements had not read Hume or Hartley, though 

 he refers to neither. 



