142 CRITICAL NOTICES OP NEW PUBLICATIONS. 



design, of power, and of wisdom, in all the inanimate works of crea- 

 tion, teaching us that there exists some power beyond the cognizance 

 of our senses ; and the uses to which those properties are applied in- 

 form us that that power must be supremely intelligent and efficient."* 

 *' If," he adds, " we are to confine our views to the phenomena 

 immediately presented to our senses, and were to reason exclusively 

 from a superficial observation of the changes in the constitution of 

 the body consequent on death, we should be led to the conclusion that 

 the destruction of the body involves also the eternal destruction of 

 the mysterious principle by which it was animated/'t Hence he 

 contends that " it is upon this contracted view alone of the pro- 

 cesses accompanying the dissolution of the body, that the hypothesis 

 of the materialists can be supported ; but such a consideration of 

 the subject is only suited to the rudest ages of ignorance, and 

 will be found to be directly opposed to the plainest deductions from 

 all scientific investigations.''^ 



The causes, no doubt, which have indisposed religious persons to 

 follow up this pursuit may be traced to that laudably sensitive appre- 

 hension of guarding against any approach whatever to materialism ; 

 namely, that atoms, whether of matter or, if we may so speak, of 

 spirit, have an innate self-exerting power of generating what is 

 termed life. But we do not see why the subject may not be grap- 

 pled with, even in its most menacing form. The materialist argues 

 thus : Matter, in its atomic subdivisions, is the cause of vitality, 

 under certain arrangements of its monads or monocules. The advo- 

 cate for the separate existence of life says. No ; I admit, indeed, that 

 under certain polarities, or proportions, or call them by whatever 

 other term you please, life becomes a])parent ; but I deny, in totOj 

 that the cause of such connection is inherent in either the one or 

 the other : my belief is that a higher power, the great master-mind 

 of the universe, has so constituted his instruments that, by his fiat 

 and permission, life, instinctive or intellectual, shall ensue. We 

 have scriptural authority for this, even to the very letter. " God 

 formed man of the dust of the ground ;" that is to say, the forming 

 and fashioning of the particles of matter under certain arrange- 

 ments, rendered it a fit recipient for the creative and spiritual affla- 

 tus which ensued. That the mode, and manner, and cause, is 

 beyond our ken, is of little consequence ; it stands upon the same 

 basis, and is, at all events, as intelligible, or rather say unintelligi- 

 ble, a fact, that the particles of iron in a magnet, for instance, are 

 under the control and power of an atherial or spiritual agency act- 

 ing independently, and which may be separated without the slight- 

 est interference with its existence and acknowledged presence. All 

 this is in strict conformity with the assumption of ^^Ir. Bakewell, 

 " that the vital and thinking principles are as indestructible as mat- 

 ter, and that their combination with, and separation from, material 

 organization, are merely preparatory to entering another state of 



• p. 14. t p. 16. XV' 17^ 



