APOLOGY FOR THE BELFAST ADDRESS. 509 
Why should jthe Roman Catholic Church call gluttony a 
mortal sin? Why should fasting occupy a place in the 
disciplines of religion? What is the meaning of Luther's 
advice to the young clergyman who came to him, perplexed 
with the difficulties of predestination and election,af it be 
not that, in virtue of its action upon the brain, when wisely 
applied, there is moral and religious virtue even in a hydro- 
carbon? To use the old language, food and drink are 
creatures of God, and have therefore a spiritual value. 
Through our neglect of the monitions of a reasonable 
materialism we sin and suffer daily. I might here point to 
the train of deadly disorders over which science has given 
modern society such control disclosing the lair of the 
material enemy, insuring his destruction, and thus pre- 
venting that moral squalor and hopelessness which habit- 
ually tread on the heels of epidemics in the case of the 
poor. 
Rising to higher spheres, the visions of Swedenborg, and 
the ecstasy of Plotinus and Porphyry, are phases of that 
psychical condition, obviously connected with the nervous 
system and state of health, on which is based the Vedic 
doctrine of the absorption of the individual into the 
universal soul. Plotinus taught the devout how to pass 
into a condition of ecstasy. Porphyry complains of having 
been only once united to God in eighty-six years, while his 
master Plotinus had been so united six times in sixty 
years.* A friend who knew Wordsworth informs me that 
the poet, in some of his moods, was accustomed to seize 
hold of an external object to assure himself of his own 
bodily -existence. As states of consciousness such phenom- 
.ena have an undisputed reality, and a substantial identity; 
ibut they are connected with the most heterogeneous 
objective conceptions. The subjective experiences are 
similar, because of the similarity of the underlying organ- 
izations. 
But for those who wish to look beyond the practical 
facts, there will always remain ample room for speculation. 
Take the argument of the Lucretian introduced in the 
Belfast address. As far as I am aware, not one of my 
* I recommend to the reader's particular attention Dr. Draper's 
important work entitled, " History of the Conflict between Religion 
and Science." (Messrs. H. S. King and Co.) 
