116 DEFECTS OF PREVAILING 



verse, or to any of the rational faculties of the soul ; and in 

 this mankind have been told to have faith, as the place or state 

 of future human destination ! But a rational faith in such an 

 utter inconceivability is out of the question, and an extra- 

 rational and mere dogmatic faith, in such an idea, can not 

 generally, if ever, be kept free from superstition, and hence, 

 from a greater or less degree of mental degradation and 

 slavery. Hence, in case of full adoption of the Newtonian 

 system of cosmogony, a determination to follow only the con- 

 victions of reason will necessarily tend to skepticism with 

 reference to spiritual, and to s.rme extent even with reference 

 to Divine things ; and there is no latent force in the theory 

 which, by any development can ever correct this mental ab- 

 erration. In the spirit and tendency of this merely me- 

 chanical mode of philosophizing upon the universe, may, I 

 apprehend, be found the main cause of the growing materialism 

 and skepticism of these modern days, especially among minds 

 called scientific. 



Subjected to the test of rationality, however, the Newtonian 

 system, in *at least one of its features, seems to be almost as 

 bad off as the only spiritual and theological theories that can 

 be rationally associated with it. It predicates mutual gravita- 

 tion of any two distant bodies, while it fails to recognize, if it 

 does not, by implication, entirely preclude the idea of, any 

 intervening gravitating agent. But that any two bodies can 

 in any way act upon each other, either without immediate 

 contact, or . the intervention of some substantial medium by 

 which they can touch each other, is utterly inconceivable, and 

 can no more bo supposed than any effect can be supposed to be 

 disconnected with an adequate cause. We do not, however, 

 charge the theory with absolutely and necessarily precluding 

 such a medium ; but by manifesting, at its very starting point, 



