APOLOGY FOR THE BELFAST ADDRESS. 509 



Why should the 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, if 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. Plotiuus taught the devout how to pass 

 into a condition of ecstasy. Porphyry complains of having 

 been only once united to (rod 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; 

 but 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.) 



