56 OP HEALTH AND HUMAN NATURE. 



grounded on the truth of Christianity." * While those are to be 

 pitied who think there can be any thing like an argument against 

 a future life in another order of things, if declared by revelation, 

 I am deeply hurt that others should think it necessary to attempt 

 rendering the pronunciations of scripture more probable by an 

 hypothesis which is at best but the remains of unenlightened 

 times, f and require any assurance besides that of the Gospel 



* Anecdotes of the Life of Richard Watson, D.D. F.R.S. late Lord Bishop 

 of Llandaff. — Vol. i. p. 107. See also a very decisive passage, beginning, "A* 

 a Deist I have little expectation ; as a Christian I have no doubt, of a future 

 state," in his Apology for the Bible. Letter x. near the end. 



Locke argues, " that all the great ends of religion and morality arc secured 

 barely by the immortality of the soul, without a necessary supposition that it is 

 immaterial." — First Reply, p. 34. 



Mr. Dugald Stewart concedes that " the proper use of the doctrine of the im- 

 materiality of the soul is not to demonstrate that the soul is physically and ne- 

 cessarily immortal." 1. c. p. 227. The celebrated Dr. Rush, of America, remarks 

 upon this subject, " that the writers in favour of the immortality of the soul 

 have done that truth great injury by connecting it necessarily with its immate- 

 riality. The immortality of the soul depends upon the will of the Deity, and 

 not upon the supposed properties of spirit. Matter is in its own nature as im- 

 mortal as spirit. It is resolvable by heat and moisture into a variety of forms ; 

 but it requires the same almighty hand to annihilate it, that it did to create it. 

 I know of no arguments to prove the immortality of the soul but such as we 

 derive from the Christian revelation." — Medical Inquiries and Observations. 

 vol. ii. p. 15. 



f The more uninformed the age, the greater the disposition to explain every 

 thing. The savage personifies the winds and the heavenly bodies ; the ancients 

 fancied all matter endowed with a spirit (spiritus intus alit). Philo and Origen 

 maintain that the stars are so many souls, incorruptible and immortal. In old 

 modern writings, even in those of the father of experiment and observation, — 

 Lord Bacon, the properties of matter are referred to spirits: — an acid acts by its 

 spirit All these notions still exist among the vulgar ; and the last remaining 

 among the better informed, though it too is rapdly dying away, relates to mind. 

 Those who upbraid others for refusing their assent to this hypothesis, may 

 recollect that Anaxagoras ar.d many more were accused of atheism and impiety, 

 because they denied that the heavenly bodies were animated and intelligent. 

 Even in the last reign some viewed the Newtonian doctrines as irreligious. 



