CONCLUSION. 349 



work adequate to the effect, a power under the guidance of 

 an intelligent will, and a power penetrating the inmost re- 

 cesses of all substance. I am far from justifying the opinion 

 of those who "thought it a thing incredible that God should 

 raise the dead ;" but I admit that it is first necessary to be 

 persuaded that there is a God to do so. This being thor- 

 oughly settled in our minds, there seems to be nothing in this 

 process — concealed as \ve confess it to be — which need to shock 

 our belief They who have taken up the opinion that the 

 acts of the human mind depend upon organizatw?i, that the 

 mind itself indeed consists in organization, are supposed to 

 find a greater difhculty than others do in admitting a tran- 

 sition by death to a new state of sentient existence, because 

 the old organization is apparently, dissolved But I do not 

 see that any impracticability need be apprehended even by 

 these ; or that the change, even upon their hypothesis, is far 

 removed from the analogy of some other operations which 

 we know with certainty that the Deity is carrying on. In 

 the ordinary derivation of plants and animals from one an- 

 other, a particle, in many cases minuter than all assignable, 

 all conceivable dimension — an aura, an effluvium, an infin- 

 itesimal — determines the organization of a future body ; does 

 no less than fix whether that which is about to be pro 

 duced shall be a vegetable, a merely sentient, or a rationa' 

 being — an oak, a frog, or a philosopher ; makes all these 

 diflerences; gives to the future body its qualities, and nature, 

 and species. And this particle, from M'hich springs and by 

 which is determined a whole future nature, itself proceeds 

 from and owes its constitution to a prior body ; neverthe- 

 less, which is seen in plants most decisively, the incepted 

 organization, though formed within and through and by s 

 preceding organization, is not corrupted by its corruption, oi 

 destroyed by its dissolution ; but, on the contrary, is some- 

 times extricated and developed by those very causes — sur- 

 vives and comes into action, when the purpose for which i\ 

 was prepared requires its use. Now an economy which na- 



