270 FLETCHER'S DISTINCTION OF 



responsible man, and surviving him to all eternity, we 

 are at once intuitively led and explicitly taught to be- 

 lieve ; but it is a question of morality and faith, not 

 of physics and demonstration, and to be determined 

 not by its susceptibility of proof, but at once by its 

 verisimilitude, and by our confidence in the authority 

 on which it rests. Who that has contrasted, as every 

 one does, and must do, the chaotical condition of the 

 moral world in this state of our existence, with the 

 harmonized operation of the physical, if we believe 

 that they are equally directed by the same Almighty 

 hand, can avoid believing (and the belief is, therefore, 

 and has always been, almost universal) j that this 

 Almighty hand has set apart His own time for recti- 

 fying this inconsistency ; and when, in addition to this 

 intuitive persuasion, we have the assurances of revela- 

 tion to the same effect, what need have we to look to 

 physical philosophy to shake our confidence in its 

 truth ? 



" The two subjects seem to be utterly unconnected. 

 ' I have no hope of a future existence,' observes the 

 late talented Regius Professor in the University of 

 Cambridge, ' except that which is grounded on the 

 truth of Christianity ;' and it was well remarked 

 lately, ' that if man be not satisfied to place his hopes 

 of immortality in a Divine gift, he must confess that 

 the difference between his own claims and those of 

 many other animals is in degree only, and that degree 

 in some instances a very small one.' That the soul is 

 something absolutely distinct from mind, which is 

 nothing or, at least, nothing substantial cannot be 

 doubted ; but what the nature of the soul is, it will 



