238 PKOP. G. MACLOSKIE, D.SC, LL.D.. ON 



REMARKS ON THE FOREGOING PAPER. 



The Rev. Professor J. H. Bernard, D.D., writes : — 



T have had but little leisure since I received the proof copy of 

 Professor Macloskie's paper which you were good enough to send 

 me ; and fear therefore that it would be rash to make the com- 

 ments 3'ou invite, as the subject is a difficult one and demands 

 caution and precision of statement. The paper is most interesting, 

 and with the majority of Professor Macloskie's conclusions I 

 suppose that most members, like myself, will find themselves iu 

 cordial agreement. I think the note on the first pag'e of the paper, 

 as to the word "mechanical," is quite necessary; and indeed the 

 comparison of the universe to a machine is, as the author is well 

 aware, and as he points out, most misleading. I sliould be disposed 

 to prefer Mr. Abbot's term " organism " to " machine " (page 224), 

 though the force of the author's criticisms is not to be denied. 

 Is it not the case that both elements have to be taken into 

 account ? On the one hand we may lay stress on God's trans- 

 cendence, on His distinctness from, and superiority to nature, and 

 this is the point where Christian Theism differs from Pantheism. 

 But on the other hand it seems to be equally the demand of faith 

 and of reason that God is the Life of the Woi'ld, that He is 

 immanent in natui'e as well as its author and governor. And this 

 is where the formulated Theism of oar day differs from that of 

 Paley's. We recognise that the cosmos is not merely a machine 

 once for all constructed and set going by the great artificer, bixt 

 that it is an organism of which God is at every moment and in 

 every part the Life. 



I do not quite understand what is said about personal immortality 

 " on a mechanical theory of mind " (page 228) ; but possibly no 

 more is meant than this — that the Ego is in no way affected by 

 the laws of space and time which it transcends, and that therefore 

 we can in na wise infer its destruction from the fact or the 

 analogy of bodily dissolution. And it may be true and useful 

 sometimes to insist that we have thus no right to expect natural 

 law every ichere in the spiritual world. 



