28 



REV. A. E. WHATELY, D.D.^ ON IMMORTALITY. 



such a one to " realize " the Deathless Christ is entirely different. 

 Thus immortality is attained, not by mental process but by sj)iritual 

 endowment and inheritance. In so far as philosophy sets this 

 aside, it must yield a barren result. Philosophy deals with Time — 

 " the things that are " ; it has nothing to do with Eternity — "the 

 things that shall be hereafter." 



Communication from Eev. A. Irving, D.Sc, B.A. : — 

 I have much enjoyed the perusal of Dr. Whately's able and 

 valuable paper, and beg to offer a few remarks suggested by it. 



The author rightly emphasizes individuality as the crux of the 

 whole question. He meets effectually on its own ground the 

 philosophy which would explain away the God-consciousness of the 

 soul — that faculty in man which belongs to the depths of individual 

 experience. It may lie dormant until the " venture of faith " is 

 made, by which we understand that conscious effort of the whole 

 personality, which, as a " tentative probation," a testing (Heb. xi, 1), 

 is in reality " a struggling and fluctuating effort in man to win for 

 himself a valid hold upon things that exist under the conditions of 

 eternity." It " grounds itself solely and wholly on an inner and 

 vital relation of the soul to its source.""^ It is " an elemental energy 

 of the souV' which is beyond the ken of science, since no surgeon's 

 knife nor the most refined investigations of the chemical laboratory 

 can detect the immaterial and spiritual in us, any more than the 

 sweeping of the heavens with the telescope can find a Being, who is 

 Himself immaterial and spiritual. It is realized in the individual 

 experience, as those in whom it finds exercise have that " witness 

 borne to them through their faith " (Heb. xi, 39), which marks the 

 stage of steady " conviction," and in this the individuality of the 

 soul emerges — outside any philosophical system (p. 18), and still further 

 outside the range of what is dealt with in Professor Schafer's 

 Address at Dundee — as something in consciousness which is " com- 

 plementary," being neither contradictory to, nor a constituent part 

 of, any " system " to which belong those states of consciousness 

 which may be operated upon by the " machinery of Eeason" (p. 1 1), 

 and are of an inferior order to itself. Such states of consciousness 

 (enormously increased in number and variety in a highly complex 

 civilization) are correlated through sensory impressions and 



* Prof. Scott-Holland in Lux Mundi. 



