DR. GREGORY SMITH, ON PSYCHOLOGY. 



129 



A man driving a horse over a common evidently goes where the 

 stronger of the two wills directs ; a train weighing hundreds of 

 tons seems governed by merely physical laws as it rushes onward, 

 but the fate of the train and all the passengers is governed by the 

 judgment and will of the man in the signal box who, with a touch 

 on a lever, turns it right or wrong at a junction. 



Lieut.-Colonel Alves said : I want to ask the speaker two 

 questions. First, what is ontology, and second, what is the soul 1 

 I have a fairly clear idea of what spirit and body are, but what is 

 the soul ? In Genesis ii we are told, " Man became a living soul," 

 but in the Bible even fish are spoken of as living souls, and we have 

 the expression " Love the Lord thy God with all thy soul," as 

 different from heart, mind, and strength. What is the soul 1 Is it 

 generated through union of spirit and matter, or is it the combination 

 of these two 1 Without doubt the proportions of a person's brain 

 affect his feelings, making him, as regards this life and the next, 

 either cheerful or despondent, without any real reason for either of 

 such feelings. The material element in man affects unquestionably 

 his " soul's " views of things, and must not be confounded with the 

 things themselves ; nor must we confound the corrupted spirit of the 

 natural life, the property of every man with the Divine Spirit, the 

 property of regenerated man alone. 



Colonel Alves subsequently communicated the following : — 



It seems to me that the Church generally has fallen into error 

 from deriving its idea of the " soul " from heathen philosophy 

 instead of the Bible, making it for all without exception, either the 

 essential individual existing from eternity to eternity, or else some- 

 thing implanted in each individual at or before birth, being specially 

 created for the purpose by the Almighty, and, of course, absolutely 

 sinless. 



This doctrine leads, I think, to one of two conclusions : — (1) Pure 

 Pelagianism, or, (2) Evil lying in matter, tainting the sinless soul. 

 Neither conclusion is scriptural. 



Our Lord's incarnation is spoken of by many as a " great mystery." 

 It seems to me to be the solution of a great mystery. In His 

 case, the Holy Ghost quickened the form from which grew the 

 material part of His human nature ; and in this material part, 

 derived from His mother, herself a sinner and needing a Saviour, 

 resided no sin. 



