296 
CONCLUSION 
upon that grand point, which gives indeed interest and im 
portance to all the rest—the resurrection of the human 
dead. The thing might appear hopeless, did we not see 
a power at work adequate to the effect, a power under the 
guidance of an intelligent will, and a power penetrating the 
inmost recesses 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 thoroughly settled in our minds, there seems to 
be nothing in this process (concealed and mysterious as we 
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 organization , that the mind itself indeed 
consists in organization, are supposed to find a greater dif¬ 
ficulty than others do, in admitting a transition by death to 
a new state of sentient existence, because the old organiza¬ 
tion is apparently dissolved. But I do not see that any im¬ 
practicability 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 ordi¬ 
nary derivation of plants and animals from one another, a 
particle, in many cases, minuter than all assignable, all con¬ 
ceivable dimension; an aura, an effluvium, an infinitesimal; 
determines the organization of a future body; does no less 
than fix, whether that which is about to be produced shall 
be a vegetable, a merely sentient, or a rational being; an 
oak, a frog, or a philosopher; makes all these differences; 
gives to the future body its qualities, and nature, and spe¬ 
cies. And this particle, from which springs, and by which 
is determined a whole future nature, itself proceeds from, 
and owes its constitution to, a prior body; nevertheless, 
which is seen in plants most decisively, the incepted organ¬ 
ization, though formed within, and through, and by a pre¬ 
ceding organization, is not corrupted by its corruption, or 
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 
it was prepared requires its use. Now an economy which 
nature has adopted, when the purpose was to transfer an 
organization from one individual to another, may have some¬ 
thing analogous to it, when the purpose is to transmit an 
organization from one state of being to another state: and 
they who found thought in organization, may see something 
