fessor Beale says in so many words, "that the force which weaves these tissues must be separable from the body;" for it very plainly is not the result of the action of physical agents. Ulrici shows, especially in a magnificent passage on immortality, that all the latest results of physiological research go to show that immortality is probable. You say that, unless we can prove the existence of something for the substratum of mind, we may be doubtful about the persistency of memory after death; but what if this non-atomic, ethereal body goes out of the physical form at death? In that case, what materialist will be acute enough to show that memory does not go out also? You affirm, that, without matter, there can be no activity of the mind; and that, although the mind may exist without matter, it cannot express itself. You say, that unless certain, I had almost said material, records remain in possession of the soul when it is out of the body, there must be oblivion of all that occurred in this life. But how are you to meet the newest form of science, which gives the soul a non-atomic enswathement as the page on which to write its records? That page is never torn up. The acutest philosophy is now pondering what the possibilities of this non-atomic, ethereal body are when separated from the fleshy body; and the opinion of Germany is coming to be very emphatic, that all that materialists have said about our memory ending when our physical bodies are dissolved, and about there being no possibility of the activity of the soul in separation from the physical body, is simply lack of education. There is high authority and great unanimity on the propositions I am now defending; and although I do not pledge myself always to defend every one of these theses, yet I must do so in the present state of knowledge and in the name of a Gulf-current of speculation which is twenty-five years old, and has a very victorious aspect as we look backward to the time when the microscope began its revelations. 22. It becomes clear, therefore, that, even in that state of existence which succeeds death, the soul may have a spiritual body. What! you are preaching to us the book called the Holy Word? Yes, I am; and here is a page of it [with a hand on coloured diagrams of living tissues]. A spiritual body! That is a phrase we did not expect to hear in the name of science. It is the latest whisper of science, and ages ago it was a word of revelation. 23. The existence of that body preserves the memories acquired during life in the flesh. 24. If this ethereal, non-atomic enswathement of the soul be interpreted to mean what the Scriptures mean by a spiritual body in distinction from a natural body, there is entire harmony between the latest whisper of science and the inspired doctrine of the resurrection. What if I should dissect a human body here? I might have a man made up of a skeleton; then I could have a human form made up of muscle. If I should take out the arteries, I should have another human form; and just so with the veins, and so with the nerves. 1 Gott und der Mensch, vol. i. pp. 222-225. Were they all taken out and held up here in their natural condition, they would have a human form, would they not? Very well; now, which form is the man? Which is the most important? But behind the nerves are those bioplasts. If I could take out those bioplasts that wove the nerves, and hold them up here by the side of the nerves, all in their natural position, they would have a human form, would they not? And which is the man? Your muscles are more important than your bones; your arteries, than your muscles; your nerves, than your arteries; and your bioplasts, that wove your nerves, are more important than your nerves. But you do not reach the last analysis here; for, if you unravel a man completely, there is something behind those bioplasts. There are many things we cannot see that we know exist. I know there is in my body a nervous influence that plays up and down my nerves like electricity on the telegraphic wires. I never saw it; I have felt it. Suppose that I could take that out. Suppose that just there is my man made up of nerves, and just yonder my man made up of red bioplasts; and that I have right here what I call the nervous influence separated entirely from flesh. You would not see it, would you? But would not this be a man very much more than that? or that? What if death thus dissolves the innermost from the outermost? We absolutely know that that nervous influence is there. We know, also, that there is something behind the action of these bioplasts. If I could take out this, which is a still finer thing than what we call nervous influence, and could have it held up here, I do not know but that it would be ethereal enough to go into heaven, for the Bible itself speaks of a spiritual body. You know it is there, this nervous influence. You know it is there, this power behind the bioplasts. When the Bible speaks of a spiritual body, it does not imply that the soul is material; it does not teach materialism at all; it simply implies that the soul has a glorified enswathement, which will accompany it in the next world. I believe that it is a distinct biblical doctrine that there is a spiritual body as there is a natural body, and that the former has extraordinary powers. It is a body which apparently makes nothing of passing through what we call ordinary matter. Our Lord had that body after His resurrection. He appeared suddenly in the midst of His disciples, although the doors were shut. He had on Him the scars that were not washed out, and that in heaven had not grown out. I tread here upon the edge of immortal mysteries; but the great proposition I wish to emphasise is, that science, in the name of the microscope and the scalpel, begins to whisper what revelation ages ago uttered in thunders, that there is a spiritual body with glorious capacities. This is a sad world if death is a leap in the dark. But, gentlemen, we are following haughty axiomatic certainty. In clear and cool precision, science comes to the idea of a spiritual body. We must not forget that this conclusion is proclaimed in the name of philosophy of the severest sort. The verdict is scientific; it happens also to be biblical. Is it the worse for that? It is more and more evident, as the training of the world advances, that everything funda mentally biblical is scientific, and that everything fundamentally scientific is biblical. In every leaf on the summer boughs there is a network which may be dissolved out of the verdant portion, and yet retain as a ghost the shape which it gave the leaf from which it came. In every human form, growing as a leaf on the tree Igdrasil, we know that network lies within network. Each web of organs, if taken separately, would have a form like that of man. There might be placed by itself the muscular portion of the human form, or the osseous portion, or the veins, or the arteries, and each would show the human shape. If the nerves could be dissolved out, and held up here, they would be a white form, coincident everywhere with the mysterious, human, physical outline. But the invisible nervous force is more ethereal than this ghost of nerves. The fluid in which the nervous waves occur is finer than the nervous filaments. What if it could be separated from its environment, and held up here? It could not be seen; it could not be touched. The hand might be passed through it; the eyes of men in their present state would detect no trace of it; but it would be there. Your Ulricis, your Lotzes, your Beales, adhere unflinchingly to the scientific method. The self-evident axiom, that every change must have an adequate cause, requires us to hold that there exists behind the nerves a non-atomic, ethereal enswathement for the soul, which death dissolves out from all complex contact with mere flesh, and which death, thus unfettering without disembodying, leaves free before God for all the development with which God can inspire it. "Then long Eternity shall greet our bliss With an individual kiss, And joy shall overtake us as a flood, When everything that is sincerely good And perfectly divine, With Truth and Peace and Love, shall ever shine About the supreme throne Of Him to whose happy-making sight, alone, When once our heavenly-guided souls shall climb Then, all this earthly grossness quit, Attired in stars we shall for ever sit, Triumphing over Death and Chance and thee, O Time!" THE END. PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO. EDINBURGH AND LONDON MILTON. INDEX. Bain, his confusion of "union" with close his materialism, 101-112. his "Mind and Body," 52, 104. his theory of the spontaneity of vital on the spontaneity of vital actions, 69. Bathybius. Häckel and Beale on, 3. Huxley's varying accounts of, 1-4. Beale, his method of microscopic research, his "Protoplasm, or Matter and Life," 73. marvellousness of their activities and pervade all living structures, 38. Cells examined under the microscope, 53, 54. Cell walls are formed matter, 38, 39. 2, 3, 34. Chemical and physical forces, 65. their origin and action described, 39, Chloroform, its value, 98. The ineffaceable contrast between the Border-land between the physical and the Boston and Edinburgh, 126. Effects of electrical stimulation of, 93. Facts concerning, 118, 119. Lower ganglia of, 121. of, 121. in man and in the ape, 22, 23, 31, 33. is the chief centre of force, 143. the meeting-place of the influential Bremer. Fredrika: her intercourse with Brown. Alexander: on the cell theory, 50. Butler, his "Analogy," 15. on conscience, 134. Butterfly. The: its history, 110. CABANIS, his theory of the soul, 26. on newspapers, 26. on the soul, III. Carmine, its use in microscopic research, 38, Carpenter, his "Mental Physiology," 11. his theory of the location of conscious- Cause and effect, 107. Causation. Belief in, 30. is the will of God, 25. Cellated nervous arcs, 79. Cellated theory. History of the, 36, 49, 50. is now discarded, 39. Christ: His appearance after His resurrec- The resurrection of, 139, 140. Christian theism, 128. Chrysalid and butterfly, 110. Clearness of thought. Importance of, 11, 40, 122. Colleges, what they teach, 113. Colouring living tissues. Beale's method of, Conception. The miraculous, 55. its prophetic action, 134, 135. its relation to the influential arcs, 80, 81. The unity of, 73, 74, 111, 142. Co-ordination of parts in living tissues, 47, Creation. Biblical account of, 5. is the act of God, 25. Creative personal First Cause. Hypothesis Crystals. Formation of, 40. Culture. Four stages in, 135, 136. DANA on the origin of man, 22. Darwin, his agreement with Butler as to the Darwin, his theory of natural selection, 4, his theory of the survival of the fittest, |