studied, and that the chief interest of the subject undoubtedly centres. But it is in the species at the other extremity of the scale, those which are most removed from man, that experiment is most easy, and that definite results are most readily obtained at the choice of the experimenter. It is this separation of the field of inquiry, into that of the most interesting observation, and that of the most positive experiment, that has been one main occasion of the doubt thrown by many writers on the scientific evidence for the existence of spiritual entities.

It is, perhaps, not the same thing to shew that the existence of a spiritual entity, in a material organization, is a necessary hypothesis, and to conclude that such an entity has an independent existence, apart from such organization. Such, of course, is the natural inference. And with regard especially to the highest cases-to human existence

there is a great body of argument from which it is the natural result that the connection of the human spirit with the human organization is rather a phase or period in the existence of that spirit than the total duration of its individuality.

Thus it is undoubted that many of the phenomena of human life are rather such as point to the association of a distinct entity with an organized abode, than to the existence of a single compound material being. The phenomena of accidental injuries bear upon this question. Accident, or disease, will suddenly disable more or less important parts of the organization, without any corresponding interference with the mental energy. It may be urged that such observations are local; that the brain is the organ of mental energy; and that the loss of a limb, or the derangement of any important

function, only very slightly affects the brain.

But such a reply is virtually to admit the very point in question. If we can conceive of an organization in which the vital principle should be, not the cause and rule, but the consequence, of organization, we must conceive of an injury to a part as an injury to the whole. If, on the other hand, we divide the activity of the vital force, and apportion distinct organs to its distinct energies, such as the brain to the function of thought, we at once admit the distinct individuality of the spiritual entity, which thus diversely acts with or by its different material organs.

The phenomena of sudden and violent death, in the full prime and vigour of life, are intelligible on the hypothesis of an independent spiritual existence. They are very strongly opposed to our sense of probability on the hypothesis of such an accident proving the actual extinction of the energy which, up to that moment, was so full of apparent vitality. Such an event more resembles, so far as we can judge, the sudden fracture of a vessel containing a liquid, than the annihilation of a living being. The glass is shivered-the water escapes. The man is stabbed-can the automatic centre of love, hope, and intelligence be destroyed by such a casualty?

The fact that, as a common heritage of mankind, the immortality of the soul has been matter of hope and of faith, if not in itself a definite proof, is a matter of extreme import. We are not entitled to dismiss such a mass of evidence without explaining how the belief can have originated. We may conceive of mankind, either as having gradually risen, as a species, from an humbler development, or as having retrograded from a higher state of development to the lowest

It may well be said to be impossible, on the bare material theory of human life, to suggest any hypothesis for the existence, or for the development, of these separate faculties of the human mind. In this, as indeed in almost every branch of philosophical inquiry, Materialism presents but a hopeless blank. As it fails to present any intelligent hypothesis as to the law of the well-known difference between organic and inorganic chemistry, so is it perfectly silent, confused, and helpless as to any problem that arises from the study of history, or the attempt to draw from the book of nature any lessons beyond those of chemical or physical science. The creative faculty, most thinkers hold, is denied to man. It may not be within the range of the human intellect to conceive a perfectly new idea, nor in that of the human power to embody such an idea. We can call no new form of life into being. That man should have formed the idea of an invisible, ever-acting Ruler and Maker of all, would be an exception to such a general law so striking as to render the observations on which the asserted law was based entirely anomalous. Again, that man should find within him the instincts of veneration, faith, trust, and hope, as directed to a future life, to the prosecution, under

changed conditions, of that education which, in the highest class of human minds, becomes yet more active the greater is the wealth accumulated by experience; that he should be able to form the conception of a happy immaterialised existence, if no such lot were in store for him, would be contrary to all that we know of organic function. All instincts have their object or final cause, as well as their source. All conceptions, so far as we can verify them, have their appropriate objective existence. That the highest conceptions, and the noblest instincts should alone be false, visionary, and unfounded, would be an anomaly in the observed order of nature.

It is easy to speak of religion as the invention of a priestly class. That cruel advantage is constantly taken of any form of human weakness by moral sharks is as certain as that the wounded fish, or rat, or wolf is at once devoured by its congeners. But the fullest admission of this kind still leaves the root of the matter intact. The priest may take advantage of the fear of future punishment; but in what did that fear originate? The priest may prey upon the abuse of a human instinct; but no priest, philosopher, or legislator could ever originate a human instinct. He could only direct his intelligence to the cultivation or to the abuse of certain beliefs. The origin of these beliefs is a question entirely unaffected by his conduct. The question is not as to the form which, among any people, or at any time, religious belief has assumed; but as to the fact that belief, under some form or other, is practically universal.

There are two other independent considerations, from each of which may be drawn an inference as distinct as any at which it is possible to arrive in this class of inquiry.

The first of these results from the observation of the perfect economy of nature. No fragments of her feast are lost. The mode in which the elements of the material world, in that constant change which pervades alike inorganic and organic existence, are continually assuming new forms of combination; -the manner in which, amid this constant change, may be traced the secular development of progress; how reptilian life succeeded aquatic life, to be in its turn succeeded by a terrestrial fauna ;-this perfect economy, and steady progress of nature are altogether irreconcilable with the waste that would ensue if mortal life formed the whole of human existence. A vast and well ordered series culminates in the production of an intelligent being, capable of education to a power and a dignity to which no limit can be readily assigned. The education of each individual of this race corresponds, as species corresponds to genus, to the historic education of the whole race. The term race, in fact, is a philosophic conception; the actual fact is the existence of an enormous number of individuals. To suppose that each of these individuals shall undergo an education for the short space of threescore or fourscore years, an education for which an unmeasured past has provided facilities, and then, this degree of excellence attained, that all is lost, all is wasted, and the cultivated product of SO much combined thought and toil is to be blown like the chaff from the threshing floor, is an hypothesis so contrary to all that we can observe of the order of nature, and so unsupported by either reason or analogy, that it certainly throws the onus of proof on the side of the materialist advocate.

Again with regard to the entire order of visible nature. It must either be or not be the result of definite law, order, and reason. But

the negative hypothesis is one that cannot be stated in plain terms. To affirm that there is no law or order is to affirm the existence of a chaos of which we have no knowledge. To affirm the action of law is only in other words to affirm the action of thought, reason, wisdom. Nor is this any other conception than that of a thinking, reasoning, wise Power. Thus from the very fact of the existence of the material order of the universe, the thought is irresistibly led to the belief in an invisible Maker and Ruler. Our conception of this being may be to the last degree inadequate; but the human mind must be deficient in a natural faculty that is without some such conception.

Considerations of this nature, rather indicated than wrought into system, are enough to shew that the general belief of mankind, first, in the distinct nature of spiritual entities, as the primary principles of organized beings; secondly, in the permanent existence of such entities, that is to say, in the immortality of the soul; and thirdly, in the rule and government of nature by invisible power, are not only not unphilosophical, but are so closely in accordance with all phenomena that their negation is all but inconceivable. If brought forward, not as a positive, but as a negative, hypothesis, the denial amounts to little less than a refusal to think at all. For, on the one hand, the spiritual hypothesis is adequate, as an hypothesis, to explain and coordinate the phenomena. On the other hand, no hypothesis of a contrary nature has ever yet been suggested, according to which any such explanation could be given. We are thus shut up eitner to the adoption of some form or other of spiritual hypothesis, or to the blank negation of thought as to the intimate nature of the phenomena of material existence.

It results from this view that the historic account of the origin of such a mighty movement as the establishment of Christianity has to be regarded from a totally different standpoint from that which is occupied by such a writer as the author of Supernatural Religion. Instead of having our attention directed to a certain number of events, each of which was in itself either incredible or to be rendered credible only by a species of evidence which is not forthcoming, we are called on to investigate phenomena which, however special, are cases of what has always been considered to be a general law.

If it be not only not absurd, but highly probable, that a spiritual entity forms the primary principle of man; if it be further highly pro

bable that the course and order of the world is directed by a Supreme Power and Intelligence, it is indispensable that some method of communicating the wish of the Supreme Intelligence to the subjects of his rule must exist, and must, when requisite, come into operation. This logical result of the hypothesis, again, has been tacitly accepted by mankind. That God, however imperfectly conceived by man, has, at times, communicated with man, is the belief of man as a race. The only question that remains, if we once admit the spiritual hypothesis, is as to the mode of communication.

Unless, therefore, some unconscious error has glided into the foregoing argument, the difference that results from an unphilosophical or a philosophical use of the word supernatural," is briefly this.

If the word imply something opposed to the ordinary course, and accepted laws of nature, the evidence which is necessary to establish the occurrence of any supernatural phenomenon must be of a precise and overwhelming

kind. It must be so clear and certain as to assume the form of logical proof. As it is needed to establish something which is primá facie improbable, not to say incredible, it must be of a more exact and accurate character than that information which supplies the ordinary data of human life. In the absence of such evidence, an absence which is asserted by a certain school of criticism, religion, of any kind, is entirely without adequate basis.

On the contrary, if we regard the entire group of phenomena of which what is called the supernatural forms an important part, and possibly covers the whole, we find ourselves in presence of a series of observations of which a portion may be confirmed by direct experiment. We find, in the simplest of these observations, the indication of a special peculiarity which is absent from ordinary chemical and mechanical phenomena. This ever present characteristic, of independent, automatic, or individual action, increases in its intensity with each ascending step in the order of organization. In the highest developments it not only passes far beyond human control, but may reasonably be held, in its turn, to control and modify human action. On some theory of this nature, however imperfect, all known human institutions have been originally established. The law, the literature, and the poetry of mankind, no less than its architecture, art. and social organization, are based on the belief in spiritual entities, whether existing in organized and material form, or believed to exist in a mode not distinctly to be understood by those yet in the organized condition. That more or less frequently, but always as a somewhat exceptional occurrence, direct communications have been made from this invisible

world to certain individuals is a faith which underlies not only all forms of religion, but all the ultimate sanctions of legislation among all people, in all time. To affirm that this belief, however it may have been perverted, is without foundation in reality, is equivalent to ascribing to the human mind a faculty which, according to our best analyses, it does not possess. For

to affirm that religion is the invention of man, is to attribute to the human intelligence a creative

power.

*

II.

The self-imposed, but unacknowledged, task of the author of the book called Supernatural Religion, may be compared to one of those vigorous efforts by which a partizan leader has at times attained a brief and transitory renown. In such cases it has often happened that the chieftain was unacquainted with some of the primary maxims of the art of war. The success which he attained was due, in the first place, to audacity, rather than to consummate generalship, on his own part. But secondly, and mainly, it arose from the unpreparedness and disorganization of his enemies. It was thus (as those under whose eyes that rapid drama-comic rather than tragicof the successful raid of Garibaldi on the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was enacted well know) that a change of masters was effected in that volcanic region soon after death relaxed the firm grasp of King Ferdinand the Second. In the utter helplessness of a party paralyzed by the loss of their astute and active ruler, lay the secret of the success of a movement which would have been checked at

any moment by the fidelity of a single well-handled regiment; and which, finally, was only saved from overpowering disaster by the advance of the regular troops of Victor Emmanuel.

It is at a triumph no less sudden and complete, over the whole vast realm of Faith in things unseen, that the author of these volumes. aims. But the disproportion between the force at his command and the extent of the wide field that he seeks to occupy, is far greater than was the case in that romantic Italian struggle into which some of us were able so closely to look. The guerilla General who sat down to take Capua, one of the strongest places. in Italy, without (if some of those engaged in the service may be trusted) a gun, an ambulance, or an ounce of quinine among the enthusiastic youth-of whom the fair lads of England were the flower-who formed what he called his army, was not more devoid of the main qualifications. of the general and of the statesman, than is the anonymous author before us of those of the philosophical investigator of the great subject of Religion. It is not by mere defects of form, and imperfections of execution, that the want of mastery of the subject is betrayed. The vice of the work is fundamental. Between the object of the book, as declared by its title; that is to say, the demonstration of the falsehood of what men call religion

for religion, apart from what is called the supernatural, is known by the name of ethics-and the mode of attack employed, which is the criticism of a certain group books, there is an utter disparity. If we admit, for the sake of argument, all for which the author so

of