sys

been legislated into the very nature of things. If the tem were not essentially founded in righteousness, there could be no proper sin. Where there is no law, there is no transgression. Where there is only unrighteous law transgression is not sin, but virtue. Sin is impossible, then, where righteous law does not pre-exist. But how can this law be transgressed? Why does not God prevent it? We answer: A free system is better than a mechanical system; and freedom necessarily implies the possibility of sinning. This possibility, then, is given in the fact of freedom. But could not God so act upon the will by some hidden constraint of motive, as to lead it in any given direction? Some hold that God does so act in every case, and thus becomes properly the author of sin. This device of a secret constraint is a favorite method for reforming incorrigible sinners and devils. But in truth, it is only a roundabout way of canceling freedom, and a return to the notion of automatic sainthood. It is a demand that the free being be degraded to an automaton and mechanically rearranged. If it be asked, How could sin originate in a state of innocence? the reply is easy: We have a complex nature, every part of which, in its place, is innocent and becoming. Moreover, our desires and impulses are in themselves unlimited and also unmoral. But the health of the soul demands that an ideal order be maintained in it; and morality consists, not in introducing new factors into the soul, but in ruling ourselves according to the soul's ideal law. At bottom, sin is allowed disorder. It is permitting the soul to live at random. It is the acquiescence of the will in a usurpation of supreme rule by the

lower powers. But the possibility of sinning does not necessarily involve a taint or evil tendency in the soul.

But not all these considerations suffice to fully explain the facts of life. If the consequences of sin were confined to the sinner, there would be less difficulty in the problem. But as it is, the innocent suffer and perish as well as the guilty. Why was sin permitted to have such terrific consequences? We may admit the goodness of the laws of heredity and social solidarity in a righteous world, but their effect is so blighting and so unjust in a sinful world, that it seems as if they could not be excused. To this there is but one sufficient answer. The present life is a time of probation; and as such, it is a time of abnormal moral adjustment. But there is another life in which every one shall be judged according to that which he hath, and not according to that which he hath not. There men shall take their places according to their moral character; and there the Judge of all the earth shall do the best, for saint and sinner alike, which the eternal laws of righteousness will permit. To one who has this faith, life presents indeed a dark problem; but to one who has it not, blindness is the only refuge from despair. There is no use in further argument. We admitted at the start that a speculative solution is impossible, and we now repeat the admission. We do not agree with the pessimist, but our chief reason is, our faith in a future life. If he cannot advance to this faith, we shake hands and separate. He chooses the gospel of despair; we choose the gospel of hope. The future must decide between us.

CHAPTER X.

THE SOUL: SPIRITUALISM OR MATERIALISM.

ATHEISM is commonly allied to materialism and

physical fatalism; and, conversely, these doctrines rarely fail to pass into atheism. On the other hand, the belief in an active, substantial soul, implies a belief in a personal God. If the spiritual philosophy can be justified, most of the objections to theism disappear. Hence the propriety of discussing the subject in the present work.

The tendency of the uncritical mind is to lose itself in its objects. Hence it finds nothing so real as the objects of sense-perception. The typical conception of the real is the tangible or visible. When this tendency

or instinct, we have

is uncorrected by either reflection the coarsest type of materialism. From constant dealing with the object, the subject at last forgets that there is and must be a subject of knowledge. Because of this objective tendency of the unreflecting, the materialistic argument seems very strong to crude common sense. We know nothing of mental phenomena except in connection with a body. Mind and body begin together, advance together, decay together, and, so far as our observation goes, they perish together. In fact as well as in poetry, the grave remains the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns. There

is nothing in experience to suggest that mind and body are separable. During life, the mind is most rigorously conditioned by the body; and we never find it apart from the body. What conclusion, then, can be more probable than that the mind is simply a function of the organism? By this is not meant that mental phenomena are material, or that they can be assimilated to any mechanical phenomena whatever; it would never occur to any sane materialist to teach such a doctrine. His theory is, that mind is only a general word for mental phenomena; and that these phenomena result from physical organization. They are the melody of the instrument. They are the rainbow which is painted on the dark cloud. And as the melody is unlike the instrument, and the rainbow is unlike the cloud, so mental phenomena are totally unlike the dark physiological processes which underlie them. But as the melody dies when the instrument is broken, and the rainbow vanishes when the cloud is shed; so mental phenomena disappear when the organism is shattered. Mind does not belong to the substances, but only to the phantoms of the universe.

This argument seems to be in perfect harmony with common sense; and the inductive canon, known as the method of concomitant variations, appears to justify the conclusion. Yet the superficiality of the argument is evident. Materialism always starts with the assumption that matter is a perfectly clear notion, and that it is known as a noumenon. It is an almost impossible insight to the materialist that matter as noumenon is a purely metaphysical and speculative notion. It rarely

or never occurs to him that his atoms and molecules are as purely matters of inference as are God and the soul. Accordingly, he insists that there is no telling what matter can do. Every day it is growing in mystery and capacity. Hence, he says, it is the height of rashness to say what matter cannot do. We see it explaining the organism; and we see nothing but matter in the organism. The simplicity of this position both disarms criticism and renders it unnecessary. We merely mention it to put the reader on his guard against the unconscious imposition which the materialist practices upon himself at this point. In truth, materialism is based less on observation than on a metaphysical theory; and its metaphysics are based on the imagination rather than on reason. It does not think in concepts, but in images; and its reasoning is a train of misapplied sense-pictures. In this respect materialism is still on the level of the brute mind; in which, probably, all seeming reasoning is but a semi-pictorial association of sense-experiences. The essence of superstition, also, consists in mistaking sense-images, with their spatial and temporal conditions, for thoughts and principles. In this respect materialism belongs to the family of superstitions.

We said that to unreflecting common sense the materialistic argument must seem very forcible. However, common sense lives more by instinct than by logic; and on this account it has never favored materialism. The word soul, occurring in all cultivated languages, and the content of the word, indicates a general belief that the soul is not a passing phase of matter, but an abiding In its spontaneous language the race has re

essence.