in its own case, is repugnant to all we are taught by common experience or physical science.

To illustrate the point I take this sheet of paper and fold it thus. It bends back upon itself, as you perceive, but by means of its parts; one part leaning against another part, not the whole against the whole. If, then, this unity of agent and patient, of subject and object is so contrary to all the laws of matter, assuredly the act of self-consciousness cannot come from an extended, divisible substance like the brain, but must come from an unextended, indivisible, or simple substance, and that simple substance we term the mind. The brain, then, is not the mind.

But neither is the brain the cause of thought and volition. Water cannot flow higher than its source, and from matter nothing can come but what is material. A sensible faculty can neither create nor represent what is spiritual. The fingers can spread paint over the canvas, can polish the marble, can fashion the letters of the alphabet into an endless variety of combinations; the voice can ring out all the changes of the gamut; the eye can see the colors of a picture, the profile of a statue, the words of a poem or discourse; the ear can catch the notes of a song; the fancy can take in all these sights and sounds, but neither hand nor voice can create, nor eye nor fancy represent that which lies beneath these outward symbols. This the intellect can do. Behind the coloring of painting, the outlines of sculpture, the language of prose and poetry, the harmony of music, the intellect can throw out and gaze upon the grand idea that breathes into them all their life and beauty.

It can strip the image limned upon the imagination of all its hues and look upon it as it stands out in all its pure, immaterial form. It can pass the bounds of time and space, can

penetrate into the essence of things corporeal or spiritual, into the eternal principles of truth and goodness and justice, into the secrets of the Divinity. And what the intellect can apprehend the will can freely desire. It can place its end in the love of the Supreme Being, can refer all to Him, and can withstand whatever power would separate it from that love. It may be allured by the glitter of gold, the charms of pleasure, the mirage of glory, but conquered where it wills to resist, never. Would you use force against it? Not all the tortures malice may invent can hush its noble cry: "I will not.” The "Transfiguration" of Raphael, the "Moses" of Michaelangelo, the "Phaedo" of Plato, the "Hamlet" of Shakespeare, the "Summa" of St. Thomas, the "Divina Commedia" of Dante, the "Messiah" of Handel, the sublime "No!" of St. Agnes and St. Pancratius, could these be the product of a little clay, however finely wrought by nature? No, thought and volition cannot come from the brain. The faculties by which they are produced must needs be spiritual, and spiritual, too, must be their root, the soul.

But if the soul is simple and spiritual, it is of its own nature incorruptible. Death is not a state, but an act; not annihilation, but dissolution. It is the severing of the sweet wedlock of soul and body and the extinction of the physical life which sprang from that wedlock. As every schoolboy knows, the material elements of the body undergo after death a slow process of combustion, which we call decomposition, whereby they are transformed.

Now if the soul is simple, it has no parts, and if it has no parts, it cannot be decomposed. Nor can it perish, as in the case of brutes, because of its dependence upon the body. For if the soul is spiritual as well as simple, its dependence is not intrinsic; it depends upon the body in general, and the brain

in particular, as its instrument. Hence when the instrument perishes, the master survives. Men can kill the body, because it is organized matter; they cannot kill the soul, because it is self-subsistent. It is beyond the reach of pistol or dagger and lives on, in spite of the purpose of the self-murderer, a disembodied spirit. By its union with the body it marked the latter as human, dowered it with its being and nature. But now that the tie which bound them is broken, the soul subsists in its own individual essence. It does not, as the materialist holds, go

"To mix forever with the elements,

To be a brother to the insensible rock,

And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon."

Nor does it pass into the infinite, as the pantheist dreams, since this would be contrary to the very nature of the infinite. The mode, however, of its action, following the mode of its existence, must be different from that of its present state. Its higher faculties, the intellect and will, for whose exercise it needed remotely the imagery of sense, now attain their objects directly. Freed from the bonds of matter, they are no longer trammelled by the sensible, but are in touch with the supersensible. Naturally, then, or by reason of its own essential constitution, the soul outlives the body and, if destroyed at all, must be destroyed only by annihilation.

And can it be annihilated? That it can is certain, though by nothing less than by infinite power. Annihilation is the reduction of something to nothing; it is the refusal of further creative conservation. He only, therefore, who can call a being out of nothing can call it back to nothing; He only who preserves it in existence can cease to preserve; He only can annihilate.

And will He ever annihilate the soul of man? Deep down in human nature there is a moral law whose imperious dictates are forever and for all. It did not come from custom or education, whose laws are for this or that people, for this or that time. Nor yet from men; for it binds a man as man, and man as man is not below his fellow. He alone could have carved it there who is above man as man, the Author and Lord of human nature, the Supreme Lawgiver - God. But there is no law without a sanction. A legislator who dispensed with all sanction would rightly be taken by young and old not to be in earnest in his command. If, then, God has given a law to man, He must have attached a perfect sanction to that law. Where shall we find that perfect sanction in the present life? Not surely in the distribution of the goods and ills of this world. How many virtuous men meet with continual trials and sufferings during the whole course of their lives! How many wicked men enjoy prosperity to their latest breath! Perhaps in human law? But how many crimes are committed in secret, how many infamies escape the law, and how often does not the law itself serve as a veil to the abuse of human power! Perchance, then, in public opinion? But how many offences public opinion condones it should condemn, and condemns it should condone! That perfect sanction, therefore, will perhaps be found in remorse? But the remorse which follows a sin arises principally from fear of future punishment, just as the peace of a good conscience carries with it an earnest of future recompense. Moreover, sensitiveness of conscience depends on our surroundings, on education, on reflection, and on many other conditions, and therefore its verdicts are variable and unequal and often unjust. In fact the moral sense becomes so dulled by habitual wrong-doing that were conscience our only judge, the greatest sinner would suffer least,

the greatest saint most. Besides, to escape remorse a little poison or a bullet would be sufficient, and then God and society, instead of a guilty man to punish, would have but a corpse.

Most likely, then, the sanction of divine law consists in that peace which accompanies the practice of virtue? But how would he be rewarded who died for virtue's sake? A man is dragged into the presence of a tyrant, who, while barbarously torturing him, exclaims: "Abjure thy faith or die!" and the martyr answers: "I will die," suffers in silence, and dies smiling. Where is his reward? A young soldier is placed in a post of the greatest peril. Were he to leave it, he would be saved. But duty to God, the good name of the army, the honor of his flag, the safety of his country keep him there; he remains and dies at his post. Where is the prize for this hero? Oh, his name will be noised abroad! But to what end do they talk of him and set flowers upon his grave, if that is his goal?

It is only in a future life, therefore, that God's justice can be vindicated, and that future life must be eternal, for the just soul demands unfading bliss as a reward of its perseverance; nor, on the other hand, would any temporal penalty deter sinful man from yielding to the violence of passion. It is fitting, moreover, that the rebellion and ingratitude of a subject against a Lord of infinite majesty should be punished by a penalty finite in intensity, but indefinite in duration.

The natural and universal yearning for illimitable happiness implanted in the human breast by its Creator points to the same conclusion. All men necessarily long to be happy and to be happy forever. But this desire can never be satiated on earth. Earthly happiness is but fleeting, as the gleams of sunshine on a cloudy day; and even were it lasting, it would fail