The central Presbyterian. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1856-1908, 1881-05-25

he uudlu ODleCG Vi lue
to Halls book seems to be to get three
celebrated gentlemen, who stand on the
Christian side of science, namely, Joseph
Cook, the celebrated Boston lecturer,
Prof Gray, the great Botanist of Har-
ward University, and the no less distin-
guished Dr. McCosh, President of Prince
ton College, thrown into the same mortar
with Darwin, Tyndall, and Huxley, that
he (the author) may be able to grind
all of them at once to fine powder with
the rough pestle of his crude logic.
If denunciation and ridicule were logic,
then MILFORD Hall would be one of the
great reasoners of the present age If
assumptions and bold declarations were
arguments, his reasoning would be ire
sistible. But fortunately cool-headed
men are not often found ready to con-
clude that statement of a man like Dr.
McCosh is "self-annihilating," simply be-
cause some one else quotes the statement
in a garbled and disconnected form, and
then declares it to be "self-annihilating.
Nor to assume that conclusion of some
distinguished scientific Investigator is "a
great absurdity," simply because some
body says so.
The author then begins his great argu-
ment, on which he basis his theory, that
sound is material substance distinct
from the air and all other bodies that
transmit sound by assuming" (not
proving) that the soul of man is mate
rial substance possessing organic struc-
ture." He says on page 30: Whenever
we are enabled thus to grasp and COM
prehend this radical fact that there are,
or may be, invisible, intangible, and con-
sequently incorporeal bodies all around
us, possessing forms and organic struc-
lures, as literally and truly as do the
physical bodies recognised by our cor
poreal senses, then, and not till then, will
we begin to get the first glimpse into the
true solution of the problem of human
life, and that mysterious something so
vaguely spoken of as the Immortality of
the soul. To suppose that the hui
man soul is bodiless, formless, and organ
less, is thought about as unsatisfactory
as to try to conceive of the Immortality
of rubber balloon. How can an i'm
mortality be predicated of man worth
hoping for, if the soul is not to see, hear
feel, taste, and smell And if these
powers, even in ourmost exalted concep-
lions of them, are to exist in the eternal
state of man, then he must possess the es-
sential organs by which such faculties are
to be exercised and enjoyed" 1t will be
seen from this that he believes that the
soul is an "incorporeal body" possessing
form and organic structure" How an
incorporeal' substance can be "body"
it is hard to conceive; and still more diff
ficult to get clear notion Of an iaaco1po-
real organic structure.
Swedenborgians hold similar ghostly
doctrine thus expressed by one of their
most popular writer's "That the soul or
spiritual body is a form in exact CORES
pondence with the external, material
body; that it presents similar assem-
blage of parts and features; and that it
undergoes no change in these respects
when it casts off the material envelope,
x x is involved in ghoStly- behef" = y
Literally the ghost of man is his soul or
spiritual body; and in order that this
may be seen, it must be looked at with
adequate organs of sight, namely, the
eyes of spiritual body like itself. We
have such eyes every one of us.
Ghosts, therefore, so far from being mere
phantoms or apparitions, the terrifying
illusions of heated imagination, are far
more real than our bodies of flesh and
blood. They endure forever, whereas
the latter are but temporary consolida-
tons of little atmosphere, with a few
pounds of phosphate of lime G13ndom,
" Life, de-" Ed 1869 PIP. 217-221.
The ghost of the Swedenborgian is not
quite so mate15alastic as that OF Hall, but
very much like it in "organic structure.
Of course both of these authors must have
seen ghosts, else they would not know so
much about them
Whence came this soul of man? Hall
says: 1t is certain that no substance in
tie universe can be annihilated, or cease
to exist, however often it may change its
form, and it is equally settled and in
disputable principle of science, that no
substances, corporeal or incorporeal, can
come into existence or be created out of
nothing, even by the aid of dtUiaee power,
Gtalics mine). am aware that this
trenches upon one of the prominent
articles Of the Westminster Confession of
Faith, held almost sacredly by large
bodies of Christian believers in this coun-
try and Europe. But there are certain
automatic truths so self-evidently settled
even in the very roots of science, that to
controvert them by any article of reli-
oious belief is to fv into the face of all