beauty in these -no poetry in these? And was it a spirit unworthy of chivalric breasts gave birth to such glorious conceptions as these? And, again, is there no poetry in their souls whose hands are daily hardening at the task of working and superintending these vast machines? Let us beware lest we come to look upon them as mere machines. There is no materialism so bad as this of an insensibility to the claims of our common humanity. And there is a danger lest, in endeavouring to form an estimate concerning these miracles of the day, and contrasting their immensity with the comparative insignificance of our individual attempts, we exclude man too much from our thoughts, and attribute too much to "the power of machinery," forgetting that the one is to the other what providence is to the world and God to both. There is an unfathomed mine of thought in the vast masses of humanity accumulated within the factory walls; and we never pass one of those leviathan structures without thinking that beneath so much slate and timber is pent enough of mind, if properly trained and directed, to accomplish almost anything that mortal heart could wish or immortal spirit could conceive. Let but imagination once attempt to fathom that profound of human life,—the birth-life-death-of every bosom's swell in that throng of a thousand-a thousand in which every unit is an infinite-A SOUL,—and how unequal to the comprehension of even that single unit are her highest powers! If one incomprehensible-a thousand, how surpassing thought!-how endless a theme for fancy's musings here! The early dawn of spirit on the world of life and its ripening glow; the busy mind and the decaying sense; and last, the gathering of the evening clouds and the fall of nature's tears, where lingered the parting beams of the light of day!

not so.

Yes-if there be indeed such a thing as poetry, it is here. A river of feeling and perennial spring of thought: bubbles for the day of mirth, and diamond-drops to gem the eye of beauty in the pensive hour. We err who deem that the art of man has banished poetry from this earth. It is He must needs have first exiled himself and his kind; for poetry is of his nature an integral part, and where he is there must it ever be. Even art itself is but another development of the nature of man; and though material in its forms, is nevertheless spiritual in its essence, and "beautiful exceedingly" in its use. For utility-what is it but the embodiment of thought that was the poetry of a by-gone day?

We grant, indeed, that the world does not now exhibit just the same developments of beauty that it did of yore; that the spirit of poesy has quitted some of its older tenements and entered into new; that there is at least the semblance of diversity between the poetry we find in the past and that we think to discover beneath the surface of the present; that the building of towns and the digging of railways, the smoke of furnaces and din of factories, have sadly disfigured the vernal meads and obscured the arcadian skies of the olden time, if they have not yet driven the winged minstrely of nature from the scanty retreats which the scattered hedge-row and far-off forests still afford. But what we have lost in uncultivated, we have gained in cultivated beauty; and what at first seemed dissolution, will, in the end, be seen to be only a life-giving change. In all these, as we may deem them, encroachments of art on the just dominions of nature, we shall find, if we attentively observe, the supremacy of nature still. In all this bustle and turmoil, there is still of the new and striking and wonderful enough, and more-to meet imagination's utmost stretch. And

in the human part-the busy coining brain, contriving and executing all these hopeful plans-and the unfathomable, ever-restless heart, with its fluctuating sea of passion and of circumstance, beating hither and thither, we have still the purest and the deepest source of song. The poetry of life can never die.

Nor is there wanting still for those who worship beauty best "in temples not made with hands," in the rural landscape or the forest glade, the lonely vale, with its wild-flowers and placidly rippling stream, or the stately mountain grove, with its song of many birds and the holy hymn of trees, many a spot of loveliness in our railroad-ridden isle, where they may securely pay their sweet idolatry at nature's shrine. "And the deep blue laughing sky" of summer, and winter's hoary locks, and the opening bud of spring, and the autumn's falling leaf,—

"All these are beauteous still, and still for man
Adorn the varid cycle of the year."

And the ever-rolling sca, with its soul-heaving surge, its craggy cliffs and pebbled-sounding shore, with its sunny calms and blackening storms, is still as fresh and green, as mighty and changeless still, as when its Maker's spirit first flashed upon its face. The poetry of nature is little impaired by the progress of art. It is the romance of barbarism alone that suffers diminution from the march of civilization or the innovations of time. And even this is essentially preserved to us in the poems and legends of our early national manners-obscured perhaps a little by the medium of tradition, but at the same time greatly purified from that offensive grossness which is the invariable characteristic of a rude, illiterate, and superstitious people. Let us not, then, living in an age so rich in its historical associations, its accumulated stores of the wisdom and experience of preceding times, and its yet exhaustless treasures of mental and moral wealth,-in an age so prodigal of industrious, enterprising, and benevolent effort, and so prolific in events, that for the intensity of their immediate interest, and the significance of their prophetic import, surpass those of any former period in the history of the world,-let us not in such circumstances exclaim that the age of chivalry is gone, or that the reign of poetry is at an end. Rather, while disposed to cherish a natural affection for the imaginative features of the past, let us show an equal willingness to recognise the grand and the beautiful in the occurrences of the present, and the new world of promise that is even now before our eyes.

"The following ludicrous circumstance once happened, and was related to the writer by a native in graphic style. Two men had succeeded in stealing an iron pot. Having just taken it from the fire, it was rather warm for handling conveniently over a fence, and by doing so, it fell on a stone, and was cracked. It is iron,' said they; and off they went with their booty, resolving to make the best of it, that is, if it would not serve for cooking, they would transform it into knives and spears. After some time had elapsed, and the hue and cry about the missing pot had nearly died away, it was brought forth to a native smith, who had laid in a stock of charcoal for the occasion. The pot was farther broken to make it more convenient to lay hold of with the tongs, which are generally of the bark of a tree. The native Vulcan, unacquainted with cast-iron, having with his small bellows, one in each hand, produced a good heat, drew a piece from the fire. To his utter amazement it flew into pieces at the first stroke of his little hammer. Anether and another piece was brought under the action of the fire, and then under the hammer with no better success. Both the thief and the smith, gazing with eyes and mouth dilated on the fragments of iron scattered round the stone anvil, declared their belief that the pot was bewitched, and concluded pot-stealing to be a bad speculation."—Moffat's Missionary Labours.

A STUDENT'S THOUGHTS ON SOME ABSTRUSE QUESTIONS.

ON THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL-No. I.

TO THE READERS OF "THE STUDENT."

DEAR FRIENDS,It is not my purpose to occupy your time by giving expression to any high-sounding remarks on the importance of the subject we are about to contemplate. The interest that attaches itself to the soul's immortality could be heightened by no eloquence that I am competent to adduce. The longings and intense desires of your own minds, with their affections, their hopes, and their fears,-the desire inherent in each intelligent creature for the prolongation of existence,—the lofty faculties of man, which yearn for full and complete development, and seek a higher range, and a wider scope, that his present humble position can afford,—and, above all, the positive horror which he seems naturally to experience when contemplating the gloom and ghastliness of death,-all conspire to render the subject of a future existence one of deep and absorbing import.

The soul's immortality as a fact is placed beyond doubt by the revelation of God's purposes respecting it: so that our present object is not to institute an inquiry as though the demonstration of a fact depended upon its result, but rather to ascertain how far our mental faculties by the light of pure reason are adequate to the discovery of this truth-how they thus exhibit its philosophy: and it is also our purpose to point out the fallacy of many objections that have been urged against it.

Vitality, or the power by which the proximate principles composing our various organs are held together, and through which those organs, individually differing though they do, are sustained and formed by the same original elements, seems rather to entrench on the present subject,-inasmuch as an opinion is and has been very commonly held, that the soul, or thinking principle in man, imparts also life to the body, and, after employing its energies in animating lifeless clay, at last wings its flight to the regions of light and life. If, however, we consider for a moment that consciousness is an essential quality of the human soul, which of course implies its perfect cognizance of its own actions whilst a perception of that consciousness exists, we must conclude that, if the soul were the mere animal life of man, we should be aware how incessantly it was engaged in maintaining the functions, and in fashioning the organs of our wonderful mechanism; moreover, as Dr. Wright, in his Lectures on Physical and Intellectual Life, truly remarks, "We should, in the case we suppose, be enabled to will the cessation of one process, or the reparation and revival of another?" but it would be idle to remind you how totally independent are our physical capacities to the operations and faculties of our spiritual life.

To bestow, however, a passing thought on this intricate question, though in some respects foreign to our subject, we cannot agree with those who would assert that LIFE is the sum-total of our functions, which functions depend simply upon the arrangement and form of the organs of the body. suppose that mere form and arrangement would produce all the various functions and movements of the human body, without the intervention of some extrinsic force, I humbly submit, is an absurdity. Equally reason

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able would it be to assert, that the mechanism and adjustment of the parts of a watch or a steam-engine alone suffice to propel their levers and cranks, or that the heavenly bodies by being merely placed in the situations they occupy-those situations would of themselves originate the centrifugal and centripetal forces. We must, in truth, wherever we find movement, trace it to an immaterial principle; for, since the supposition that matter can move itself is a contradiction, we cannot mathematically or reasonably stop till we have arrived at a power totally independent of the material universe. A clearer proof of the existence of Deity, as Robert Hall has truly observed, there cannot be than motion; and whether we look upon movement as generated by attraction, in its mechanical and chemical forms, by light, heat, or electricity,- even if these also are considered, as seems to be the case in the present day, but effects of the movement of an universally-diffused ether, whichever hypothesis we may adopt, we must not, we cannot close our investigation till we have traced all influence to the great First Cause. The supposition that the organs of the human body are so arranged as that the mechanical and chemical forces shall mutually operate, and thus constitute life, seems a much more feasible proposition, and would certainly account for the performance and support of many of its phenomena. As an illustration of this theory, we may instance the water-mill, in which, by a proper arrangement of parts, and without the intervention of any more subtle agents, we find the water, simply by the power of gravity, turning the water-wheel, and the whole complicated mechanism continually put in force. As to what power it is by which the materials we take as food form such diversified organs, and thus constitute this particular arrangement, or why the same elements should form in us a hand, and in a dog a paw, we pretend not to decide-it is beyond our comprehension. Such is the will of God; and indeed we cannot rationally account for it, but by supposing that His immediate agency is employed in thus fashioning and guiding the sustenance we receive. Truly it was the result of inspiration that induced the apostle of old to exclaim: "In Him we live, and move, and have our being." It cannot but enhance the veneration we experience for the Divine being to contemplate power so great incessantly exerted for our protection and comfort, and must show the absurdity of the notions of Epicurus of old, who imagined that the world having been created and furnished by God was left then to the events of fate-as though the work of preservation were not still greater than that of creation. The theory we are contemplating too, and which is now adopted by many eminent physiologists, does appear to destroy completely the speculation of equivocal generation; for if life result from a peculiar disposition of organs, together with a peculiar construction of those organs, of course to say that we can vivify mere clay, or that putrefaction can generate life, is an absurdity too glaring to need refutation. Nothing can have life that is not peculiarly and wonderfully formed; and no power but infinite skill could so arrange materials, and with such a precision and exactness, as to educe the wondrous principle of life, which can only result from ONE certain arrangement: so that it will be perceived how visionary they must be who assert that chance is invariably the same, or that uncertainty is certain, and one in its operations.

As the organs of a living being could not be naturally formed but by the most intricate processes, and as the position of those organs and their growth must be simultaneous, the nicest and most minute case is necessary

to the formation of any organized treature. The structure of the bones of the muscles the nerves, which bade the most careful scrutiny-the blood-vessels, and all the digestive and breathing apparatas, it will de evident must be brought together, and elaborated by a law of organintion, which law we bow, from the sacred oracies, is, "that the seed should multiply in itself Under no other circumstances whatever conid the frame of an animal be developed, and its yet half-finished structure protected; and, consequently, under no other circumstances could lite be

educed.

It must however be remembered, when we say that life results from a modification of material organs, and their peculiar disposition, that we by no means affirm that any new property can result from any particular adjustment of acknowledged properties. It would indeed be absurd to imagine that any modification of matter could educe a principle bearing no relation to the parts modified. Life, under our present view, is simply a performance of mechanical and chemical functions; in fact, the working of an elaborate piece of mechanism, detached however from all sensibility and feeling. Nerves are indeed material parts of the human frame ; but that their energy is derived from a cause altogether remote every one will allow. If a nerve be divided, its energy in the part not attached to the brain is instantly destroyed; and, if we may be permitted to state our view on the subject, we should say, that, if the source of feeling be traced upwards, we cannot stop till we conclude that sensation is a faculty of mind, and is conveyed, by what means we know not, throughout the nervous system. Dr. Wright, whose work I have before referred to, considers sensation as the result of organization; but admits, "that in what it essentially consists, and where it resides, are ultimate facts in physiology with which we shall perhaps never be acquainted." Doubtless no sensation would be experienced were there no peculiar organization to be acted upon ; thus, if we had no body, we should of course have no animal feeling: on the other hand, if the mind takes its departure, and leaves the various organs of sense in a perfect condition, as is frequently the case, wo well know that no sensation can by possibility be experienced. That most acuto reasoner, Drew, in his work on The Immortality of the Soul, thus argues that sensation is a result of organization: "Sensation," says he, "must necessarily be diffused through every department of animal being, and must of itself be as extensive in its diffusion as the Being which possesses it. To be assured that it is a something which depends upon the modification of the body, we have only to advert to the amputation of any bodily part. In proportion as these parts undergo a separation from each other, the capacity of sensation must be reduced in its extension, and the power of feeling must be confined within a narrower sphere. The acuteness, however, can have little or no relation to its diffusion; for, although the amputation of the parts of the body may contract it in the extent of its operations, those parts which remain will preserve their acuteness uninjured and entire. And though we consider sensation as one great whole, yet the reduction of its diffusion must necessarily be injurious to that whole, while the acuteness remaining plainly demonstrates that sensation cannot arise from an independent principle. A capacity which is thus capable of being reduced must, through the progress of the means of that reduction, be finally annihilated; for it is a contradiction to suppose anything which is not infinite to be capable of reduction without arriving at last to a point