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future state . Surely , therefore , there needs no comparison of the superior sanctions to virtue in the gospel scheme and of the glorious superiority of that divine illumination which lights us through the dark valley of the shadow of death . Ignorance and prejudice
may , and indeed do , assert , that the ChristianMaterialist , proceeding on the same reasoning with the Sceptical Materialist , would necessarily be subject to the same contempt of revelation and futurity , and which , if pushed to its extent , would lead to the Atheist ' s
creed of a material Deity ; but this by no means follows , and we shall give the present controversy in evidence . We strongly contend , on behalf of Christian Materialists , that , as far as revelation is concerned , their opinions make not a shadow of difference . We
do not enter into the various theories of Immateriality , which , indeed , is a term for a something of which no one has yet given any distinct explanation . We are ourselves strongly inclined to
the hypothesis of Mr . Locke , who thought there was some unknown principle superadded to matter to confer the faculty of thinking but we do not wish to obtrude our own individual speculations on our readers : we only
wish to inculcate Mr . Locke ' s liberal accompaniment , that these metaphysical riddles have no right to be obtruded as creeds , and that , however that faculty may exist , A < it cannot be in any created being but merely by the good pleasure and bounty of the Creator . " JSee Essay on II . Und . B . iv . Oh . ;* .
jmit to exhibit the same evident truism from these metaphysical alarmists themselves , we will quote the following accidental and simple slip of the pen in the very first page of the Quarterly Review , and after which its scurrility requires no other antidote : — "It can scarcely be necessary to remind our readers , in liminc , that the nature of the living principle is among
through the whole ; range of organized creation ; but on what they depend , and how they are produced , never has been discovered , and probably never will" ! And again , p . 20 : 4 < Immaterial ity does not necessarily imply immor *
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the subjects which are manifestly beyond the reach of human investigation . The eilccts and the properties of life are indeed obvious to our senses
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tality : they are not convertible terms , *' So also Mr . Rennell , in his-Remarks p . 113 : " The principle of volitiun ' because it is immaterial , is not , therefore , of necessity , immortal- " These admissions , however , were necessary since they knew that any argument
used to prove the necessary self- existence of the soul , went to prove its pre * existence—an absurdity too great for even them to undertake , skilled as they are in maintaining paradoxes . Now , if immateriality be not necessarily immortal , common sense must
perceive that it cannot be a requisite or material part of the creed of a Christian ; or at all events , that it is equally subject with matter to decay and perish - , since , by their confession , immateriality may have a beginning and an end , and yet man attain
immortality . Where , then , is the object of dispute , or where any preference of the two opinions ? And even had there not been this luckless admission , who would be the sceptic ;—the Immaterialist , who reckoned on futurity as the
necessary result of an imperishable vital principle ; or the Unitarian Christian Materialist , who placed his hope in the power and benevolence of his Creator , and on the fact of one Man , Christ Jesus , having actually risen from the dead ? We think St . Paul has
answered this : " If Christ be not risen , ye are yet in your sins , and those also who are fallen asleep in Jesus are perished . "— " But now is Christ risen from the dead , and become the firstfruits of them that slept . " Did St . Paul believe in futurity oa any other trust than that of the resurrection oi
our Saviour ? Did he believe in an intermediate state of the soul , previous to the resurrection of the body t And how many sublime passages in his writings are destroyed by the supposition of an intermediate state ! The Christian Materialist founds his
hope on the immediate power of tin Deity ; the Immaterialist , on the subordinate agency of a supposititious vital principle ; yet the latter denounces the former as a sceptic 1 Mr . Macleay , to whose candour we have before
appealed , has stated our own opinmi ^ on this head with great force . kt l " necessary immortality of the human soul is a dogma as much in opposition to the idea of Divine Omni potence , as its necessary mortality . W ithout the
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176 Review . — Recent Controversy on Materialism .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1822, page 176, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2510/page/48/
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