of many worlds, that God's substance should be condensed away, and God, as God, cease to be." I fear you are becoming too sensitive on the possible obliteration of God from the universe, even if He has done, and continues to do, all that my hypothesis involves. Did you ever reflect upon what omnipresence signifies? Have you ever thought of the meaning of unlimited space? and then reflected that this vast illimitation is filled with the substantial and personal presence of God? Why, my dear brother, if God's substantial essence were a million times more attenuated than hydrogen gas, and had all the suns, visible by the aid of the telescope, just been condensed out of His exterior substance, they would altogether amount to less, compared to the whole of His essential being, than the diminutive substance of a pin's head contrasted with the myriads of suns and systems of worlds thus condensed! There is not the slightest ground, therefore, for such apprehension on your part, as there is not the least danger of the omnipresent Author of the universe condensing Himself away, or sensibly reducing even the outer cuticle, so to speak, of His substantial entity, should He continue on to eternity condensing worlds, as He has been doing in the past. Besides, it is reasonable to assume that an intelligent God would know enough to cease the work of condensing worlds before the danger you have supposed should become imminent !

You thus observe that my "pantheism" is of a very mild type, and even should it become epidemic there is no danger of its proving fatal to anybody or anything except to one very unnecessary article of the Westminster Confession of Faith, though I was reared to believe in it by as devoted and pious a father and mother as ever a boy had, and never thought of doubting it till I was recently forced to it by the stubborn

facts of science.

I will now point out one of your misrepresentations (unintentional, I am willing to be lieve) of my teaching, as a fair specimen of others in your letter, and as I promised to do at the commencement of this reply. You argue, if the incorporeal organism expands and possesses less vital density with development, that when a man hias grown old he must impart an "attenuated organism to the child," and you add, as if to show the absurdity of the whole thing,- "If it gains size by expansion, this small portion of attenuated soul must, with each generation, become more attenuated, and it will not be long before the race is without soul."

Now I have no doubt, when you penned this sentence, you fancied you had struck a powerful blow at my position of an "incorporeal organism." Let us see. In my book, pages 426, 427, and in other places, in discussing the difference between human knowledge and animal instinct, I carefully show that the Creator, in forming each original species, delegated to the parents the power of imparting to the ovule an incorporeal "life-germ" embodying their joint specific vital and mental organism, but so condensed that it might expand to keep pace with the growth of the embryo, and thus form the invisible outline or structural guide for the deposition of the physical molecules from the mother's blood. I

urged that each of the offspring also received with this life-germ the same power of imparting similar germs,-not small portions of their own. 'organism" or "attenuated soul," as you so gratuitously assert, but a complete and condensed. life-form, capable of expanding into that of the mature specific being; and hence that the father and mother, instead of imparting a "small portion" of their own vital structure, transfer to the ovule the perfect germ without any reference to their own age or vitally attenuated condition, so long as they are capable of procreation at all. I never intimated, or intended to intimate, such a stupid thing as that the father and mother transferred a portion of their own vital organisms or a fraction of their souls, to the ovule, and if anything in my book bears that construction it is an inadvertency of language. I hold and teach that the parents of all species are the natural vicegerents and custodians of the Creator for the impartation of these specific and perfect incorporeal germs to offspring. Hence the crude conception in your letter, that this "small portion" of the father's "attenuated soul" is given to the child, according to my view, as the capital stock for all future generations, and that this fraction of soul would be subdivided at each step of descent till it would finally run out and become exhausted, like Darwin's physical stock of 'dormant germules," is a statement for which I am unable to frame any justifiable excuse. How could such a formless fragment of soul serve as a guide to the developing embryo? As I said in my first letter, in regard to the unjust and almost ridiculous charge of pantheism, I can sympathizo with any man who could honestly mistake such a fragment of attenuated soul," as the equivalent of this delegated power in nature of transferring a perfect life-germ to offspring by parents, so explicitly set forth in my published

views.

"

Your objection to my theory, that it fails to explain "the unity of consciousness and its testimony as to identity," is singular to say the least. According to my view there is something to perpetuate consciousness of identity in the man or woman; for, when the immortal part leaves the "earthly house of its tabernacle,” it goes into the spirit-world with an exact counterpart of its personal existence here, its organs, shape, size, countenance, etc., and is the same essential, entitative being that it was on earth, and as it will be observed by spirit-eyes in that world. Hence mine is the only conceivable position in religious psychology upon which conscious and personal identity can be predicated of man in the next life. On the contrary, your view that the soul has neither atoms, constituent elements, parts, organs, senses, size, shape, countenance, nor anything else by which personal identity is recognizable here, since it is not an "organism," utterly excludes the possibility of the soul's identification in another life, by an intimate friend on earth, even should such friend happen to possess an extraordinary soul endowed with eyes and other senseorgans with which to make the examination. As we would scarcely be able to identify a friend here who had lost all his organs and senses, including head, arms, legs, etc., then, "reasoning

how a conscious, personal "identity," can have anything to do with another state of existence, or how John the Revelator could have seen "the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus," since they must have been "organless," and as "headless" as were their bodies, if your view be correct.

As an illustration of the unreliability of your letter in matters of science, I need only refer to one of your twice-repeated statements. You say: "The objection I urged, that matter could not acquire new properties by being attenuated, was clearly to the point." Yet a more manifestly erroneous doctrine could hardly be condensed into so short a sentence. Among the distinctive properties of the diamond, for example, may be named its hardness and brilliancy, both of which are totally lost when this gem is attenuated by heat and converted into gas, though not a particle of the substance of the diamond ceases to exist. The same is true when we invert the illustration. For example, one of the characteristic properties of steam is its remarkable elasticity, yet, when condensed into water, this property of matter entirely disappears and is substituted by its exact opposite property called incompressibility. I could give a thousand illustrations, as there is not a solid or liquid body in Nature that would not, if attenuated, contradict your "science," while there is not a normally rarefied substance in existence which, if condensed to a solid or liquid form, would not take on "new properties" not possessed in its natural condition.

But I cannot now take time to follow you through all your misconceptions of my theory of creation, or to correct all your unscientific reasoning in regard to my hypothesis of an incorporeal vital and mental organism. I must, however, attend to one other matter on which you seem to lay special stress, before bidding you adieu. You appear to have discovered, near the close of your letter, a prodigious inconsistency in my supposi

NOTE. In the preceding correspondence I have been compelled to differ from the Westminster Confession of Faith, concerning the creation of all things out of nothing, contrary to my former prejudices, and in opposition to most of my brethren of the Presbyterian branch of the church. Dr. Barr, as will be seen, admits that the Confession can be amended should a majority of Presbyterians consider its teachings upon this subject erroneous. Then I appeal to the clergy and laity of that influential denomination to take action at once, looking to the change of the first section of Chapter IV., since it is manifestly on its face contrary to the Bible, as will appear by the following quotation:

"It pleased the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, for the manifestation of the glory of His eternal power, wisdom, and goodness, in the beginning to create or make of nothing the world and all things therein, whether visible or invisible, in the space of six days, and all very good."

Now it is perfectly plain that man and woman are included in "all things therein," and it is just as plainly evident that man was created out

else out of an atom, so to speak, of his own substance. You present to me the fact that "the act of condensing implies a condenser." Yes; why not? Who would ever think of disputing this proposition? You then add, with your usual logical discrimination: "That the condenser and the thing condensed are one and the same, is inconceivable. Just as well might we say that the Creator and the thing created are identical. In the name of science [!] I must protest against such unscientific statements.' Yet even after this formal protest, I think you would admit that you might, if you should try, pare your own finger nails, pulverize the fragments, and then condense them into a pellet, and while you would readily understand how this act of condensing "implics a condenser," I doubt if even your own logic would lead you far enough to conclude that "the condenser and the thing condensed," in such a case, would necessarily be “ one and the same!” In the name of science I must protest, etc. It is only about a week ago that I saw a lady clip from her head a tress of hair, out of which she made a beautiful and artistic watch-chain; but it never occurred to me, that "the creator and the thing created," in that case, were necessarily "indentical,' that this lady, in other words, and the watch-chain were necessarily “one and the same" because a part of her own exterior stucture was used in making this ornament! No;

did not occur to me till I was fortunate enough to receive your interesting communication. Possibly I may have been laboring under a pantheistical delusion in supposing that God possesses as much power as a finite human being. If I am mistaken in this estimate of the attributes of the omnipotent and omnipresent Author of the universe, I shall wait patiently to be set right in your next letter.

Very truly yours,

WILFORD.

of the dust and woman out of a rib. Hence, the Confession is clearly in error in thus teaching that Adam and Eve were made of "nothing." I beg of the progressive ministers of this church, therefore, that they insist upon the immediate elimination of this erroneous section and thus free their hands for the impending conflict with atheistical scientists. If this section were of any real use either for the glory of God or the consistent vindication of religion, I should not insist so earnestly upon its elimination. But it is both unnecessary and untrue; and must cripple the efforts of religious philosophers in their contest with materialism. Should it be thus voluntarily expunged from the Confession, as here suggested, such a progressive step would tend to convince the world that the church is as ready and willing to make advances in the elimination of error and the adoption of new truths as scientists themselves; while such a willingness on the part of all denominations would tend ultimately to bring them together in the bonds of a real Christian union, whereby the battle against the enemies of religion might be successfully waged under one flag and to the glory of God.

That man is a volitional being, capable of choosing his course in life, that, in other words, he possesses a will which makes him the arbiter of his own destiny, at least to a considerable extent,-is just as self-evident a proposition as that he is an intelligent being, capable of thinking, reflecting, reasoning or judging about matters which come under his observation. Yet there are thousands of the more "radical" thinkers, as they call themselves, of the advanced class of scientific investigators, who have formed themselves into clubs in different cities of this country and Europe, the first article of whose creed is that will is a chimera, that the power of voluntary choice is a fallacy of psychology, and a men al delusion, and that man intrinsically is a puppet, a mere automaton operated by the wires and levers of circumstances over which his so-called will or volitional power of choice has no control whatever, and, that when he thinks that he acts freely he is in reality self-deceived, being forced to do just as he does by the irresistible power of some controlling motive which impels him. They insist that what we suppose to be voluntary choice, is no more free agency than the movement of a water-wheel in response to the weight of water acting with the stronger force upon one side of its periphery.

This was the position assumed by the great Scotch atheist, Robert Owen, in his debate with Alexander Campbell, at Cincinnati, about forty years ago, and it has been used ever since unsparingly by the "Liberal Clubs" all over the land, to the discomfiture of religionists who would happen to drop into these gatherings and essay to take part in their “liberal" discussions.

Now the line of demarkation between voluntary action and the coercive force of motives and circumstances is a very narrow one, I admit, and I do not hesitate to grant that it is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to determine in all cases just where freedom of cl oice begins and the force of motive ends. And I doubt if any mind is fully capable of analyzing, or even comprehending all the ingredients and influences of circumstances and motives on the one hand, and on the other hand of voluntary will-power and choice which go to make up the moral and spiritual qualities of an act, even when we make a certain act an absolute mental test to assist such analytical conclusion. If, for example, I make the lifting of my hand from the table a test of my power of choice, and then try to analyze metaphysically its relation to the motive which leads to the mental decision, and which determines the final act of aising my band, it is seen

that we at once become involved in psychological distinctions and a blending of the confused overlapping of choice and motive-force which the mind utterly fails to untangle satisfactorily. I say I can raise my hand if I choose to do so. Certainly I can. But it requires some circumstance or motive to make me choose to lift it, rather than let it remain, such as a purpose to convince the one with whom I am conversing, or to convince myself that I have such power of choice. This circumstance then acts as the controlling motive which coerces my volition and forces my will to issue its command to the muscles of my arm, which finally proceed to lift my hand from the table in obedience to my will. But had the motives and circumstances been the other way, holding out the stronger inducement to allow my hand to remain upon the table, then evidently the will would have dictated to my muscles accordingly, and volition would have acquiesced, and, in a sense, my hand would have been voluntarily forced, if I may be allowed the paradox, to remain upon the table instead of being lifted from it.

I have thus admitted all that the most radical member of a "Radical Club" can ask, and have tried to state his case in its strongest possible light. And yet, when I have done all this, and after freely confessing that my mind is not capable of disentangling the interlacing fringes of this motive-force and volitional power of choice as they brush into each other, there is yet somehow a something that stands out clear and distinct above all this tangle, as conspicuously self-evident as that the mind has the power of thought, going to demonstrate the freedom of the will and the absolute power of choice somewhere in the midst of motives and circumstances as an indepen lent prerogative of the mind over and above all these controlling influences. This, it must be admitted, seems self-contradictory, but I will now try to make it appear and prove that it must be so, and in doing this to settle, if possible, the most intricate problem in metaphysics that can be conceived of.

In the first place, no radical thinker of the Robert Owen tvpe, let him philosophize ani metaphysicize as he may, does believe or can believe any such doctrine as he teaches in regard to the absolute force of circumstances and motives, and by which the will is coerced and all choice

is but the result of force. The very con sitution of the human mind revolts at such a doctrine of coercion in defiance of our logic, and I may challenge any man to reason himself into it far enough to wipe out this intuitive, inborn testimony of consciousness that man has a free will, મ power of choice, an ability to select between two motives and determine upon one or the other by what the soul reccgnizes as a voluntary act of choice.

In the next place, if man cannot thus decide, by choosing voluntarily between a number of motives set before him, then how can we account for this inbred lie of conscience, and why these punitory horrors which continually dog us for errors which we really have never committed but were rather forced by the strongest motive, like simple automata, to perform? Why this self-condemnation which frightens us with a false arraignment before conscience, when we were forced merely to act the crime by the influence of resistless circumstances, as a Punch and Judy are forced to slap each other in their mimic spats? If freedom of the will be really a chimera, and our power of choice a mental delusion, then evidently man is not responsible for his acts at all, any more than is a clock for stopping when its weights have run down. To say that there is a difference in the two cases, since man is an intelligent machine, and the clock is not, is to teach that just so far as there is a difference is there responsibility, and just so far is man free to act under the guidance of his will in his choice among motives and circumstances, which is all that constitutes human responsibility. Raise man just one slight degree above the water-wheel, and to the extent of that degree does he become responsible as a volitional being, and the arbiter of his own fortune. But make him, as this system of radicalism teaches, a mere creature of circumstances, absolutely chained to obey the behests of the strongest motives which he has no hand in originating, and that moment we obliterate all distinction in his actions between right and wrong, vice and virtue, and in so doing wipe out the social system and civil government. Carry out this doctrine legitimately, and all words making a distinction between acts good and bad, such as crime, wickedness, sin, wrong, right, good, bad, justice, injustice, virtue, vice, etc., have no use in the vocab

ulary of life, and should be expunged from our dictionaries. If man really cannot act only as he is acted upon by circumstances, and cannot do a voluntary deed only as coerced by a motive which he has no hand in framing (except as some other motive or circumstance induced him to frame it), then he cannot be justly punished as a criminal, and our prisons and penitentiaries are but institutions of torture, and any ostracism by society of the criminal who has been thus innocently convicted, and who has served a term in prison as a felon, is simple cruelty, for the reason that the most flagitious crime, so-called, is in reality the most innocent act, since the victim of this legal torture and cruel ostracism could no more help doing as he did, according to this doctrine of Robert Owen, than could the water-wheel avoid turning under the weight of water, or than could the supposed criminal have prevented the circumstances in which he found himself placed.

But, in the third place, the worst feature of this doctrine, and that which, more conclusively than anything else, goes to show its fallacy as a law of ethics, and hence, its impossibility as a fact, is its necessary fruits, should it be everywhere taught and become the universal guiding law of our actions. It is only because the advocates of this doctrine do not believe it, nor act upon it; in other words, because they are superior to their philosophy, that they are not all in the State-prison. The truth is, they neither believe that they are without the power of voluntary choice in determining their course in life, nor do they teach such a blighting and ruinous doctrine to their children. They are very careful to impress upon their sons, whatever they may argue in their club-meetings, that their success in life depends upon the choice they make of their studies, their books, their habits, their recreations, their associates, their use of language, etc. No father who has the least regard for the future welfare of his son would dare to teach him that he is the absolute creature of circumstances, that he can only act as he is acted upon, or as he shall be influenced by the strongest motive, and that should he commit a crime, he is nevertheless as innocent in the eyes of all just and educated men as if he had done the noblest act, since all acts, good and bad, are alike, and equally the result of the strongest

motive, and which we can no more resist than can a water-wheel fight against the weight of water in its buckets. But even should a father become so crazed by his radical fanaticism as to teach this doctrine in his family, it might still not work out its legitimate tendency and fruits in the lives of his sons, since the ineradicable sense of a free will and power of volition in the mental constitution of every sane person would shield such minds from the baneful effects of this abominable doctrine, whatever metaphysical difficulties or psychological complexity may stand in the way of our analyzing the hidden springs of thought and action as relates to the true influence of motives.

We can, however, readily imagine a state of society in which this radical view of ethical law is universally taught in schools and in the family circle, and that an entire community might be thus educated for generations, and taught to believe that man cannot help his actions, good or bad, and that, whatever he does, he is innocently coerced thereto by motives and circumstances over which he has no control. We have only, then, to suppose this people wholly isolated from the rest of the world, and under the exclusive influence of this doctrine, socially, politically, civilly, and in all the business relations of life, to imagine them sunken to the lowest depths of selfgratification (provided such a community could exist at all), the strong overpowering the weak, every man devoted to his own selfish ends, without regard to the wants or wishes of others, believing each act to be innocent whatever its turpitude, till finally chaos would take the place of all law and order, and worse than the worst phase of savage barbarity would usurp the place of all government and of all true ideas of civilization. We have supposed this case, though it is, perhaps, an impossible supposition, so long as the human mind is constituted as it now is, with an inbred consciousness of right and wrong, which can only grow out of the innate power of choice which every human being must feel that he possesses, and upon which alone the issues of life depend. There is not, therefore, the least danger that this radical doctrine of the overpowering mastery of circumstances and motives, however involved in mystery, will ever spread sufficiently to subvert society, based as it is upon the intuitive sense in