personal relation to the Eternal, and therefore our eternal personality. In that communion, death is already left behind.

And as our relation to God excludes all fear of mere absorption in nature or humanity, so our membership of the redeemed society, and our relationships with its other members, bar out all idea of absorption in God. Between God and the Church stands the individual, secured on both sides in the unalienable possession of his personal identity.

I had wished to take up the question of the relation of soul and body, but all that can be done now is to indicate the line that would be taken. If we are right in rejecting the idea of a mere soul-substance, separable from its manifestations, we certainly cannot build upon any extreme form of Interactionism, the sharp antithesis of soul and body. That the soul is largely independent of the body as we know it through ordinary sciencethe body that dies-seems to be proved by Dr. McDougall in his important and interesting book, "Body and Soul." But, after all, it is in accordance with sound psychology-here James has taught us well-to include the body in the idea of personality. But in what sense? Not, assuredly, the mere matter of which it is composed, which changes constantly, but the form and functions of the organism. Now it has been well pointed out that the more we explain the spiritual part of us in terms of its material vehicle, the more spiritual does that vehicle become, the more distinguished from common material objects. After all, what do we know of the body? Need we be so hasty in brushing aside the conclusions reached by occult investigation, whatever we may think of the philosophies associated with them? Why should we assume that the narrow range of vibrations that convey to us the sights and sounds of earth, embraces all physical reality? Surely the presumption is all the other way. If the soul always requires some sort of physical vehicle, and yet proves itself too vast for the body as we know it, have we not the right to argue from the higher to lower?

To put it another way, the more exclusively narrow and mechanical the categories employed in the study of the body, the more surely do we block ab initio all pathways to broader and deeper understanding even of the body itself. The more it is cut off from the personality, the more intrusive and unmeaning

* See also article, "Mrs. Piper and the Subliminal Consciousness," by E. Bozzano: Annals of Psychical Science, September, 1906.

must appear the hypothesis of higher grades or planes of organic functioning. Witness the still common prejudice among ordinary scientists against psychical research. But, from the broadest and deepest standpoint, the higher physical sphere is more than a mere hypothesis, more even than a theory based on investigation: rather the burden of proof lies with those who deny it.

In conclusion, let me say that the arguments I have tried to put forward suffer greatly from their necessary isolation from the wider ranges of thought to which they belong. But their main drift and moral have, I hope, been made clear. A cœlo descendit γνώθι σεαυτόν.”

DISCUSSION.

Colonel ALVES said: On page 9, lines 1 to 3, is the implication, only too true, that the doctrine of Immortality is relegated by religious thought to a comparatively subordinate position.

Why should this be the case, seeing the great importance attached to it by our Lord and the Apostle Paul?

The answer is not far to seek. Immortality, or undyingness, is, to any mind, save that of a juggling schoolman, the same thing, manward, as future, eternal (or never-ending) life; and it is one of the monopolies of Deity, entrusted to the Lord Jesus, see I Tim. vi, 16.

But most of us have been brought up to believe that, will we or nill we, in grace or in wrath, we are born heirs of an immortality to be passed either in bliss or in woe. We have been taught, not by God's Word (theology) but by God's-Word-men (theologians), that life does not mean life but happiness, that death does not mean death but misery, that destruction does not mean destruction but preservation, and so on; in fact, that, in matters of Eschatology; the Bible seldom or never means what it says. Protestants and Papists alike endorse the serpent's lie-"ye shall not surely die."

When to this is added the too general Arminian teaching that for no one is future salvation a present assured certainty, can we wonder that, with people who think at all, either immortality is assumed as a matter of course, the only question being how shall I escape hell, instead of-how shall I be fit for heaven; or else the mind is revolted from the whole subject?

For all this, I believe a false psychology to be largely responsible. "Theology," save the mark, has made the natural man a spiritual and moral image of his Maker, by the "breath of lives"; but a careful study of Genesis iii, 1 Cor. xi, 7, and of 1 John iii, 9, and v, 18, must cause us to reject this idea, and to hold that the male bodily shape and corresponding mental faculties of man (homo sapiens) are what constitute his likeness to Deity.

After showing great mental talent in naming the animals, the first things that we hear of Adam, when he has a mate of his own kind, are moral weakness and disobedience, two witnesses that the "breath of lives" was not God's own Spirit.

I believe that the anti-scriptural idea of never-ending torment has taken away men's minds from the revelation of a glorious and neverending, because a Divine, life. But for this false notion, which has debased the motives for preaching the Gospel from Divine to Humanitarian, viz., the baling "immortal souls" out of an endless hell, Immortality, with all the glory and blessing which Scripture connects with it, would probably have laid a much greater hold on Christian minds, and caused them to proclaim a more scriptural gospel than has generally been the case since the second century A.D., when the heresy of natural immortality appears to have first crept into the professing Church.

Rev. J. J. B. COLES said: "God, Man, and the Universe" are ultimate terms for Philosophy, Science, and Religion-but when we consider the union of God and man in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ, and see how inscrutable a subject we have before us, when we speak of Him as an individual man-we see that the Metaphysics and Psychology of Holy Scripture must necessarily transcend that of all merely human systems of Philosophy.

The Bible deals with both Oriental and Western processes of thought. Take the question of personality.

The "Whosoever" of the Pauline Epistles is an individual doubtless, but not the "unique existence" of the Scottish philosopher, which is "perfectly impervious to other selves "—such is not the individual of the New Testament, for the words of John xvii, 23-"I in them and Thou in Me that they may be made perfect in One"-sets aside the exclusively Western idea of "impervious spiritual atoms," as being contrary to Christianity and psychologically false,

"It is no longer I that live, but Christ that liveth in me " reveals a Divine mysticism that transcends both Western and Oriental systems of psychology.

Dr. Whately has read a most interesting and suggestive paper, which calls for very careful and thoughtful perusal.

Professor LANGHORNE ORCHARD said: The key-line of the Paper is, I think, that near the beginning of p. 11-"Our regenerated self-consciousness-born anew in God." The Author's aim seems to be the showing that, to those who, through their personal faith in Christ, are spiritually regenerate, the strongest evidence, indeed the complete proof, of their immortality is given by a spiritual intuition-this spiritual intuition being an affirmation of the highest consciousness when in communion with God. This is a perfectly intelligible proposition, and reminds me of the words of the Lord Jesus Christ-"This is life eternal, to know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ Whom Thou hast sent." It also reminds me of the belief of our late President, Sir G. G. Stokes, that all life proceeds from the action of Spirit, and therefore eternal life has its author in the Eternal Spirit. Professor Schäfer's assertion, in his Dundee Address, that by a process of "gradual evolution " life may have originated from that which itself had not life, is a mere assertion devoid of proof, indefensible as a scientific statement.

In criticizing James's Empirical theory of personality, the Author points out that "there is a deeper basis of personality than the succession of psychic states." And, with all respect to one of

greatest psychologists, the Empirical theory is absurd, for it contradicts the idea which it seeks to explain. Personality is not the sum or the product of a multitude of conscious states, for the personal idea, or notion, is there from the first. The first state of my consciousness is as truly mine as is the hundredth. Nor is personality explained by Bosanquet's System theory, for (as shown at the beginning of p. 19), the two words-"personality" and "system' -express different ideas. In fact, to have a system is not the same as to be a system.

Further, the notion of Personality is with us from the first. It is innate; but the idea of System is acquired through experience. Sleep does not make a gap in our consciousness of our existence.

Mr. MARTIN L. ROUSE, B.A., said: Although the individuality of the soul is specially dwelt upon in Dr. Whately's paper, he

soul and a body Now it has often.

advises us to reflect upon the way in which a together form a distinct person acting in unison. struck me that, however young and inexperienced a person may be, or however dim may be his eyesight, he can always bring his thumb and forefinger straight to his mouth, or touch with his forefinger any particular part of his body that he chooses to think of. This he always has done without measurement or calculation, and with equal precision, doing it instantaneously. Definite thinking of the part to be touched certainly causes, by nervous telegraphy, a sensation in that part, and the sensation is instantly transmitted to the brain, whence again, as rapidly, the directive power goes forth to the hand and the finger-tip, making this touch the part. Yet this is not mechanism, unique as such mechanism would in any case be, for the movement to touch may be restrained by the will. Therefore the complete and unerring co-operation just described can arise only from an absolute unity of a non-material co-operating systemthe soul.

A strong argument for the immortality of the soul is that which I first learnt from the late Joseph Cook of Boston, a famous Christian Evidence lecturer in the States. The Creator, said he, has implanted no instinct for which he has not provided a satisfaction. Now the Creator has given to every man an instinctive longing for immortality for a happy and endless after-life; so we conclude that He has graciously provided for men this supreme satisfaction, or has planned and told them of a way by which they may obtain it. It was this consideration, said the same lecturer, that led Professor Romanes of Oxford to abandon scepticism and become a Christian, as he himself stated in the preface to his latest book.

Mr. ARTHUR W. SUTTON said: The subject chosen by the reader of the paper, "Immortality," is one that appeals to us all and concerns us all very deeply, and I should like to join with others in thanking Dr. Whately for the able manner in which he has dealt with it.

I must confess, however, to some degree of difficulty in following the closely reasoned arguments of the paper, and should like to ask Dr. Whately to explain to whom he refers when using the word "we" on page 10, lines 4 and 5. In the preceding sentence Dr. Whately speaks of "us" as those whose belief in Immortality is "central and assured," and "must, like our belief in God, rest upon