e, or what help of analogy,
remains for either conceiving or proving aright the existence of Him who
is "a Spirit" and "the Father of the spirits of all flesh?" And if the
"spirituality" of the Divine nature be called in question, many of the
Divine attributes must also suffer; for it is only as "a spirit" that
God can be _omnipresent_, and his omnipresence is presupposed in his
_omniscience_ and _omnipotence_. For these reasons, we incur the
greatest risk of entertaining limited and false conceptions of God, by
obliterating the distinction between "matter" and "spirit."

It is, no doubt, competent, and it may even be highly useful, to
entertain the question, how far the theory of Materialism should be held
to affect the grounds on which we believe in a living, personal,
spiritual God? In answer to this question, we have no hesitation in
avowing our conviction that the theory of Materialism, however it may be
modified, has a tendency to impair the evidence of that fundamental
article of faith. God is "a Spirit," and man was made "in the image of
God." Take away all spiritual essences; reduce every known object in
nature to matter, gross or refined; let mental and moral phenomena be
blended with the physical, and what remains to constitute the groundwork
of a "spiritual" system, or to conduct us to the recognition of a
supreme, immaterial Mind? If the material body, with its peculiar
organization, be capable of producing human thought, and sufficient to
account for the intelligence of man, why may not the material universe,
with its mysterious laws and manifold forces, be held sufficient to
explain whatever marks of a higher intelligence may appear in Nature?
and why may we not at once embrace Pantheism, and conceive of God only
as "the soul of the world?" Dr. Priestley's reply to this question
appears to us to be a mere evasion of the difficulty. In treating of
"the objection to the system of Materialism derived from the
consideration of the Divine essence," he first of all premises that "in
fact we have no proper idea of any essence whatever; that our ideas
concerning 'matter' do not go beyond the powers of which it is
possessed, and much less can our ideas go beyond powers, properties, or
attributes with respect to the Divine Being;" and then adds, "Now, the
powers and properties of the Divine mind, as clearly deduced from the
works of God, are not only so infinitely superior to those of the human
mind, when there is