founds, not on the _resemblance
or analogy,_ but on the _essential difference_, between created and
uncreated intelligence; but, in point of fact, the _difference_, great
and real as it is, has no bearing on the only question at issue; it is
the _resemblance or analogy_ between all thinking beings and the
Supreme Mind that suggests the reason for classing them under the same
category as "spirits," and that enables us to rise from the spiritual
nature of man to the spiritual nature of God.

The personality of God, as a living, self-conscious, and active Being,
distinct from the created universe and superior to it, is dependent on
the "spirituality" of His nature; and in so far as the latter is
affected by the theory of Materialism, the evidence of the former must
also be proportionally weakened. We find, accordingly, that many
Materialists have exhibited a tendency towards a Pantheistic theory of
nature, in which the material universe is conceived of as the "body," of
which God is the "soul." Some Materialists, indeed, have stopped short
of Pantheism; but this may have arisen from their being less consequent
reasoners, or more timid thinkers, than others who were prepared to
follow out their principles fearlessly to all their logical results;
for, assuredly, if there be no evidence sufficient to show that the
"mind" is distinct from the "body," it will require a very high kind of
evidence to make it certain that "God" is distinct from "Nature."

4. The theory of Materialism comes into direct collision, at several
points, with the doctrines of Revealed Religion.

The doctrine of Scripture in regard to the "human soul" is manifestly at
variance with that theory. In the earliest pages of Genesis, we have an
account of its creation, which, when compared with other statements and
forms of expression occurring elsewhere, seems very clearly to imply
that the "soul" is a distinct substantive being, possessing properties
and powers peculiar to itself, and, although now united to the "body,"
yet capable of existing apart from it, and destined to an immortal
existence hereafter.[178] That it is a distinct substantive being,
connected with the body, but not dependent on it, at least in the sense
of being incapable of existing apart from it, appears from various
testimonies of the inspired Word. God is there pleased to call Himself
"the Father of our spirits," and that, too, in contradistinction to "the
fathers of our flesh." "We