ting occupy a place in the disciplines of religion? What is
the meaning of Luther's advice to the young clergyman who came to him,
perplexed with the difficulties of predestination and election, if it
be not that, in virtue of its action upon the brain, when wisely
applied, there is moral and religious virtue even in a hydro-carbon?
To use the old language, food and drink are creatures of God, and have
therefore a spiritual value. Through our neglect of the monitions of
a reasonable materialism we sin and suffer daily. I might here point
to the train of deadly disorders over which science has given modern
society such control--disclosing the lair of the material enemy,
ensuring his destruction, and thus preventing that moral squalor and
hopelessness which habitually tread on the heels of epidemics in the
case of the poor.

Rising to higher spheres, the visions of Swedenborg, and the ecstasy
of Plotinus and Porphyry, are phases of that psychical condition,
obviously connected with the nervous system and state of health, on
which is based the Vedic doctrine of the absorption of the individual
into the universal soul. Plotinus taught the devout how to pass into
a condition of ecstasy. Porphyry complains of having been only once
united to God in eighty-six years, while his master Plotinus had been
so united six times in sixty years. [Footnote: I recommend to the
reader's particular attention Dr. Draper's important work entitled,
'History of the Conflict between Religion and Science' (Messrs. H. S.
King and Co.)] A friend who knew Wordsworth informs me that the poet,
in some of his moods, was accustomed to seize hold of an external
object to assure himself of his own bodily existence. As states of
consciousness such phenomena have an undisputed reality, and a
substantial identity; but they are connected with the most
heterogeneous objective conceptions. The subjective experiences are
similar, because of the similarity of the underlying organisations.

But for those who wish to look beyond the practical facts, there will
always remain ample room for speculation. Take the argument of the
Lucretian introduced in the Belfast Address. As far as I am aware,
not one of my assailants has attempted to answer it. Some of them,
indeed, rejoice over the ability displayed by Bishop Butler in rolling
back the difficulty on his opponent; and they even imagine that it is
the Bishop's own argument that is there employed. But th