disbelief in a future life is the Scientific
Argument from Materialism. Lucretius says, "There is nothing in
the universe but bodies and the properties of bodies." This is a
characteristic example of the method of the materialists: to
assume, as an unquestionable postulate, the very point in debate,
and that, too, in defiance of the intelligent instincts of
consciousness which compel every unsophisticated person to
acknowledge the simultaneous existence of mind and matter as two
correlated yet distinct realities. The better statement would be,
There is nothing in the universe but forces and the relations of
forces. For, while we know ourselves in immediate self
consciousness, as personal intelligences perceiving, willing, and
acting, all we know of an outward world is the effects produced on
us by its forces. Certainly the powers of the universe can never
be lost from the universe. Therefore if our souls are, as
consciousness declares, causes, and not mere phenomena, they are
immortal. To ignore either factor in the problem of life, the
material substratum or the dynamic agent, is mere narrowness and
blindness.

But the unbelieving naturalist argues that the total man is a
product of organization, and therefore that with the dissolution
of the living combination of organs all is over. Matter is the
marriage bed and grave of soul. Priestley says, "The principle of
thought no more belongs to substance distinct from body than the
principle of sound belongs to substance distinct from bell." There
is no relevancy in the comparison, because the things are wholly
unlike. Thought is not, as Hartley's theory avowed it was, a
vibration of a cerebral nerve, as sound is a vibration of a
sonorous body; for how could these vibrations be accumulated in
memory as our mental experiences are? When a material vibration
ends, it has gone forever; but thoughts are stored up and
preserved. A hypothetical simile, like that just cited from
Priestley, is not a cogent argument. It is false science thus to
limit the modes of being to what lies within our present empirical
knowledge. Is it not pure presumptuousness to affirm that the
creative power of Almighty God is shut up so that intelligent
creatures can only exist in forms of flesh? When a recent
materialist makes the assertion, "The thinking man is the sum of
his senses," it is manifest that he goes beyond the data, assuming
what should be proved, and confounding the instruments and
mat