thinking, sentient mind.’  Now, the truth is, Materialists contend that matter as a whole cannot in strictness be considered either dead or living, intelligent or non-intelligent, but simply matter; which matter when in certain well-known states is called dead, and when in other equally well-known states is called living.  If where motion is there is life, then there is no dead matter; for all matter, or at least all matter of which we have experience, moves.  To charge upon Materialists the dogma of matter’s deadness is a paltry trick which a writer like Mr. Smith should disdain to practice.  Nor does it become him to lecture Atheists about their dogmatism, while from his own published writings can be adduced such passages as the following:—­

’We know that the two principal attributes of matter are visibility and tangibility, and these two properties are purely spiritual or immaterial.  Thus resistance is nothing but that mysterious power we call repulsion—­a power which fills the whole universe—­which holds the sun, moon, and stars in its hand, and yet is invisible.’

This is what our Rev. Pantheist calls one of Spiritualism’s ’splendid arguments,’ and splendidly absurd it certainly is; quite equal, considered as a provocative of mirth, to Robert Owen’s sublimest effusions about that very mysterious and thoroughly incomprehensible power which ‘directs the atom and controuls the aggregate of nature.’  But the argument though ‘splendid,’ is false.  Who is ignorant that resistance is not a power at all, though we properly enough give the name resistance to one of matter’s phenomena.  Only half crazed Spiritualists would confound phenomena with things by which they are exhibited.  Matter under certain circumstances resists, and under certain other circumstances attracts.  But neither repulsion nor attraction exists, though we see every day of our lives that matter does repel and does attract.  Its doing so proves it is able to do so, and proves nothing more.  Mr. Smith says, ’if we want repose for our minds upon this subject we may find it; but it can only be found in the universal mind.’  He does not however explain the co-existence of universal mind with universal matter.  He does not tell us how two universals could find room in one universe.

’We are gravely assured (by spiritualising Pantheists among the rest) that God is something out of time and space; but since our knowledge is intuition comprehended under conception, we cannot have any knowledge of that which is not received into the imaginary recipients of time and space, and consequently God is not an entity.

’But here comes the jugglery—­reason forms the idea of the soul or a substance out of nature, by connecting substance and accident into infinite and absolute substance.  What is that verbiage, but that the reason gives the name of soul to something that does not exist at all?’

’Reason forms the idea of God or of Supreme Intelligence out of Nature, by connecting action and reaction into infinite and absolute concurrence.  What is God out of Nature?  Where is out?  Where is God?  What is God?—­an absolute nothing.’