As there is inertness somewhere, and as it is not in nature, of course the conclusion is that it is in man.  Inertness is in the phenomenon; that is, in nature as it. appears to us.  There cannot be any question that nature seems to us to be inert.  But the author of this book declares that this inertness, though in the phenomenon, is not in the fact.  Nature looks inert; it is not-inert.  How does the notion of inertness come at all, then?  Now comes the very essence of the new theory; I give it in its author’s words:—­

The inertness is introduced by man.  He perceives defect without him, only because there is defect within him.

To be inert has the same meaning as to be dead.  So we speak of nature, thinking it to be inert, as ‘dead matter.’  To say that man introduces inertness into nature implies a deadness in him:  it is to say that he wants life.  This is the proposition which is affirmed.  This condition which we call our life, is not the true life of man.

The Book that has had greater influence upon the world than all others, differs from all others, in affirming that man wants life, and in making that statement the basis of all that it contains respecting the past and present and future of mankind.

Science thus pays homage to the Bible.  What that book has declared as if with authority, so long ago, she has at last decyphered on the page of nature.  This is not man’s true life.

And who is there who can doubt, looking at man as lie is now, and then thinking of what he is to be in another world, that there is about him, now, great defect?  There is truly much wanting which it is hoped will one day be supplied.  What shall we call this lacking thing—­this one thing lacking whose absence is felt in every fibre of our being?  Our author chooses to call it life; I am doubtful with how much felicity or naturalness of expression.  Of course we all know that in the New Testament life does not mean merely existence continued; eternal life does not mean merely existence continued for ever:  it means the highest and purest form of our being continued for ever;—­happiness and holiness continued for ever.  We know, too, that holy Scripture describes the step taken by any man in becoming an earnest believer in Christ, as ‘passing from death to life;’ we remember such a text as ’This is life eternal, that they may know Thee, the only true God, and-Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.’  We know that a general name for the Gospel, which grasps its grand characteristics, is ‘The Word of Life;’ and that, in religious phrase, Christianity is concerned with the revealing, the implanting, the sustaining, the crowning, of a certain better life.  Nor is it difficult to trace out such analogies between natural and spiritual death, between natural and spiritual life, as tend to prove that spiritual life and death are not spoken of in Scripture merely as the strongest words which could be employed, but that there is a further and