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Let us, then, not imitate those who, with little faith, watch with fear the stormy conflict between some forms of Theology and Science; but let us remember with reverence, that underneath the φαινόμενα which we observe, there is the Hand of Him who is the Lord of all Power and Might, and who "upholdeth all things by the word of His Power."
CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M.A. AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
world ought to be admitted as certain, without reasoning, is nothing else but a consideration of the laws or constitution of the mind. Mind, therefore, and its elementary principles stands first in logical order; and the existence of matter follows, if not as an inference, yet as a truth not to be affirmed until after another has been granted.
The bearing of this controversy upon Christianity may thus be stated.
The doctrine of the materialist, if it were followed out to its extreme consequences, and consistently held, is plainly atheistic, and is therefore incompatible with any and with every form of religious belief. It is so, because, in affirming that mind is nothing more than the product of animal organization, it excludes the belief of a pure and uncreated mind, the cause of all things; for if there be a supreme mind, absolutely independent of matter, then, unquestionably, there may be created minds, also independent of matter.
But if the materialist is ready to admit, as he usually does, the divine existence, and the pure spirituality of the divine nature, and if he professes to mean nothing more than that created minds are in fact always embodied, and that, apart from some material structure or aninal organization there is no consciousness or activity, then, and in this sense understood, materialism becomes a doctrine of little or no importance to our faith as Christians, for it may consist well enough with what is affirmed in the scriptures concerning the immortality of man, the resurrection, the intermediate state, and the existence and agency of invisible orders — Isaac Taylor, Physical Theory of another Life, p. 14. (Bell and Daldy, 1866.)
