Questions awakened by the Bible Author:John Miller Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: II. THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL NOT IN REASON. CHAPTER I. Can Reason Be Unmistakable? 1. If common sal ammoniac be put in a glass shade under certain c... more »ircumstances of heat and moisture, it will effloresce into the most exquisite growths, shooting up over the surface of the glass into the most plant-like shapes of leaves and branches. Is it alive? Nobody dreams it. Is it dual? No. So that I can heat the glass more, and melt all back into a mass, and no body dreams that there was more than matter. 2. Next I plant a bean in the glass. Presently I get an efflorescence not a whit more beautiful. What have I now? The bean has wonderful dignities. It can climb. It can observe wholesome laws. It mounts with the precision of an animal change- lessly from East to North. Put it in the ground, and without eyes it will know the way upward. Put a bone near it; and if it be like the grape, it will burrow a whole yard towards it, and though in the lap of the dark earth, go pilgrim to it with manyroots, and web its spongelets over it, and peer in into all its pores, that it may eat up all its substance. Does matter do this ? Certainly. Or rather (for we prefer always to speak of the efficiency of Jehovah), God blesses it with life. And yet no mortal thinks that there are two things in the bean, first, matter, and second, life, in any such sense that if we could kill it shut up in the vase, a something would be shut in with it other than its material molecules. 3. Now take a dog. What have we in him ? Suppose I shoot him, and tumble him into the earth. Is there a spirit that floats away ? And yet remember, that grey cur was very intelligent. He had thought, and arrangement, and memory, and fine judgment, some said, more than his master. He had discriminating affection, and conscienc...« less