III.

(From nothing, p. 194.)

From this chapter, if not from others, it had been rashly affirmed that our author imagined that the soul perishes with the body, and is to be renewed out of nothing. The argument is wholly ad hominem, and asserts nothing from the author's own point of view, as I understand it. He gives what is "sufficient for his argument," and professes nothing more. He was not a clergyman, nor is his work a sermon to the faithful. He defies any one to deny, that, if God could form man out of nothing, He can make him anew out of nothing. The residue of the argument is a brilliant assertion of the imperishability of matter, in terms which might satisfy modern science; and the implication is, that the soul no more perishes to the sight of God than does the body vaporized and reserved in the custody of the elements.