have occasion to revert again to both of these latter doctrines. At present, let them pass.
Plato maintained that the soul was Divinæ particulum auræ, an emanation from God Himself, a portion of His immaculate Being, detached for a time only, and that after innumerable transmigrations it is re-absorbed into Himself again, and loses its own distinctiveness. Of course, this notion, if it be true, instead of proving immortality, as Plato supposed, in fact disproves it altogether; that is, if immortality be conceded to be a continuance of personal identity, and an individual duration, subsequent to the demise of the physical body. Immortality means a continued existence of the personality, and not a mere survival of the varied elements whereof a human being is composed. The particular Deific emanations which constitute the souls of A, B, C and D, respectively, as soon as they become souls, are beings totally distinct from all else that exists, and must forever remain so; and "soul" can be predicated of either, only as beings thus separate, and therefore immortality can be the prerogative of man only so long as God and man are not blended into one single Personality. So long as each soul shall think, feel, suffer, enjoy, cogitate and have a continuity of self-knowing, just so long will it be possessed of an invincible conviction of personal identity, under which circumstance alone, and only, can its immortality be truly predicated and affirmed. But, should any soul ever be reabsorbed into Deity—again become a portion of Divinity an utter, total, and complete annihilation of the individual must ensue; and that destruction of the human selfhood would be as effective, utter and complete, as if the varied elements entering into it as constituents were
