gospel and its revelations than could have prevailed before it was proclaimed. Working apart from the data of revelation, and ignoring the phenomena uncovered to the Bible seers, the devious reasonings of the Christian schools worked round, as I said, to the starting point of the old philosophers. If the thought changed its form it was only to be shorn of its one-time grandeur and poetic freshness. It came at last in the current doctrines of the soul to a logical demonstration of nothing.
There is no conception in modern speculative thought of spiritual form and organization apart from the material body. The mode of induction is to abstract all the qualities of the body and take what is left as our knowledge of the soul; as Dr. Sears said, "You must first go through the process of subtraction, and then look after your remainder." Body has form, organization; take these away and you have pure spirit without form. Denuded to this extent it would be interesting to know what is left of us; and we have for answer, 'thinking principle,' 'pure essence,' 'a metaphysical entity,' 'a substance uncompounded and without parts.'[1] Run this to its last dismal absurdity, and you will
- ↑ Foregleams of Immortality, p. 27 et seq.
