This materialism grades man from the dust upward; but how is the material species maintained when man passes the Rubicon of spirituality? Spirit forms no proper link in this chain of being, but reveals the eternal chain as uninterrupted; yet this is seen only as matter disappears.
If man was first matter, he has passed through all its forms to become man. If the material body is man, he is mere matter, or dust. But man is the image and likeness of Spirit; and the belief that there is Soul in sense, or Life in matter, belongs to the mortal mind that is to be put off, to which the apostle refers.
Anatomy makes man structural. Physiology continues this explanation, measuring human strength by bones and sinews, and human life by material law. Phrenology makes man thieving or honest, according to the development of the cranium; but anatomy, physiology, phrenology, do not define the image of God, or immortal man. To measure capacities by the size of the brain, and limit strength to the exercise of a muscle, would subjugate intelligence, and place Mind at the mercy of organization and non-intelligence.
Matter, taking divine power into its own hands, is like a fiction, in which debauchery is attuned to such fascination, that mankind are in danger of catching its moral contagion. The spiritual opposite of materiality will reopen, with the key of Science, the gates of Paradise, that human beliefs had wellnigh closed, and find man unfallen, upright, pure, and free, having no need to consult almanacs for the probabilities of Life, or to study brainology in order to learn how much of a man he is.
