thousand ties that bind it to its habitation at the very moment of its destruction. Were it not for this assurance of our immortality, we could look forward in the uncertain future to nothing but blank, drear annihilation, as awaiting our minds, just as it does the minds of the brutes that perish. In our carefulness to avoid materialism, we are too apt to look upon the mind and the body as two separate and independent things. At death they do indeed become so, but who of us knows that they would, were it not for the fiat of the Almighty? Who knows that there is not a necessity for the putting forth of his power in each individual case at the time of death, to prevent the mind of man from dying with his body, just as the mind of the brute does with his? The very prevalent notion that the mind is _essentially_ indestructible, and that it is put into the body as a separate thing, having the power _of itself_ to leave the body whenever it dies, rests on no substantial proof. That it is _destined_ thus to leave the body is quite another thing. Materialists, of whom we are pained to say there are many among believers in phrenology, though they flatly deny it,[39] seem to think that the brain produces thought pretty much as the liver makes bile or the stomach gastric juice. This doctrine would be _gratuitous_, a mere supposition, even if there were no Christian revelation to contradict it. But while we discard all such anti-Christian and absurd fantasies, we must not run to the other extreme, as some good men have done. It must be admitted, that in this life all the _manifestations_ of mind are not only connected with, but are _dependent_ upon, a material organization. The nature of this connection and dependence is of course a mystery, but of its existence there is no doubt. So far as injury is done to the brain and nervous system, just so far are the manifestations or actions of the mind impaired. And, on the other hand, moral causes, acting _directly_ upon the mind, affect through it the organization. And when insanity results from moral causes thus acting, it is not a direct effect, but an _indirect_ one—the organization affected by the mind is thrown into a diseased state, and reacts upon the mind, influencing its manifestations. If the mind thus acted upon were a spirit, separated from the body, the result would be merely the feelings, which the motives applied would _naturally_ produce, and not the unnatural feelings of insanity. It is not strictly proper then to speak of a ‘mind diseased.’ Let me not be understood to mean that mental derangement in every case is to be attributed to disease that leaves such palpable traces that the dissecting knife would reveal it if death were to take place. There are diseased operations in the body, that are hidden from our view—so hidden, that they not only leave no traces, but often develop no characteristic bodily symptoms.