The machine may be broken, and rust corrode the springs: but can rust feed on motion? Worms may batten on the brain: but can worms gnaw the mind? Dynamics are, and dwell apart, though matter be not made; Spirit is, and can be separate, though a body were not: Power is one, be it lever, screw, or wedge; but it needeth these for illustration: Mind is one, be it casual or ideal; but it is shown in these. The creature is constructed individual, for trial of his reasonable will, Clay and soul, commingled wisely, mingled not confused: As power is not in the spring, till somewhat give it action, So, until spirit be infused, the organism lieth inergetic. Or shalt thou say that mind is the delicate offspring of matter, The bright consummate flower that must perish with its leaf? Go to: doth weight breed lightness? is freedom the atmosphere of prisons? When did the body elevate, expand, and bud the mind? Lo, a red-hot cinder flung from the furnaces of Ætna,-- There is fire in that ash; but did the pumice make it? Nay, cold clod, never canst thou generate a flame, Nay, most exquisite machinery, nevermore elaborate a mind: Rather do ye battle and contend, opposite the one to the other; Till God shall stop the strife, and call the body colleague. Garment of flesh, and art thou then a vest, so tinged with subtle poison, (Maddening tunic of the centaur,) as to kill the soul? Not so: fruit of disobedience, rot in dissolution, as thou must,-- The seed is in the core, its germ is safe, and life is in that germ: Moreover, Marah shall be sweetened; and a Good Physician Yet shall heal those gangrene wounds, the spotted plague of sin: He, through worldly trials, and the separative cleansing of the grave, Shall change its corruptible to glory, and wash that garment white. Still, is the whisper in thy heart, that oftenest the bed of death Seemeth but a sluggish ebb, of sinking soul and body? Mind dwelling, long-time, sensual in the chambers of the flesh, May slumber on in conscious sloth, and wilfully be dulled: But is it therefore nigh to dissolution, even as the body of this death? Ask the stricken conscience, gasping out its terrors; Ask the dying miser, loth to leave his gold; Ask the widowed poor, confiding her fatherless to strangers; Ask the martyr-maid, a broken reed so strong, That weak and tortured frame, with triumph on its brow!-- O thou gainsayer, the finger of disease may seem to reach the soul, But it is a spiritual touch, sympathy with that which aileth: Pain or fear may dislocate and shatter this delicate machinery of nerves; But madness proveth mind: the fault is in the engine, not the impetus: Dissipate the mists of matter, lo, the soul is clear: Timour's cage bowed it in the dust; but now it goeth forth a freedman.