Briggs, School, College and Character, 95—“Some of us remember the days when we were on earth for the first time;”—which reminds us of the boy who remembered sitting in a corner before he was born and crying for fear he would be a girl. A more notable illustration is that found in the Life of Sir Walter Scott, by Lockhart, his son-in-law, 8:274—“Yesterday, at dinner time, I was strangely haunted by what I would call the sense of preëxistence—viz., a confused idea that nothing that passed was said for the first time—that the same topics had been discussed and the same persons had started the same opinions on them. It is true there might have been some ground for recollections, considering that three at least of the company were old friends and had kept much company together.... But the sensation was so strong as to resemble what is called a mirage in the desert, or a calenture on board of ship, when lakes are seen in the desert and sylvan landscapes in the sea. It was very distressing yesterday and brought to mind the fancies of Bishop Berkeley about an ideal world. There was a vile sense of want of reality in all I did and said.... I drank several glasses of wine, but these only aggravated the disorder. I did not find the _in vino veritas_ of the philosophers.” To the theory of preëxistence we urge the following objections: (_a_) It is not only wholly without support from Scripture, but it directly contradicts the Mosaic account of man’s creation in the image of God, and Paul’s description of all evil and death in the human race as the result of Adam’s sin. _Gen. 1:27_—“_And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him_”; _31_—“_And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good._” _Rom. 5:12_—“_Therefore, as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin; and so death passed unto all men, for that all sinned._” The theory of preëxistence would still leave it doubtful whether all men are sinners, or whether God assembles only sinners upon the earth. (_b_) If the soul in this preëxistent state was conscious and personal, it is inexplicable that we should have no remembrance of such preëxistence, and of so important a decision in that previous condition of being;—if the soul was yet unconscious and impersonal, the theory fails to show how a moral act involving consequences so vast could have been performed at all.