Mr. Editor: In the July number of THE CONTINENTAL, I notice some editorial remarks upon a portion of my article 'Touching the Soul,' which appeared in the June number. For these remarks I am under obligation to you, as pointing out the looseness of my phraseology, whereby I have failed to convey the idea I intended; for which looseness the only excuse must be that my mind was occupied more with the thought than with the expression, and the latter was so absorbed in the former as to have suffered in consequence. For it seems to me that the strictures are due to misapprehension of the position assumed. To commence with the assumed operation of spirit on the material world, as seen in the action of nature: Does not the theory that the mysterious productive forces are in their own nature spiritual verge somewhat closely upon the dogmas of pantheism? What else than this was the belief of the ancients, which placed a Naiad in every stream and a Dryad in every tree? Does it not draw still nearer to Shelley's theory of a 'Spirit of Nature,' which was his God, creating, shaping, and pervading all things? In a word, does not such a theory, in effect, place a god in every object? Spirit acts independently of God. And here I would not be misunderstood. For though God, as the Author of all spiritual being, may be said to be the indirect cause of all spiritual action, since, if he had not created it, the action could not have resulted, yet He has created the soul to act upon its own promptings, and entirely independent of Himself, holding it, at the same time, to a strict accountability for all the deeds done in the body. To deny this, is to deny the whole doctrine of freewill agency, and with it that of all human responsibility, unless we go to the other and blasphemous extreme of branding with cruelty and injustice the entire system of revealed religion. In consequence, then, of this independent action of spirit, we see the soul of man constantly departing from its normal state, effecting evil as well as good, and guilty of action for which its Creator can in no wise be held responsible. And upon this simple fact hangs the whole system of future rewards and punishments. If now we consider this force which we have been discussing to be spiritual in its nature, it is not for us to draw the line between it and the soul of man. Spirit, so far as it touches our knowledge or experience, is one and the same thing the world over, differing only in degree of its qualities. If we concede to this force the status of spirit, we must also concede to it that essential characteristic or faculty of spirit, _independent action_; and hence the Creator God could not be said to have any hand whatever in the works of this spiritual force--in other words, in the creation of any of the features of the physical world--further than in the original creation of the spirit which underlies and produces them. But this position is in