Rev. Edward White of England, Dr. E. Petavel of France, and Dr. Lyman Abbott of America, have denied what Dr. Abbott is pleased to call facultative immortality. Immortality, in their esteem, is an importation from without. It is the claim of Locke, and Hume, and Mill, and Spencer, that knowledge is an importation from the realm of sensation. Their war was upon the knowing faculties. From the domain of philosophy the conflict has passed up to the plane of religion, and we now have the attack made upon the self-determining spirit. In the sensational philosophy, we have seen all things dissolved. It not only makes it impossible to rationally believe in God, but also in mind, and self, and external world. The sensational philosophy got the object of knowledge by a process that destroyed the subject of knowledge, so this irrational theory of Dr. Lyman Abbot would secure the object of life by the destruction of the subject of life. We know that the raw material of knowledge is found in the objective world, but unless the mind has the inherent combining, active power to take this raw material and organize it into an orderly system, then the individual can never know anything. There being in the mind no master of ceremonies, no director and referee, the tramp and vagabond sensations may wander in and wander out at their sweet will. They would come in with their own opinions and go out with their own opinions. There being no head of the house within, the tramps could have it all their own way. Knowledge, beginning out of the mind, would have its cause and end out of the mind. Beginning with matter, knowledge could be resolved back into matter. We believe the life in which the human spirit is to realize its nature fully and harmoniously was embodied in Jesus Christ, who was the word made flesh. But it is because the spirit of man is essentially indestructible, that it has power to take hold of this life and assimilate it. If it refuses this divine embodiment of life, it brings disorder, and confusion, and everlasting sorrow to itself, but not destruction. The self-determining spirit is in its structure and constitution up to the style of life offered it in the Son of Man and the Son of God. In finding the life that was in Christ, it finds its own life, and enters the path of everlasting progress.