Science and Education | Page 8

a materialist; or, if good authorities say he is and must be so, in spite of
his assertion to the contrary; or, if he acknowledge himself unable to
see good reasons for believing in the natural immortality of man,
respectable folks look upon him as an unsafe neighbour of a cash-box,
as an actual or potential sensualist, the more virtuous in outward
seeming, the more certainly loaded with secret "grave personal sins."
Nevertheless, it is as certain as anything can be, that Joseph Priestley
was no gloomy fanatic, but as cheerful and kindly a soul as ever
breathed, the idol of children; a man who was hated only by those who
did not know him, and who charmed away the bitterest prejudices in
personal intercourse; a man who never lost a friend, and the best
testimony to whose worth is the generous and tender warmth with
which his many friends vied with one another in rendering him
substantial help, in all the crises of his career.
The unspotted purity of Priestley's life, the strictness of his
performance of every duty, his transparent sincerity, the unostentatious
and deep-seated piety which breathes through all his correspondence,
are in themselves a sufficient refutation of the hypothesis, invented by
bigots to cover uncharitableness, that such opinions as his must arise
from moral defects. And his statue will do as good service as the brazen
image that was set upon a pole before the Israelites, if those who have
been bitten by the fiery serpents of sectarian hatred, which still haunt
this wilderness of a world, are made whole by looking upon the image
of a heretic who was yet a saint.
Though Priestley did not believe in the natural immortality of man, he
held with an almost naïve realism that man would be raised from the
dead by a direct exertion of the power of God, and thenceforward be
immortal. And it may be as well for those who may be shocked by this
doctrine to know that views, substantially identical with Priestley's,
have been advocated, since his time, by two prelates of the Anglican
Church: by Dr. Whately, Archbishop of Dublin, in his well-known

"Essays"; [13] and by Dr. Courtenay, Bishop of Kingston in Jamaica,
the first edition of whose remarkable book "On the Future States,"
dedicated to Archbishop Whately, was published in 1843 and the
second in 1857. According to Bishop Courtenay,
"The death of the body will cause a cessation of all the activity of the
mind by way of natural consequence; to continue for ever UNLESS the
Creator should interfere."
And again:--
"The natural end of human existence is the 'first death, the dreamless
slumber of the grave, wherein man lies spell-bound, soul and body,
under the dominion of sin and death--that whatever modes of conscious
existence, whatever future states of 'life' or of 'torment' beyond Hades
are reserved for man, are results of our blessed Lord's victory over sin
and death; that the resurrection of the dead must be preliminary to their
entrance into either of the future states, and that the nature and even
existence of these states, and even the mere fact that there is a futurity
of consciousness, can be known only through God's revelation of
Himself in the Person and the Gospel of His Son."--P. 389.
And now hear Priestley:--
"Man, according to this system (of materialism), is no more than we
now see of him. His being commences at the time of his conception, or
perhaps at an earlier period. The corporeal and mental faculties, in
being in the same substance, grow, ripen, and decay together; and
whenever the system is dissolved it continues in a state of dissolution
till it shall please that Almighty Being who called it into existence to
restore it to life again."--"Matter and Spirit," p. 49.
And again:--
"The doctrine of the Scripture is, that God made man of the dust of the
ground, and by simply animating this organised matter, made man that
living percipient and intelligent being that he is. According to
Revelation, death is a state of rest and insensibility, and our only
though sure hope of a future life is founded on the doctrine of the
resurrection of the whole man at some distant period; this assurance
being sufficiently confirmed to us both by the evident tokens of a
Divine commission attending the persons who delivered the doctrine,
and especially by the actual resurrection of Jesus Christ, which is more
authentically attested than any other fact in history."--Ibid., p. 247.

We all know that "a saint in crape is twice a saint in lawn;" but it is not
yet admitted that the views which are consistent with such saintliness in
lawn, become diabolical when held by a mere dissenter. [14]
I am not here either to defend