Here we would wish to take an opportunity of stating that the Principle of Continuity as upheld by us has reference solely to the intellectual faculties. We are led, for instance, by this principle to assert that the process of production of the visible universe must have been of such a nature as to be comprehensible more or less to the higher intelligences of the universe.
But we are not led to assert the eternity of stuff or matter, for that would denote an unauthorised application to the invisible universe of the experimental law of the conservation of matter which belongs entirely to the present system of things.
Nor are we led to assert that the ether must play some important part in our future bodies, for our knowledge of things is vastly too limited to enable us to come to any such conclusion.
Notwithstanding these remarks, if any theologian of repute thinks that our fourth and subsequent editions savour too much of ideas of this nature, we will gladly amend our language when a suitable opportunity occurs. It is probably due to misconception of our words, possibly to a difficulty, which we have all along felt, of finding words exactly fitted to express some of the more novel of the conceptions to which we have been led, that we have been spoken of, to a certain extent even by some friendly critics, as ‘subtly materialistic’ or as ‘loose Positivists.’ Unless we were to coin new terms (which we may yet find it necessary to do), it will probably be found all but impossible to escape such charges when writing on such matters.
While the treatment we have experienced from the true leaders of religious thought has been all that we could wish, and while some of them have come forward as our champions rather than our critics, we regret to think that certain of their following have not invariably imitated the good example thus set them. All are not Bayards, whether we regard the temper of the blade or that of the individual who wields it.
Pages of so-called ‘extracts’ from our book have been strung together, now by some writers of the High Church school, anon by writers of the very lowest Evangelical type, in each case with absolute disregard of their original collocation and surroundings, and the result is of course as utterly unfair a representation of our meaning as could possibly be given. These ‘extracts,’ which are always scrupulously enclosed in inverted commas, are not merely altered in meaning by being arbitrarily detached from the context—they are often altered by the insertion of terms (e.g. luminiferous force!) which we, as scientific men, could not possibly have employed.
People who adopt a system like this deserve to have, once for all, thoroughly brought home to them the bitter rebuke administered to their analogues long ago by a witty if semi-profane divine, who proposed to choose his text on their principle, and gave out, to the astonishment of his audience, part only of a verse, viz., ‘Hang all the law and the prophets’!