Not long since I heard a preacher of some notoriety, say while preaching, that "mind must necessarily remain mind." Now I suppose that he as well as many others, have no doubt of the truth of this assertion. In view of this, I will give the following quotation from one of the religious papers of the day. It states, "nineteen years, ago, Mr. Hait of Wilton, in Fairfield county, Connecticut, then a remarkably good student, in his collegiate course was suddenly deprived of his reason and memory. Under these circumstances, his father, the Rev. Mr. Hait, sent him to Hartford, but finding no relief, he sent him to Mr. Chaplin of Cambridge, Mass. The Doctor said there was no present relief for him, but at the age of thirty-six or thirty-seven there would be a change; that the brain was too much expanded for the cranium, and there would be at that age a contraction which would enable it to act healthily. His anxious father and family saw their hopes peremptorily deferred for nineteen years. That time has recently expired, and to their great joy, the prophecy is fulfilled. The man began to enquire for his books as if he had just laid them down, and resumed his mathematical studies where he left
them. There was no trace in his mind of this long blank in his life, or of anything that had occurred in it, and he did not know that he was nearly forty years old."
I ask, is it reasonable to suppose that this man knew as much as any other common man in some other world, or sphere, (to say nothing about knowing more after the thoughts stop here, than while they were in motion,) during this long period?
Now the Bible says, "put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man; his breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth, in that very day his thoughts perish." Ps. cxlvi, 3, 4. The above is a case when the man's thoughts perish'd even before his breath went forth; and if a compressed state of the brain would produce insensibility while a man was alive, would there not a certain insensibility follow the entirely burning a man up?
Jesse Dorcas.
Fremont, Ohio.