own declining years,-if we should feel it guilt and disgrace to withhold the offering, when the happiness of a single state is the object, and when he who requires the sacrifice is but a fallible being like ourselves,-how much greater guilt and moral disgrace must it be, to hesitate in making those sacrifices, or to repine when they are made, which are demanded by wisdom that is considered by us to be incapable of error, for purposes which, as our own hearts have declared, must be purposes beneficent to mankind. Shall the warrior rejoice in dying in battle for his country, or even for his prince! and shall we feel no joy in finishing a life that has been accordant with the Divine will, in whatever manner the same Divine will may require it of us; or, if the easy offering of life be not that which is required, in bearing a little longer for the whole community of mankind, any of those evils, which we should never shrink from bearing, for that small portion of the community which our country comprehends? "Shall others say, O beloved city of Cecrops," exclaims Marcus Aurelius,—and shall I not rather say, “O beloved city of our God!"

These views of the Divinity,-the habitual love of his perfections, and ready acquiescence in the dispensations of his universal providence, are not more suitable to the Divine nature, than productive of delight and consolation to him who entertains them. They distinguish, indeed, the virtuous from the rest of mankind, in serenity of happiness, as much as in the purity of heart, from which that delightful serenity is derived.

He sees with other eyes than theirs.-Where they
Behold a sun, he views a Deity;

What makes them only smile, makes him adore.
Titles and honours, if they prove his fate,

He lays aside, to find his dignity:

Himsex too much he prizes to be proud;
And nothing thinks so great in man, as man.
Too dear he holds his interest, to neglect
Another's welfare, or his right invade;
Their interest, like a lion, lives on prey.
They kindle at the shadow of a wrong:

Wrong he sustains with temper, looks on heaven,

Nor stoops to think his injurer his foe.

Nought but what wounds his virtue, wounds his peace.
His joys create, theirs murder future bliss.

To triumph in existence his alone;

And his alone triumphantly to think,

His true existence is not yet begun. *

The true existence of man is, indeed, scarcely begun on earth. There is an immortality awaiting him,--and all which

* Night Thoughts, Night Eighth.

is most worthy of being prized in the short period of his mortal life, is the relation which it may have to those endless ages that are to follow it. In my next Lecture, I shall inquire into the grounds of our belief in this future state of continued existence.

422

LECTURE XCVI.

ON THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL.

In my last Lecture, Gentlemen, I finished the remarks which I had to offer on the relation which man, in his earthly existence, bears to that greatest of beings, from whom every thing which exists has derived its origin. We found, in the phenomena of the universe, abundant proof of a designing Power, that arranged them in their beautiful regularity; and, in the happiness which they tend to produce, a proof not less strong, of the benevolence which has arranged them for purposes so gracious.

When we consider the relation of man to his Creator, however, do we consider only a relation that terminates with the few years of our mortal life? When every thing external fades upon our eye, does the spirit within, that almost gave its own life to every thing external, fade likewise,--or is there not something, over which the accidents that injure or destroy our mortal frame have no power,-that continues still to subsist, in the dissolution of all our bodily elements, and that would continue to subsist, though not the body only, but the earth, and the sun, and the whole system of external things, were to pass into new forms of combinations, or to perish, as if they had never been, in the void of the universe.

There is within us an immortal spirit. We die to those around us, indeed, when the bodily frame, which alone is the instrument of communion with them, ceases to be an instrument, by the absence of the mind which it obeyed. But, though the body moulders into earth, that spirit which is of purer origin returns to its purer source. What Lucretius says of it is true, in a sense far nobler than that which he intended:

Cedit item retro de terra quod fuit ante,

In terram; sed quod missum est ex ætheris oris,
Id, rursus cœli fulgentia templa receptant.*

* De Rerum Nat. Lib. II. v. 998-1001.

That we do not die wholly is a belief so consolatory to our self-importance,-to which annihilation seems more than a mere privation of enjoyment, and rather itself a positive evil -that our hope of immortality may be supposed, like every other hope, to render us credulous of that which we are eager to believe. There is a principle, too, which I pointed out to you, when I attempted to explain the peculiar vividness of our love of glory, as a mere emotion, that may aid this credulity -a principle by which the very thought of our name, as our name, at the most distant period, seems to us to involve the reality of the existence of those very feelings, which are all that seem to us, in our conception, to constitute ourselves. To think of any thing as ours at any particular period, is, as I then explained to you, to feel as if we were truly existing at that particular period;-because it is to have combined the conception of the particular object, whatever it may be, with the conception of that self which is known to us by some conscious feeling, and which, as conceived by us, therefore, must always carry with it the notion of consciousness; and the frequency of this illusion, by which, in thinking of our name, or of other objects connected with us, we extend into futurity the conception of our consciousness, though it might not be sufficient to produce the belief of immortality, must be allowed, at least, to strengthen the belief, if once existing. It is necessary, therefore, in entering on an inquiry, in which we are so deeply concerned, to divest ourselves as much as possible of the influence of our wishes; and, if we cannot inquire with the impartiality of absolute indifference-to inquire, at least, with the caution of those who know their own partial wishes; and, knowing these, know in what manner they are likely to be influenced.

The change which death produces, is the most striking of all the changes which we can witness, even though we should not believe it to imply the dissolution of the principle that felt in life, and thought. It is at least to our senses, the apparent cessation of every thought and feeling. There is no bloom on the cheek,-no motion in the limb,-no lustre in the eye. Even these are but the slightest changes. There is no voice or look of reflection,-no apparent consciousness,--nothing but a little quicker tendency to decay, to distinguish him, who, but a few moments before, was, perhaps, wise and cheerful, and active, full of remembrances and hopes,--from the insensible statue that has been dug from the quarry, and slowly fashioned into the semblance of his shape. With such a change before our eyes, it is unquestionably allowable to doubt, at least, whether any thing have truly survived this change; or

whether thought and feeling have not ceased, wholly, by the injury of that mechanism, in connection with which alone, they become objects of our knowledge.

It is unquestionably allowable, as I have said, to those who have never made the phenomena of the mind, and the nature of the substance which exhibits these phenomena, objects of their reflection, to doubt, whether all the functions of life may not be destroyed, in that moment which destroys the more obvious functions, that alone come under the survey of our senses. If the phenomena of thought, be phenomena that consist only in the play of certain organs, the destruction of those organs must be the destruction of the thought itself. It would, then, be as absurd to speak of the continuance of consciousness, when there are no conscious organs, as to speak of the continuance of musical vibrations, without a single elastic body.

If there be nothing, then, distinct from the material frame, which is manifestly subject to decay, our doubt may be converted into certainty, or at least, may almost be converted into certainty. We may say then, that death which destroys the organization, destroys the capacity of feeling, because it destroys that in which feeling consists. The elements of that which once thought, may subsist in a different form, and may, perhaps, even at some remote period, become again elements of a similar organization, and again constitute propositions or passions, as they before constituted some truth or error, or emotion of love or hate; but they must meet again, by some new arrangement, before they can thus become feelings; and, in the mean time, they may have been blown about by the winds, or become a part of these very winds, or formed elements of various bodies, solid, liquid, or gaseous, as little sentient as the other insensible elements with which they mingled, in all the play of chemical compositions and decomposi

tions.

This conclusion, as to the absolute mortality or chemical decomposition of that which feels and thinks, seems irresistible, if our reasonings and passions, and whatever forms our consciousness, be only certain particles variously mingled, and variously adhering or changing their place, according to the new play of chemical affinities, as new elements may be added to disturb the particles of thought, or certain other elements subtracted from the thinking compound. But on this supposition of particles of thought, the whole force of the conclusion, from the change in decomposition, of the other bodily particles, depends. If our material frame be not thought itself, but only that which has a certain relation to the spiritual