Where, then, would be the justice of heaven, were the soul of so illustrious a character as this, to die with his body? And whither must have flown all our ideas of infinite power, and of infinite excellence?-Without immortality, age has no futurity, on which to build its hope and confidence ;-for it is the idea of immortality, which apologizes for our sorrows, and renders the condition of humanity in the smallest degree intelligible. To be born is assuredly a high privilege; and yet many men there are, who would say of life what Regnard said of a journey into Lapland:-"I would not but have made it for all the gold in the world; but which, for all the gold in the world, I would not make again." But the time will come, when he shall say :-

No lightning glares, no billows roar :
Rest, stranger, rest;-the storm is o'er.

Bird.

Were it not for an elevated idea of immortality, who would not rather be a plant, a fossil, or a mineral, than be dignified with the form and the feelings of a man? Living only in the hope of dying, the charm of immortality constitutes the greatest portion of our happiness. Being a subject, over which the soul never desires to slumber, to doubt it were to possess the credulity of an atheist. To disbelieve in the eternity of the soul were almost equivalent to the assertion, that we are afraid to meet it; as much as the denial of a God is the frequent result of having previously wished it. For it is the plague and pleasure of our Nature to believe the thing we wish.

III.

ETERNITY!-thou dark, mysterious sea,-
All that is past, and all that is to be,

Ages and worlds, are present still to thee!

"That the soul is immortal," said Mr. Fox, a short time previous to his death, "I am convinced!-The existence of a Deity is a proof, that spirit exists; why not, therefore, the mind of man? And if such an essence as the soul exists, by its nature it may exist for ever. I should have believed in the immortality of the soul, though Christianity had never existed.— But how it acts, as separated from the body, is beyond my capacity of judgment.” How many

statesmen are there, at the age of eighty, who would barter all their acquired dignities and wealth, for the privilege of escaping a conviction of that awful truth!

The petals of some flowers fall, as soon as they expand; the ephemeron, after three years of preparation, is produced, grows, extends its members to maturity, lays its eggs, propagates, and dies!-But the soul-the standard of man, and to increase the perfection of which almost every thing seems to combine-lives to eternity! That eternity, which Boethius defines a perfect possession of an interminable existence; and which Censorinus calls an infinite duration: but which, strictly and plainly, means an endless enjoyment of a perpetual present.

Empedocles placed the seat of the soul in the blood; and the Stoics in the heart But Galen conceived,

that1 every member of the body had its separate soul. Some Indians, indeed, believed that every man has two souls; a good and a bad one :-but Archelous, and probably Anaxagoras, whose pupil he was, taught, that the capacities of the soul vary in men, according to the structure of their bodies. The ancient Etrurians seem to have inclined, in some measure, to the Indian sect; since they formed Janus-a god entirely unknown to the Greeks,-with two faces:-indicating, that he could look backward into the old world, and forward into the new one.

Alcmeon esteemed the soul to be a portion of the divinity. The fable of Saturn implied as much:-for since the name of Saturn meant "first intellect," every intellect returning into itself, we may recognize great beauty in the idea of Saturn's eating his own offspring. This doctrine, though it originated with Plato, is entirely inconsistent with that of the Alexandrian Platonists; most of whom testified, that the soul is united to the body for its punishment; and that the body is the soul's sepulcure. Some, among whom we may class Origen and Clemens Alexandrinus, believed, that the connexion of the soul with the body was supported by a fine material vehicle, which separated at the

• Plat. in Plac. Philosoph., vol. iv. e. 5. 2 Danish Lett., part ii. p. 23.

3 Cic. de Natura Deor. lib. i. c. 10.

4 Remarks on Plato, Taylor; Cratylus, p. 26.

5 The earlier Platonists even believed, that there was a deity, superior to the architect of the earth: so magnificent an idea had they of the universe. Cratylus; Taylor, p. 25.

period of death. Others have supposed, that the soul is a light substance in the shape of the body in all its parts, but of a nature so elastic and aerial, as to be insensible of touch; bearing the same relation to the frame, that music does to an instrument, or perfume to the solid substance of a flower. And that it is elicited from the body, at the time of death, in the same manner, as vapour is called from the earth; only of such lightness, as to be intangible, invisible, and of such a penetrating nature, as to pass freely through all substances.

1 Augustine* says, the soul is like to the deity, immortal and indissoluble. The human structure was divided into the body, the mind, and the soul, by the Stoics, the Pythagoreans, and the Platonists; by Irenæus, Clemens Alexandrinus, Origen and Ignatius. In this light, says Augustine,‡ man may be esteemed a symbol of the Trinity. Ganganelli, something after the same manner, draws an analogy by observing, that natural philosophy denotes our bodies; mathematics express our reason; and theology the soul. Hugh Victor seems to have thought that the soul of man was originally of the nature of Angels; § and Leibnitz accounts for the communication between the soul and body, by supposing a pre-established harmony: so that they do not act physically upon each other; but essentially with each other:-the latter being always disposed to act, when the former wills.

* De Quant. Anim., cap. ii. Sallust, speaking of the soul in reference to the body, says, " unum cum Deis, Alterum cum belluis commune est.” + Nemesus de Naturâ Hominis, cap. i.

Tractat. de Symbolo. Aquinas takes up the same, or nearly the same idea.

§ In Lib. de interpret. de Imag. et simil. Dei., lib. ii. c. 2.

IV.

That the soul is immortal was believed by the Chaldeans, and Egyptians'; the Celts; the Scythians; the ancient Lydians; the Druids; the Mandingoes of Africa5; the Charibbees; the Buddhists of Ceylon'; the Mexicans; the Japanese; and indeed by almost all nations.10* The Galla of Abyssinia believe in a future state; but not in future punishments. The Sadducees among the Jews, however, disbelieved the resurrection of the dead."1 That other sects have, also, believed the soul to die with the body, cannot be denied. But this, as Burnet has said before,12 proves nothing to the general reasoning: -nor would it, were any traveller able to prove, beyond the possibility of contradiction, that a whole nation, consisting of ten millions of inhabitants, entertained the same belief. The world contains nine

Herod., lib. ii. c. 123.

3 Pomp. Mela., 4 Ammian. Marcellin. xv. p. 9.

2 Strabo and Valer. Máximus. lib. ii. c. i.

5 Park's Travels, p. 408.

6 Sir Wm. Young's Voy. to the West Indies.

7 Cordiner's Ceylon, p. 149.

8 Clavigero, b. vi, sect. i.

9 Raynal, vol. i. p. 133.

10 Cic. Tusc. Quæst., lib. iii. Senec. Ep. 18. Ælian says, that in his time none of the barbarians were Atheists. Var. Hist. lib. ii. c. 31.

11 Acts, xviii. 8; Mark. xii. 18. 12 De Statu Mortuorum, cap. ii.

The natives of the Friendly Islands believe the deity to be a female, residing among the stars; and the soul to be a divinity residing invisibly in the body.