the ceiling of the cavern, had been burning for ages; and suppose, as in some of the mines of the old world, one were born and grew up there, and had never seen darkness. How natural for him to imagine, as he stood with his back to the central luminary, that he was not dependent upon it for a knowledge of the characters before him.

So with the Deist. The world has never been without revelation of some sort. The lamp from heaven has been shining upon our dark world for ages. We have had no opportunity to ascertain what we could or could not have done, in the absence of its beams. And yet the Deist says, "Man shall live forever. We learn it from nature, independently of all aid from the Bible." Lord Herbert, the apostle of English Deism, who affirmed the sufficiency of reason and natural religion, and rejected the Bible as unnecessary and superfluous, inserted as one of the five principles of his natural creed the doctrine of a future state of rewards and punishments.

The celebrated Thomas Paine was orthodox so far as the fact of another state of existence is concerned. Hence he wrote, "I believe in one God, and no more, and hope for happiness beyond this life."* class of Deists read the hieroglyphics aright, but ignored the light without which they could never have read the first character.

This

An aged and otherwise intelligent Deist once affirmed in the hearing of the writer, that he was in no degree indebted to the Bible for a knowledge of God, or of his attributes; that he had demonstrated

*This passage taken from his "Age of Reason," is inscribed upon his monument at New Rochelle, N. Y.

all originally for himself, without aid or suggestion from revelation. When asked how old he was when he made the discovery, he fixed the period at twelve years; but when asked where he had lived for twelve years without ever hearing of a God, he was confounded. Neither could he tell how it was that he, a boy of twelve summers, could infer the being of one God, infinite, just, and unchangeable, from his works, while the sages of antiquity, with all their vast mental resources and discipline, multiplied their divinities by thousands, and invested them with every hateful attribute and passion of the human heart.

This, then, is the first error, we should rather say abuse of the rational evidences of another life-viz. to magnify them unduly, and install them in place of that only "sure word of prophecy," the sacred Scriptures.*

But it may be asked, if immortality may be inferred from reason and nature, why is not the belief universal? Why were the sages of Greece and Rome in doubt, even with the light of a traditional revelation to aid their perceptions? "I hope," said Socrates, "I am now going to good men, though this I would not take upon me positively to affirm."† "Which of these is true," said Cicero, (referring to the two theories of life or no life after death) God only knows; and which is most probable a very great

*"The evidences of human reason in favor of the immortality of the soul have their use; but they are not adapted to the comprehension of all. Neither can they, considered separate from Divine revelation, impart a sure hope and confidence.”—Helffenstein's Theology, p. 371.

† Helffenstein's Theology, p. 15.

question." "When I read I assent; but when I have laid down the book, all that assent vanishes." All this led Seneca to say, that "Immortality, however desirable, was rather promised than proved by those great men."

IV. A second error, in our opinion, and one into which not a few writers upon the subject have fallen, is to ignore or undervalue the testimony of reason. and nature to the great and glorious doctrine of Immortality.* Because the Deist has made too much of them ought we to fly to the opposite extreme, and make too little of them? Will it disparage revealed religion for us to listen to the voice of nature, whose echoes have been first awakened by the voice of God from heaven? Shall we refuse to read or apply the inscription upon the wall, lest we disparage the lamp by which we read it? The Bible is the source of all true knowledge of God and of a future life. Without it there would be no startling traditions, no "Natural Theology."

But while we thus magnify the "lively oracles," we are not confined to them. The Deist may reject Revelation, but the Christian need not, therefore, reject Nature. We are as welcome to all her "testimonies," as is the most ardent disciple of "Natural Religion;" and we study them with a Divine interpretation; and amid a celestial radiance against which he has closed his eyes for ever.

V. The Rational Evidences of Immortality, to which attention is called in the following chapters, is not then regarded as primary and independent, but rather as evidences made available by Divine Revela

*Even some Christian writers have fallen into this error.

tion. It is consequently only collateral to our chief source of knowledge, the Holy Scriptures; and instead of being a sufficient guide of itself, should only be regarded as corroborative of that Book which brings life and immortality to light, and alone is able to make wise unto salvation. Thus the Bible shines on, peerless in the moral heavens, while the Christian believer exults in its undimmed brightness, and rejoices amid scenes of beauty and grandeur illumined by its effulgence. But as the moon is made conspicuous and beautiful by the light of the sun, so all nature shines in the light of the BIBLE, and thus helps to light up the moral universe, by reflecting back upon the human heart and understanding its celestial beams. Such we conceive to be the nature of the argument drawn from reason and nature, and its true relation to the clearer light of Divine Revelation.

CHAPTER II.

INDICATIONS OF ANOTHER LIFE IN THE STRUCTURE

AND PHENOMENA OF THE NATURAL WORLD.

Read Nature; Nature is the friend of truth;
Nature is Christian; preaches to mankind,
And bids dead matter aid us in our creed.

I. A SQUADRON of ships are about to proceed to sea, or to engage in battle. Upon almost every ship may be seen a man waving a small red and white flag in various directions. It may be noticed by a landsman, but of its utility and design he is utterly ignorant. Much less can he understand the import or meaning of these signal flags and their singular movements. But tell him that these men with flags belong to the signal-corps of the fleet; and place in his hands the manual which explains the import of every flag and motion; and these otherwise unmeaning signals become as intelligible as the plainest language; and are invested with equal power to inspire courage, enkindle hope or fill with terror.

So in regard to many of the facts and phenomena of material existence. In the absence of the Bible, which brings life and immortality to light, they may seem altogether unintelligible and unmeaning; when in the light of that all-perfect manual of creation,