357.-WINTER WALK AT NOON. THE night was winter in his roughest mood; And has the warmth of May. The vault is blue And through the trees I view the embattled tower, The soothing influence of the wafted strains, The walk, still verdant, under oaks and elms, The frequent flakes, has kept a path for me. With slender notes, and more than half suppress'd: COWPER. May think down hours to moments. Here the heart And learning wiser grow without his books. Knowledge, a rude unprofitable mass, The mere materials with which wisdom builds, Surrender judgment, hoodwink'd. Some the style The insupportable fatigue of thought, And swallowing therefore without pause or choice Not shy as in the world, and to be won By slow solicitation, seize at once The roving thought, and fix it on themselves. What prodigies can power divine perform More grand than it produces year by year, And all in sight of inattentive man? Familiar with the effect, we slight the canse, And in the constancy of Nature's course, The regular return of genial months, And renovation of a faded world, See nought to wonder at. Should God again, As once in Gibeon, interrupt the race Of the undeviating and punctual sun, How would the world admire! But speaks it less An agency divine, to make him know His moment when to sink and when to rise, All we behold is miracle; but seen So duly, all is miracle in vain. Where now the vital energy that moved, While summer was, the pure and subtle lymph A cold stagnation on the intestine tide. But let the months go round, a few short months, Shall boast new charms, and more than they have lost. Shall publish even to the distant eye Its family and tribe. Laburnum, rich Now sanguine, and her beauteous head now set Studious of ornament, yet unresolved Which hue she most approved, she chose them all; Of flowers, like flies clothing her slender rods, That scarce a leaf appears; mezerion too, Her blossoms; and luxuriant above all The jessamine, throwing wide her elegant sweets, From dearth to plenty, and from death to life, Where no eye sees them. And the fairer forms He sets the bright procession on its way, He marks the bounds which winter may not pass, And, ere one flowery season fades and dies, 358.-The Immortality of the Soul. SHERLOCK. [DR. THOMAS SHERLOCK, one of the most eminent Divines of the last century, was born in 1678; died in 1761. During this long life he was an indefatigable preacher and defender of Christianity. He was successively Master of the Temple, Bishop of Bangor, of Salisbury, and of London.] Had it not been for philosophy, there had remained perhaps no footsteps of any unbelievers in this great article; for the sense of nature would have directed all right; but philosophy misguided many. For those who denied immortality, did not deny the common sense of nature, which they felt as well as others; but they rejected the notice, and thought it false, because they could not find physical causes to support the belief, or thought that they found physical causes effectually to overthrow it. This account we owe to Cicero, one of the best judges of antiquity, who tells us plainly, that the reason why many rejected the belief of the immortality of the soul was because they could not form a conception of an unbodied soul. So that infidelity is of no older a date than philosophy; and a future state was not doubted of till men had puzzled and confounded themselves in their search after the physical reason of the soul's immortality. And now consider how the case stands, and how far the evidence of nature is weakened by the authority of such unbelievers. All mankind receive the belief of a future life, urged to it every day by what they feel transacted in their own breasts: but some philosophers reject this opinion, because they have no conception of a soul distinct from the body; as if the immortality of the soul depended merely upon the strength of human imagination. Were the natural evidence of immortality built upon any particular notion of a human soul, the evidence of nature might be overthrown by showing the impossibility or improbability of such notion: but the evidence of nature is not concerned in any notion; and all the common notions may be false, and yet the evidence of nature stand good, which only supposes man to be rational, and consequently accountable; and if any philosopher can prove the contrary, he may then, if his word will afterwards pass for anything, reject this and all other evidence whatever. The natural evidence, I say, supposes only that a man is a rational accountable creature; and, this being the true foundation in nature for the belief of the immortality, the true notion of nature must needs be this, that man, as such, shall live to account for his doings. The question, then, upon the foot of nature, is this: What constitutes the |