"My dear friend, will you tell me whom you have followed ?" Tremaine hesitated, and at length observed, "I mean not any one in particular; but with a mind teeming with objections, when I came to consult them, none could give me the satisfaction I required.?? "Perhaps you required too much," said Evelyn. "I think not," answered Tremaine " I required only truth." "What is truth?"-remarked Evelyn, " was once asked with fearful curiosity, if not with reverence, on a much more awful occasion. We, at least, will not be so cruelly and criminally indifferent to it afterwards, as he who asked it proved to be: and we will not with him, wash our hands, and by that act think we may leave the world to its horrors." "But even Pilate," rejoined Tremaine, "was "He cared not to enquire," interrupted Evelyn : "truth came not of its own accord; and finding it troublesome to pursue it, he plunged into sin and blood, from mere indolency and weakness of character. How many, alas! are of the same complexion among us." "Again I say, I am not one of them," said Tremaine. "Of that I am sure," answered Evelyn; 66 you are too good. But will you tell me your difficulties with precision, that I may try to answer them? Is the truth you require, certainty, equal to mathematical? or will strong probability content you ?" "In generalibus versatur error," observed Tremaine. "How much is left in miserable doubt, or absolutely lost, under that specious but doubtful strong probability!" "And yet," said Evelyn, "the whole business of the world, all that impels the heart and activity of man; that upon which he will every day risk his all, nay his life, has no surer foundation." "You mean then," said Tremaine, rather eagerly, "that the obligations of virtue and morals are merely strong probabilities!" "As compared with the mathematical truth you require, and distinct from one other thing, I do," answered Evelyn. "That other thing?" asked Tremaine. “Christianity,” pursued his friend; "the only thing I know which can stand in the place of your mathematical truth. Whoever believes, has an authority in morals at least as high as the demonstration of the Geometrician." "This I have conceded," said Tremaine. "We are, however, not yet ripe enough for this part of our subject," answered Evelyn. "I wish to discuss the religion of nature, before that of revelation; nor do I at all mean to cicatrize your doubts with mere authority, and leave you floating in uncertainty, before you are a believer. All I intend to say is, that among those who believe, the authority of Christianity in morals is the thing which answers to mathematical demonstration in geometry. Nevertheless, even without Christianity, I contend that the strong probabilities I have mentioned, are so fearfully convincing to the mind and heart of man, that he is a bold one who doubts; much more who lets his doubts so get hold of him, as to influence his conduct as if he had arrived at certainty on the other side." "That again, as I have said, is not my case," observed Tremaine; "but I wish to know how you apply this to a future state ?” "Why thus:-that there are ten thousand arguments for it, and not one against it!" cried Evelyn. "Oh! that of your ten thousand there were but one certain and demonstrable!" "What would content you?" "The return of one, even of but one, who had lived in the other world." "Christ alone is that person," answered Evelyn ; "and for this, I agree our argument is not ripe. But on my side let me ask the reason for doubt?" ་ "Why this, if nothing else; and I am willing to allow I have little else: the total destruction, annihilation, and disappearance of every thing belonging to us. That is positive on the one side; while on the other, not a vestige beyond conjecture, (how pleasing or beautiful soever that dear illusive field!) that any thing lives again. Take the most exquisite work of art-the Jupiter of Phidias. It seems to live, to breathe; fire is in its eye; intellect and dignity on its brow; we acknowledge the father of Gods and men, we worship, we adore! Suppose, for a moment, this statue hollowed out, and filled with an extraordinary mechanism of clockwork. It begins to move; it nods; it thunders; it may even be made to produce death. It stalks with dignity round a given space; and, for a time, the ignorant believe it to be what it appears. But of a sudden, it stops; the moving power is at an end; its faculties are lost. A barbarian seizes and dashes it to pieces. It is crumbled and reduced to powder, it can no more return to the marble whence it came, but is mixed with ignominious mud, and can be even traced no longer. I know this statue had not real life; but barring the blood and breathing, the vision and hearing, of our bodies, (which are all mere modes of matter, even as this divine work of Phidias was,) what difference, when they come to be destroyed by death, or the hand of the barbarian, seems there to be, between the statue and the man? The last appears a mere machine as well as the first; more nicely put together indeed; more exquisitely contrived; with a more wonderful apparatus in the senses, and leading therefore to more powerful effects; but all of them to be accounted for by the operation of these senses, which you yourself, I imagine, will not deny to be simple matter. I ask the end and finish of all, when these senses decay, and the life-blood is out? The machine of the man, like the machine of the statue, equally falls to pieces, and is trodden into dust. Hence, with Lucretius, may we not say Nunc quoniam quassatis undique vasis, Diffluere humorem et laticem discedere cernis, "In short, the excellent warm motion has become a kneaded clod; and the issue of all seems to be, 'To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot." Tremaine here paused, seemingly moved with his own account of himself. You put this well," said Evelyn," and I beseech you to proceed." "I have little more to add," said Tremaine, "but that after the most anxious investigation I am able to make of our intellectual powers, and all I have read of the nature of thought, I cannot convince myself that it is not what Lucretius and others have fancied it a very subtle, and very wonderful effect, for a given time, of the nice and extraordinary adaptation of parts in the wonderful machine; in the same manner, though not in the same degree, and by no means in the same manner to be discovered, as |