elect, in exercise of discretional wisdom, to be virtuous and happy; well. But if to choose the evil and reject the good, by virtue of that same free agency, the distinguishing characteristic between you and inferiority, it must be so: you then only suffer the punishment due to delinquency; accuse not me. How can you dare to demand a special interference from the power who hath made all things well originally, in behalf of your narrow views? Must there be renouncement, or innovation on the propriety of Totality, to gratify at every turn the unauthorized workings of unity; to avert the necessitous consequences of blind or wilful departure from principles established by unerring wisdom? Wisdom acting in the aggregate so sublime and beautiful, that the details flowing therefrom, are strict harmonies with the chord of Universality? Must the harmony of infinity be broken or inverted by the clash of finite understanding its derivative? And if yielding yourselves a prey to duplicity and all sorts of unnatural impressions, however instilled, however imbibed, (I decree to draw no line in this respect) you suffer the dissolution of the Nature, given to you to be imbittered by a pang not its own; to be haunted by phantoms of sick terror, conjured up by the wand of prejudice or superstition; so it must be also: I leave you to misery wantonly provoked."

LETTER XXVIII.

66

"My friend," said L in an altered voice, "I think you told me, I am sure you did, that your father had ceased to live. If it be not a theme too painful, favour me with a brief account of the manner of his death; it may be useful to us both, and the living are entitled to draw accurate feeling, to profit by the departure of those who feel no more. Accordingly, I related how my venerable parent, finding his end approach, had said, 'My son, come near, and hear me before I die: I am going to the land where all my fathers are gone, where the wiles of Europeans, of the stranger who hath misused us, will not avail. Where the deer of the Indians browse in the forests interminable, reserved by the Great Spirit for his children who are prudent and good. shall pass an eternity in hunting, and recounting at the feasts of the warriors, the valorous exploits of my ancestors and myself; in listening to the 'tales of the times of old, the deeds of the days of other years:' died, serene."-"To be sure he

I

and so he

did," said

L, "that is the very point we are coming to: and why did he so? Because the faith imbibed in his early childhood, bid him believe in the future state of peculiar enjoyment, which he therefore on his death-bed anticipated. But answer me, answer, I conjure you, by your love of truth and hatred of deception; would his wishes, hopes, and faith consummate such his hope, would they alter pre-ordination, if that pre-ordination was contrary to his wish? A man may as well say, 'I will not die, because I wish to live: I am told of the beatitude of futurity, but that at any rate is happiness in expectancy; now I am positively very happy in tenancy of my life, which is actually present; and shall be well contented to abide for ever here, and enjoy this world as I find it now.' So do many of us argue, and "our wish is father to the thought;" but will that wish prevail? Salutary experience tell us that it will not: when our hour is come, we must go; we shall be torn away, cling to life and its relations strongly as we may. Death is a clause inserted in the contract of existence, who can erase it? Whether that contract be renewable on its now, or other terms, I am content to leave in the bosom of superiority; who made, and can unmake, who can dissolve and can renew.

"It is absurd to say, that because a man dies happy in reliance implicit, on particular faith, that faith is founded on truth, which shall be exemplified by enjoyment of the rewards, and undergoing the torments held out as incentives by its propagators; for if that were the case, your father's peculiar hopes would be consummated by participation in the future pleasures which he had been taught to believe would be the lot of those who, during this life, had done 'Well;' and that 'Well' might not be any thing like the 'Well doing' of other Sects; and the enjoyments to be results therefrom, might be possibly not quite those which such other Sects might be led to expect. It is therefore certain, that no correct conclusion can be warrantably drawn from such premises as the sincerity of man's hopes and wishes; because they may be built on false hypothesis. It has been well observed, 'no man can tell what his emotions in the last hour will be.' I hear, that in a great number of cases the mind sinks with the body, by stupor or dotage preceding dissolution, from disease or old age. And even if it does not, think how in such an hour, when like drowning men we catch at straws; think how vividly early impressions and associations of ideas, may rush and overwhelm, however false! And

L

yet a shameless, peeping curiosity is on the alert on such occasions, not unfrequently gross falsehood and perversion of fact, watching how such and such a man may die, who in his hours of health and calm intellectual vigour, felt unable to subscribe conscientiously to the creed of the watch-dogs aforesaid: and should the frailty of expiring Nature prompt a feeling, an exclamation dissonant from previous views, then bursts forth the taunting shout of malignancy; then are the dying acts and words of one no longer Man, blazoned in all the rainbow tints of Sectarian abuse: Ah,' says she, shaking her head in bitterness, 'it has come home to him at last! I always told you how it would be: take warning, my dear hearers; avoid the pestilents who dissent from our orthodoxy.' And besides, at a time like this, and indeed at all periods, constitution has prodigious sway. One man turns sick at seeing or undergoing a slight surgical operation, even though no pain be felt. Another bears, without shrinking, a frightful incision, an intensity of acute pain; suffers with comparative indifference, perhaps the loss of a limb. And so at the execution of criminals; you shall hear of one who suffers for a crime, as forgery in my own country, whose blackness is because we abound in paper transactions,