like those in the way, or prologue to it." He then notices one of the circumstances of humanity, which, with those who are not reconciled to life on motives derived from religion, is often a cause of the highest dissatisfaction and complaint. "Men that look no further than their outsides," he remarks, “think health an appurtenance unto life, and quarrel with their constitutions for being sick; but I that have examined the parts of man, and know upon what tender filaments that fabric hangs, do wonder that we are not always so; and considering the thousand doors that lead to death, do thank my God that we can die but once." It is impossible, indeed, to reconcile the evils of this life, moral or physical, with the mercy and justice of the Deity, but upon the basis of a resurrection and a day of retribution; doctrines on which, in fact, are founded the main pillars of revealed religion, and without which, as the great apostle of the Gentiles has asserted, we should be of all beings the most miserable.

Very forcibly, therefore, and very distinctly, has the author of " Religio Medici," expressed

himself on these momentous subjects, conscious that on a firm reliance on the truth of these essential articles of Christianity, can alone be built a morality acceptable to God.

"How shall the dead arise," he observes, "is no question of my faith; to believe only possibilities, is not faith, but mere philosophy; many things are true in divinity, which are neither inducible by reason nor confirmable by sense; and many things in philosophy confirmable by sense, yet not inducible by reason. Thus, it is impossible by any solid or demonstrative reasons, to persuade a man to believe the conversion of the needle to the north; though this be possible and true, and easily credible, upon a single experiment unto the sense. I believe, that our estranged and divided ashes shall unite again; that our separated dust, after so many pilgrimages and transformations into the parts of minerals, plants, animals, elements, shall, at the voice of God, return into their primitive shapes, and join again to make up their primary and predestinate forms. As at the creation, there was a separation of that confused mass into its species, so at the destruction thereof there

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shall be a separation into its distinct individuals. As at the creation of the world, all the distinct species that we behold, lay involved in one mass, till the fruitful voice of God separated this united multitude into its several species; so at the last day, when these corrupted reliques shall be scattered in the wilderness of forms, and seem to have forgot their proper habits, God by a powerful voice shall command them back into their proper shapes, and call them out by their single individuals.

"This is the day, that must make good that great attribute of God, his justice; that must reconcile those unanswerable doubts that torment the wisest understandings, and reduce those seeming inequalities and respective distributions in this world, to an equality and recompensive justice in the next. This is that one day, that shall include and comprehend all that went before it; wherein, as in the last scene, all the actors must enter, to complete and make up the catastrophe of this great piece. This is the day, whose memory hath only power to make us honest in the dark, and to be virtuous without a witness. That virtue is her own reward, is

but a cold principle, and not able to maintain our variable resolutions in a constant and settled way of goodness. I have practised that honest artifice of Seneca, and in my retired and solitary imaginations, to detain me from the foulness of vice, have fancied to myself the presence of my dear and worthiest friends, before whom I should lose my head, rather than be vitious; yet herein I found that there was nought but moral honesty, and this was not to be virtuous. for his sake who must reward us at the last. I have tried if I could reach that great resolution of his, to be honest without a thought of heaven or hell; and, indeed, I found, upon a natural inclination and inbred loyalty unto virtue, that I could serve her without a livery; yet, not in that resolved and venerable way, but that the frailty of my nature, upon an easy temptation, might be induced to forget her. The life, therefore, and spirit of all our actions is the Resurrection, and stable apprehension that our ashes shall enjoy the fruit of our pious endeavours; without this, all religion is a fallacy, and atheists have been the only philosophers."

With these remarks on the Resurrection and

the Day of Judgment, passages strongly conceived, and vigorously expressed, I shall conclude my selection from Sir Thomas Browne's Confession of Faith, reserving what he has written with equal energy of thought and felicity of language, on the subject of Charity, and which forms the second part of his Religio Medici, to a subsequent number.