grown a mere skeleton, withered without, and putrified within; and, to all outward appearance, a moft loathfome and despicable Jump of clay? How has the foul exerted itself, and filled the hearers with admiration at its triumphant raptures, and exalted ideas of that happiness, which it was going to tafte in a state of separation from the body? Might we not fay of fuch a foul, that it was struggling to get loofe; and, as a bird, pent up within the egg, must first break the shell that enclosed it, before it can gain its freedom; fo this body muft, in like manner, be diffolved, before the foul can become an active and celestial fpirit. Let us examine in the next place, what it is by which things are generally destroyed: fire either goes out for want of fewel, or is extinguished by water, its opposite element. A plant dies by exceffive drowth, or by being cropt at an unfeasonable time, or plucked up by the roots. An animal dies either by a contrariety of humours, by want of all nourishment, or fuch at least as is proper for it, or by external violence: but which of these can any ways affect the foul, which is immaterial, though united to the body? Will a contrariety of things do it? What can be contrary to that, which equally receives all contraries, and underftands one of them by another? Fire is hot, and water is cold, and our bodies must feel the fatal effects of two fuch contrarieties; whereas the mind unites them without heating or cooling itself; and opposes them to each other in order to the more per• fect knowledge of them; and though they are mutually deftructive in the world, yet they are mutually ferviceable in the underftanding. Though peace and war are direct oppofites, yet the mind can employ itself in the contemplation of both at the fame time. Death, which deftroys the life of the body, is not repugnant to the life of the foul;-but the way that leads directly to it-Again, can want of nourishment prove injurious to it?No, there is no food but what it can digeft; and the more it is filled, filled, the more boundlefs are its appetites. A brute owes its fuftenance and support to fome particular food that is most suitable to its nature; but the foul regales itself on all things in general. Were there no objects of fenfe to entertain it, it would notwithstanding be taken up with the contemplation of such as were rational; were there no fublunary objects for its amusement, it would reflect on the vast variety of heavenly bodies; in fhort, were the univerfe deftroyed "The foul would flourish in immortal youth, "The wrecks of matter, and the crufh of worlds. ADDISON. The edge of an animal's appetite is foon taken off, and his hunger quickly appealed; for fome particular things only prove agreeable to his tafte but what can fatiate the capacity of a rational foul? Though the more it knows, the more it thirsts after knowledge; yet it is never incommoded, or disturbed with the leaft crudity, or indigeftion. If it goes out of itself, it lives in, and derives its life from him in whom all things exist.-Again, is it poffible it should die by external violence as two bodies may be deftroyed by collifion? But what body can shock the foul, which is a spirit? If then it be no ways liable to receive any impreffions from within or without, can it be hurt in a natural way? No furely: but it may be over-powered, perhaps, by its objects, as our fenfes often are, the very glory whereof may too ftrongly affect it. Thus, our eyes may be dazzled with the brightness of the fun; our ears stunned with a clap of thunder; our fmell with too fragrant a fcent; our tafte by what is too rough; and our feeling, by too intense a heat. For the generality it is not the fenfitive power, but the organs of fenfe that fuffer. But the cafe is quite different with respect to the foul. the more glorious its objects are, For the more is it entertained in a way suitable to the nature of a spirit; if they prove obfcure, and we understand them but very imperfectly, they fhock us not, though they cannot indeed much delight us-but the more we understand them, the more they entertain ùs; and truths that are most fublime, moft quicken our understandings, and invite us to the contemplation of them. If then the nature, nourishment and operations of the foul be so different from thofe of the body, and every thing that acts by the mediation of it; would it not be childish and ridiculous to infer that it is mortal, because the fenfes decay, and the body dies?-Doubtless it would; fince from thence we may conclude, that it is immortal in its nature; for a natural death, as well as a violent one, is wholly owing to the body. It may not be improper in this place to confider what the diffolution of the body from the foul, or corruption is. Death, according to the philofophers, is the feparation of matter and form; and fince the body is the former, and the foul the latter, their feparation is commonly termed death: but how can the foul die, which we have proved to be immaterial, and able to fubfift without the body? And moreover, how can the perfection of a thing be the corruption of it? The lefs fenfual a man is, the more rational he is; nay, his true life confifts in abftracting himself from matter.Every thing acts according to its nature; and that perfects its nature, which renders its operations perfect: the feparation of the foul from the body, or of matter and form, which compleats its operations, has the fame effect on its nature. To die is to become corrupt; to become corrupt is to fuffer; and to fuffer, is to receivefome apparent detriment which cannot be faid of that which receives all things and fuffers nothing. Intense heat and extreme cold corrupt our bodies; but neither the one would burn nor the other freeze us, did we not suffer by them. Our fenfes decay by the too powerful weight and oppreffion of their objects; becaufe they they receive, and clearly difcern what it is that fhocks them, and acts upon their objects in such a degree, as that they are liable to be injured by them; whereas the foul receiveth all things by virtue of the understanding, and acts only in a rational manner, and therefore cannot be corrupted. The mind is no more difcompofed by reflecting on the most intense heat, than on the bleakest air; on the cold ice of Greenland than on the fcorching fands of Africa; on vice than virtue: fo far are they from being oppofites to it, that it never understands them more fully, than by oppofing one to the other. That, then, which fuffers nothing, nay, perfects itself by by every thing, can never be subject to corruption.-Again, death is a ceffation from all motion, and the conclufion of this life, which has a continual tendency towards death, as that is no more than a ort paffage to the true life; like the chain of a watch, which, every minute of its motion approaches nearer to its standing still.— When the body ceases to move, it ceases to live; but if the foul, moved with the body, it would be carried along with it; whereas, it either is at reft, or travels in a way fuitable to a fpirit; juft as a ship carries us along with it, whether we walk or fit ftill; and our power of walking in it is not in the least interrupted, though that rides at anchor.-Again, if the foul was fubject to corruption, as the body is, it would be fubject likewife to mutation, and confequently to time; for mutation is a fpecies, or rather a confequence of motion, which must happen in fome point of duration; and at. certain periods the body manifeftly changes, grows, and decays ;. though when the fenfes are dulleft, the understanding is fometimes. most active. Again, time paft cannot be recalled, with refpect to the body, whereas it is always present to the mind; nay, perfected and renewed by it. In time the body decays and dies, but the foul is not fubject to time, and confequently not to any alteration,. and confequently not to corruption. Moreover, nothing is nourished. by what is more excellent than itself; and things corruptible live. upon upon fuch as are equally corruptible with themselves, which they must destroy for their own prefervation: brutes fubfift on herbs, men on oxen, sheep, &c. And fuch beings as can live on incorruptible things, and not only conceive them, but convert them into their substance and nourishment without destroying them are incorruptible. Now the understanding difcerns reafon and truth, feeds upon them, and is nourished by them: thefe are incorruptible things, not fubject to place, time, or variation; for that two and two make four is as folid a truth now, as it was three thousand years ago. The foul, then, which comprehends both reafon and truth, cannot be liable to corruption. Again, have not all men an innate thirst after immortality, except those who have degenerated fo far as to fuffer their brutal part, to get the afcendency over them; and doubtlefs even fuch as thefe, whenever they give themselves the leaft time for reflection, feel, a dread of falling into nought, which they only fmother; because they are apprehenfive of what another life will produce? Befides, when we argue from the frame and conftitution of our natures, we are not to take our estimate from the most depraved and abandoned, but from the fober and confiderate part of mankind. of mankind. And among the latter, we shall find an earnest desire of preserving their memories and an eager thirst after pofthumous glory: witness the elaborate writings of the learned; the stately monuments of princes and nobles; the buildings of the rich; and the trophies of the brave; abstracted from that univerfal maxim, that it is highly ungenerous to speak ill of the dead. Whence fhall we account for that veneration and respect, which all nations pay to the ashes of their departed friends, the pompous funeral rites and all the fplendid circumstances of such as have departed this life; could we conceive, that they were no better than common clay, and the duft of the earth? May we not rather suppose, that such a caft of the mind is owing to an innate principle within, which informs us, that we are immortal |