the event. It can be shown that the dissolution of the body does not necessarily lead us to infer the extinction of the soul, but that the presumption lies the other way. It is in this moderate form that the argument from the light of nature is stated by Butler, and it would have been well if Clarke had imitated his reserve. Immortality is no part of the positive teachings of nature; to revelation alone can we look for light and life beyond the grave.

I take no account of those extraordinary speculations which suppose the soul of man to be a ray or emanation from the Deity, which, at the dissolution of the body, will again be absorbed into its source. "This seems," says Mr. Stewart, "to have been the opinion of many of the ancient Stoics; and a similar idea has been adopted by some philosophers in modern times, who have compared the soul, when joined to the body, to a small portion of the sea inclosed in a vial; and when separated from it, to the same water, confounded and intermixed, by the breaking of the vial which contained it, with the ocean from which it was first taken." This is but one of the applications of the doctrine of pantheism, and those who can give up the belief in a personal God may be satisfied with this conception of the soul's futurity. But to others, the loss of distinct consciousness and personal identity or individuality, which is implied in this theory, will cause the doctrine to appear little more consoling than a belief in the termination of all things at the grave. The admitted physical fact, that of all the material particles which constitute the body at the instant of death not one is lost, but all enter into new combinations, and pass through a ceaseless round of growth and decay, gives us an idea of the perpetuity of our corporeal frames which answers exactly to this pantheistic notion of the immortality of the soul. To speak of different minds being blended together and lost in one general mass of being is to employ a form of words which is only not injurious to sound doctrine because it is unintelligible and absurd. Existence is an abstract idea; there is no such thing as existence in general, apart from individual beings, any more than there is such a thing

as this audience existing separately from the men and women who compose it. To speak of the annihilation of these persons in their individual capacity, leaving their presence as a general assembly, is nonsense. To such an absurdity are we reduced by confounding abstractions with realities, or employing terms without attaching definite and distinct meaning to them.

Yet we have been told, that it is "written legibly in Nature that man is an undying being," and every thing justifies us in saying, that, "if man were made to live for ever, the impress of that intention must be distinctly visible in his very structure." Science, it is accordingly said, must decipher the marks which indicate this intention, and spell out the natural language in which every rational creature is labelled with the promise of immortality, just as it infers from a mere fragment of a fossil bone "the whole fashion of the animal to which it belonged, its food, its mode and sphere of existence." But the history which is deciphered by

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the geologist and the comparative anatomist is that of the past; and not even in their boldest speculations do they attempt to pry into the secrets of the future, far less, to speak confidently of an endless duration to come. Science can read the annals of former ages, but it cannot "look into the seeds of time, and see what grain will grow and what will not." The astronomer hesitates about pronouncing upon the future stability of the system of which our earth is but a part, even on the supposition that the laws which now seem to control its action shall continue for ever in force, without restraint, limit, or interference from the omnipotent hand which first established them. But who shall say when His purpose shall be accomplished? or who shall scan the designs of the Almighty? The naturalist may declare, if he can, that the flower shall droop and die at the end of a single season; but he finds no evidence that the secret principle which now vivifies it, after it has ceased to hold these material particles together, shall yet continue to be, either animating other forms, or existing apart till time shall be no more. And mental science is equally barren of any distinct promise of the future; the sharpest scrutiny of the phenomena of mind, unguided by special revelation,

leaves this doctrine of immortality precisely where it was in the speculations of antiquity,—a dim though glorious foreboding, a splendid doubt.

We are not surprised, then, to find the author of the assertion just quoted rebuking those who conceive "of the eternal world as situated on the other side of the tomb," and telling them that eternity "is here and now,—that they are in it, and that it is in them." It is all a juggle of words, then, which substitutes a flight of rhetoric for the severe expression of a scientific or a religious truth, and reduces the immortality of the soul to a figure of speech. Unquestionably, it is a tolerable metaphor to say, that in good deeds there is length of years; but it is paltering with words to hold up this trope as an enunciation or a proof of the doctrine that the soul shall never die.

I have time to give but one other illustration of the truth, that religion is founded entirely upon matters of fact, and must be supported, therefore, by moral evidence. Religion inculcates certain duties; it enjoins some motives and modes of conduct, and forbids others, and this, too, by the highest of all sanctions, the command of God. These injunctions are in great part coincident with the moral precepts of our own hearts; the Divine law and the law of conscience, whenever they meet, harmonize with each other, and so far as they regard only the outward act, are reduced to one. Still, to the religious man there is an additional sanction, a new source of obligation; the act, once deemed obligatory only from an instinctive perception of its rightfulness, now becomes a manifestation of obedience, a religious duty, an act of worship. Virtuous actions as such, or in themselves considered, are not religious deeds; mere virtue must be consecrated by reference to the Divine will before it can assume even a resemblance to holiness. I do not say, that the moral sense is of imperfect obligation, so that it must be buoyed up and enforced by the will of God before its dictates are binding upon man. Right is of necessary and inherent obligation, anterior to all command. But the precept added gives another aspect to the duty, and creates a new joy in the fulfilment of it.

A life which is irreproachable before the world, which is warmed by all the kindly affections and elevated by a steadfast adherence to noble principles, is still an irreligious and godless one, if its acts are not sanctified by this reference to the Supreme Will. This is but a definition of religion, the meaning of which, as shown by its etymology and its universal acceptance, is to religate, or to bind anew, to the performance of duty, by offering an additional motive and guide; and this meaning constitutes the only possible distinction between religion and mere morality. In the family, a rule obligatory in itself acquires a new claim to observance from the command or wish of a parent, the motive of obedience and love being thus added to our almost involuntary homage to conscience. So, in the great human family, the primal duties of life-truthfulness, temperance, justice, and charitybecome alike more awful and engaging, —I do not say more binding, because the performance of them is the declared will of our Heavenly Father.

Observe, then, that the whole practice of religion depends upon our knowledge of this fact, that God has commanded us to do, or to abstain from doing, certain acts. It matters not how this knowledge is obtained, whether by direct revelation, or by inferring the will of the Creator from the character and tendency of his works. In either case, the light of nature, or a Divinely appointed messenger, or a miracle, announces to us a solemn, an awful reality, that the moral law is His law, and transgression of it is violation of His command. I may even infer the fact only from my instinctive perception of the duty; still, the inference is one that leads to a fact, and not to an abstract principle. I argue, not from one general law to another, but from a given effect to a particular cause; not from one rule enforced by conscience to another rule enjoined by the Almighty, but from the fact that conscience speaks at all to another fact that God also speaks, and that the voice of conscience is also the voice of God.

These views, I am well aware, are directly opposed to a theory now very popular with a certain class of minds, which

tends, first, to identify revealed with natural religion, and next, to merge both in the practice of a sublime but rather indefinite morality. A pure life is held up as the only true criterion of a religious character, and then as the only desirable object of attainment. Especially has this disposition been manifested when treating of the nature and functions of conscience; so that many earnest but injudicious persons have now become quite as fanatical, quite as bigoted, irrational, and intolerant, in regard to moral principle, as were formerly the wildest sect of the Puritans in respect to their religious faith. Reverence of their own nature seems to them quite as just and proper as reverence of the Deity, and a glowing though vague conception of virtue takes the place of religion as a guide of life. Nay, a sort of ecstatic contemplation of the mere ideas of duty and right has, with some, usurped the place of a practical manifestation of these ideas in outward conduct; and thus a species of Antinomianism has been established on ethical grounds, quite as absurd and dangerous as the same theory is when nominally resting on Scripture. If these vagaries must exist, let them, at any rate, appear in their true character, and not borrow the name and garb of the faith which they dishonor. Religion is indeed an affair of the heart and the life; but a belief in religion is an affair of the intellect. Impulses cannot take the place of convictions, nor can morality itself find anywhere a sure and permanent support except in a recognition of its dictates as the commands of God.