history of human affairs."* We aspire to know the history, not only of the earlier generations of our own race, but of the mutations which the solid globe underwent in those geological periods the remoteness of which can hardly be represented by figures, while to our aching conceptions they seem to lie upon the confines of eternity. Not content with the ability to predict the motions and future positions of the heavenly bodies, we torment ourselves with unanswerable questions as to the beings who inhabit them, or the purpose which they serve in the grand scheme of the universe, or the order and law under which they were successively created. The mind returns from these sublime and far-reaching inquiries, to find itself tied to a body which is limited, in comparison, to a speck of earth and a moment of duration. The wants of this body afflict it with a multitude of petty cares, and the ordinary business of life, referring mostly to these wants, seems vexatious and contemptible. It is said that the disproportion here is so vast, that it cannot be reconciled with the notions we have formed of the attributes of the Creator and Governor of the universe, except by regarding it as an intimation of a future and higher state of existence, in which this curiosity and these aspirations shall be fully satisfied. I am far from wishing to lessen the force, or take away the applicability, of such elevated considerations as these. Those whose belief in a future life rests entirely upon the teachings of the author of Christianity may still dwell upon them with satisfaction and pleasure, as they open new views of the purposes to which the existence beyond the tomb may be subservient. Speculations upon the nature of our employments in another stage of being, and upon the accession to our knowledge that will instantly take place when we are released from the incumbrance of the flesh, though they may not often command our unhesitating assent, will often afford scope for profitable meditation. But their use is secondary; they tend to fortify and render inviting the faith which was first conceived upon other grounds. Such a * Stewart's Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers, p. 379. mode of reasoning as is here adopted, if reasoning it can be called, would hardly occur to any one who had not been educated in the Christian belief from infancy, nor to such a one, even, if his life had not been devoted chiefly to scientific investigations and speculative pursuits. Vastly the larger portion of the Christian world, even at the present day, can with difficulty be persuaded to use even those means of knowledge which are opened to them; those cannot complain of the barriers which limit the progress of science, who do not know where these barriers are placed, who have not gone over the hundredth part of the field which they circumscribe. There is more danger that men will attach undue importance to the petty cares and transitory interests of this world, than that they will be led to slight and despise them because their intellects can traverse creation, and their curiosity aspires to number the stars in the heavens. The grand openings which philosophy and science afford into the scheme of God's universe seem intended, not so much to warn us of a future state to which we are destined, as to counteract the influence of those passions and appetites which relate only to the petty objects that are immediately before us, and to the concerns of the moment. They answer a useful purpose, then, in the economy of this life, and have no visible necessary reference to that which is to come. If the only purpose of reason were to take the place of instinct in guiding us to the proper mode of satisfying our bodily wants, then, indeed, we might expect that curiosity would be limited to those things which immediately affect our temporal well-being. But if a moral end is superadded, if self-improvement is desirable for its own sake and in any stage of being, then there is an obvious utility in rendering our curiosity boundless, so that the efforts and investigations to which it leads may tend to the unceasing, the indefinite, development of our faculties. To what other purposes in God's providence this insatiable thirst for knowledge may be subservient, we do not know; it is enough for us to see that it is useful here, that it enlarges the sphere of our enjoyments, sustains our activity, and dignifies our life. Surely we are not driven to the sup position of another, an untried, state of existence, in order to find any benevolent purpose, or any useful result, in causing man to thirst after knowledge as for hidden treasure. I need not dwell long upon the only remaining branch of the moral argument, the discordance between our moral judgments and feelings and the course of human affairs, -as much of what was necessary to be said upon this point has been anticipated. I do not believe that the moral government of this world stands. in need of an apology, or that we must imagine another world in which its errors may be corrected and its imperfections supplied. Do not let us make the same mistake as the Mahometans, and believe in the immortality of the soul, only because we crave a sensual paradise, and cannot find one here below. You say, that the course of human affairs often does not coincide with your ideas of absolute right; that is, the good often seem unhappy, and the wicked triumphant. To remedy these evils, you would create an Elysium in which there should be no temptation, no suffering, where there would be no call for benevolence, no opportunity for self-sacrifice, and where, consequently, virtue would be a mere abstract conception, never a reality. If such a state be preferable to the one in which we live, why were we not placed in it from the beginning? why not admitted at once to the joys of heaven, without carrying thither any stains from earth? By applying the doctrine of a future life only as a solution of the problem respecting the origin of evil, we do not destroy the difficulty; we only push it a little farther off. And, without this doctrine, the presence of apparent evil in this life will not seem inexplicable to those who can see the whole force of our Saviour's allusion to the righteousness which hath its reward, or who can penetrate the meaning of his solemn declaration,-"They shall not say, Lo here! or Lo there! for behold, the kingdom of God is within you." - I do not fear lest these observations should seem opposed even to that belief in the immortality of the soul which is founded wholly upon revelation. It is certainly conceivable, that the same scheme of government, which is begun here, should be continued hereafter, when, though its essential features remain unchanged, its excellence shall be more apparent. We can conceive that the two periods of human existence should stand related to each other as childhood to mature age, the former being a preparation for the latter, and still so justly and benevolently constituted in itself, that, if existence did not extend beyond it, it would yet mirror to our eyes the perfections of the Infinite One. The commands of conscience, though of absolute obligation, are too frequently so weak as to lose their supremacy over the passions. Nothing could tend so effectually to increase their hold upon our attention, and to strengthen their influence, as the assured belief that the consequences of obeying or neglecting them will extend, and will be recognized by us, through an endless futurity. The din and tumult of earthly passions, the force of earthly appetites, which now obscure or drown their utterance, through infinite ages will be hushed or will have passed away; and as we have formed ourselves here by respecting or contemning their authority, so shall we continue for ever. The incalculable value of a revelation which should fully establish this great truth cannot be more impressively set forth than in the few words with which Paley closes his view of the importance of Christianity. "Had Jesus Christ delivered no other declaration than the following,—The hour is coming, in the which all that are in the grave shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation,' he had pronounced a message of inestimable importance, and well worthy of that splendid apparatus of prophecy and miracles with which his mission was introduced and attested; a message in which the wisest of mankind would rejoice to find an answer to their doubts, and rest to their inquiries. It is idle to say, that a future state had been discovered already; it had been discovered as the Copernican system was; - it was one guess among many. He alone discovers who proves; and no man can prove this point, but the preacher who testifies by miracles that his doctrine comes from God." LECTURE XI. THE RELATION OF NATURAL TO REVEALED RELIGION. THE object of my last Lecture was to show, that the doctrine of a future life, and, for yet stronger reasons, that of the absolute immortality of the soul, cannot be made out from the light of nature alone, or by the unassisted intellect of man. Questions of fact come within the range of human investigation only when they relate to the present or the past; the future is for us a sealed. book, except so far as we can determine what may be from what has been, or can know directly that what always has been always must be. We believe that fire will burn the flesh, and thus cause pain, because we have observed that it has done so; but the fact that man has lived only establishes a presumption that he will continue to live as he has done, that is, in this stage of existence, subject to our powers of observation. When this existence is interrupted by death, and he is wholly removed from our sight and observation, we have no antecedent fact on which to found even a presumption that he continues to live, though in a different state of being; for, apart from revelation, we have never known the grave to give up its dead,—we have had no experience of this other state of being. We perceive, then, that a future life is possible, but we have no natural grounds for believing that it is either probable or improbable. I remarked, therefore, that the doctrine of a future life stands on the same basis with the opinion, that the other planets of our system are inhabited by beings like ourselves; it is a mere con |