Let us be careful never to lose courage, but keep on our journey, each day of life turning over some new page of truth for our study, and of beauty for our admiration, rejoicing to drink at new fountains, from time to time discovered. As we advance, finding strength in our exercise, and health in our toil, and tranquillity in duty, and this life now itself a joy, whatever joy in the unseen life may follow this. Such are the conflicts of faith in the Church, and such are the conflicts of faith in the soul's life.

Through storm to calm! and though his thunder-car
The rumbling tempest drive through earth and sky,
Good cheer! good cheer! that elemental war

Tells that a blessed healing hour is nigh.

Through strife to peace! and though with bristling front
A thousand frightful deaths encompass thee,
Good cheer! good cheer! brave thou the battle's brunt
For the peace march and song of victory.

Through death to life! and through this vale of tears,
And through this thistle-field of life, ascend
To the great home, in that world whose years
Of bliss unfading, cloudless, know no end.

DISCOURSE XVIII.

FUTURE LIFE. - IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL.

IF A MAN DIE, SHALL HE LIVE AGAIN?-Job xiv. 14.

THIS inquiry, regarding it as a direct question separate from its context, and from any probable opinions of the Hebrew author in whose writing it is found, connects itself with all which is important in human action. It involves the great question of the design of man's existence. What is the grand object of human exertion? What are the truest motives and incitements to human effort? For what does man live? These are the momentous questions which are suggested to all reflecting minds by these words from the Hebrew Scriptures. The inquiry associates itself with the profoundest investigations which have ever engaged the human understanding, and with the strangest theories which have ever been the fruit of human imagination. Among every people who have made any advance in the arts of civilized life, wherever the intellect has been active and thought has been encouraged, the future, the unseen, has been a problem which the

first and ablest minds have been solicitous to solve. It has lost none of its interest to this day. Not only have the devotees of every religion, Pagan, Moslem, Hebrew, and Christian, had their theories, but every sect almost of every religion has had its peculiar creed; and even now among Christians in our most enlightened communities scarcely two minds can be found to coincide in their views of what we call the future life, though probably a large majority of all, within churches and without, have never seriously questioned or permitted themselves to entertain a doubt as to the existence of that portion of our nature which we call the soul, beyond the event which we call death. But the innumerable variations of opinion regarding the condition of the unseen, or, as we are all accustomed to express it, spiritual world, bear conclusive witness to the mystery in which all that relates to the future is involved. Among the large majority of Christians, the only point of agreement which appears as to the future beyond death is that it is a state of rewards and punishments, while as to the nature and duration of either those rewards or punishments there appears scarcely to be anything which can be called a uniform or general belief. Among the minority, a considerable body of Christians make it a chief article of faith that the future beyond death is not even a state of rewards and punishments, they believing that the New Tes tament Scripture clearly teaches the strict confinement of all that is meant by rewards and punishments to this present mortal life, and that the future is a state exclusively of everlasting happiness to all human souls and all ranks of beings. So that there

is but this one point concerning which there appears to be anything like a universal agreement among professed Christians, namely, that there is an exist ence of the human soul after the change called death.

Still even this does not imply that all Christians agree in believing in the necessary immortality of the soul, that is to say, the eternal existence of the soul in the future. There are some Christians believing the future to be a state of retribution, or rewards and punishments, who also believe that the souls of those who reach a certain point of sinfulness or wilful wrong in this life, and dying so, having no power of recovery from a downward and destructive tendency, continue in the future to lose their moral power, or suffer the loss of one faculty after another, till finally there is no more to lose, and the soul has literally perished, lost all conscious existence, being no more now than before they began to be. This they think justice requires, as they can conceive of nothing to be gained either to God or to the souls themselves, no reasonable end to be accomplished, in preserving souls in an eternal existence of suffering or punishment, while they conceive that there may be some justice and some reason in leaving souls in that life to work out their own literal and complete destruction, even as in this mortal life men are left free to accomplish if they will the literal destruction of their bodily or organic life. While unable myself to adopt this view, I cannot hesitate to say that in the New Testament Scripture there is much more to warrant this opinion, than to sustain the common doctrine of infinite arbitrary and eternal misery. For while nei

ther of these phrases, eternal happiness or eternal misery, is found at all in Scripture, the New Testament abounds in the antitheses or contrasting terms, life and death, live and destroy, live and perish, life and destruction. But the signification of these various terms is a mere question of interpretation or verbal criticism, which it is not the purpose of this Discourse to consider.

We return to the simple inquiry, If a man die, shall he live again? May the principle or element we call the soul be immortal? Can it have a conscious existence, after dissolution with the decaying body? In view of the great difference of sentiment among nominal Christians and among all professed believers in a future state, as to the object, nature, or conditions of that state, it is not altogether a matter of surprise, that some of the most honest and earnest minds, applying to the subject some at least imperfect analogies, have been led to doubt, and sometimes to lose every reason and ground for belief in, any conscious existence beyond the moment of mortal dissolution. They can find no evidence sufficient to support a faith in any future life. It is an easy matter to talk of wicked unbelief, and to indulge in offensive language, to employ such terms as heretic, sceptic, infidel, and similar opprobrious epithets. But I have never in all my observation of discussion and controversy known the first instance in which any man has been converted from his opinions, or convinced of other views, by the force of such epithets as these. It is not diffi. cult to talk of zeal for the faith, but the value of a faith is proved by its fruits, and that is a mis