dition enviable. They, content with their own organs, pleased with ranging the fields, and browsing the herbage, their desires need no restraint; all their wishes are satisfied-while the soul of man abounds on the one hand with insatiable desires, and on the other is confined amidst vain and unsatisfactory objects, and, on this account, must be unhappy."* Consider then that you are an immortal being. You cannot annihilate yourself. You cannot fall into an eternal sleep. You cannot be lost amid the promiscuous crowd that shall rise from the dead. "The heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat; the earth also, and the works that are therein, shall be burned up;"† but you shall remain. No matter can crush, no fire can destroy, no floods can overwhelm, no power can put an end to your existence. Your duration cannot be measured. If once in ten thousand years a single grain of earth could be annihilated, the whole, in a course of time, might all be removed. If once in ten thousand years a drop

of water could be taken from the ocean, it might in time be exhausted. But what is this to eternity? After all, you would exist, and be no nearer to dissolution, than at the first moment when you began to breathe. How awful then is the reflection, that you are created to live for ever! Whatever be your condition on earth, whether rich or poor, ignorant or learned, young or old, happy or miserable, you carry about with you an immortal spirit. You may banish reflection, but you are immortal still. You may plunge into scenes of licentiousness, but you cannot plunge into oblivion. You may degrade your nature, but you cannot destroy it. You may stifle conscience, and sin away your time, but you cannot sin away your immortality. Your mortal frame, it is true, will ere long perish; but your soul will not descend with it to the grave, but be transmitted to another world, to be happy or miserable for ever.

How solemn then is the thought, yet how strange that men should be affected with every thing more than this! Were you to lose your character, you would feel the deepest concern; were you deprived of all your property, how

would you be grieved! If you were to lose a cause on which much of your happiness depended, you would be ready to despair. If you were to lose the friend on whom you have set your affections, how would you weep and mourn! But the thought of losing yourself, of losing your soul, of being in danger of everlasting separation from God, the fountain of happiness, has never perhaps seriously affected⚫ your mind as it ought to have done! O how strange to put a less price on your soul than on any thing beside; to prefer a few sordid joys, a few transient vanities, an external show, to a treasure so infinitely valuable! How truly lamentable to see an immortal being so eager after the pleasures of sense; so alive to mere secular interest; so merged in the affairs of this life; and so keen in his pursuit after sublunary objects-yet, after all, when he obtains them they cannot make him happy; and if they could, he cannot carry them with him to another world.—Reader, say is not this folly, is not this irrationality? "Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this, and be ye horribly afraid; be ye very desolate, saith the Lord. For my

people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water."* But we will now proceed more particularly to make some enquiries as to a future state.

THE RESURRECTION.

WE have already considered the shortness of human life, and that the soul cannot die with the body: but there is reason to believe that the body shall be raised again. This may appear a very mysterious doctrine to some, and the infidel may rather wish to cherish the idea of eternal sleep than believe it. But there is nothing unreasonable in the supposition. In the natural system we see something of it. Hence, says the Apostle, "Thou fool! that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die." To say it is impossible would be ridiculous.

If Omni

* Jer. ii. 12, 13.

† 1 Cor. xv. 36.

potence made all things at first, in the different forms in which they now appear, he can by the same power unite the parts which are dissolved. His omniscience distinguishes every atom in the universe; and we know that with him all things are possible. It is also equitable. The body is one constituent part of man. It is but right it should be rewarded or punished with the soul. The same body that sinned must suffer; the same that was devoted to the service of God shall be made glorious. Not that every particle which ever belonged to the human frame shall be restored to it, but all that is necessary to identify it as the same body shall be raised. Hear the scripture: "Marvel not at this; for the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live. Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead? There shall be a resurrection of the dead both of the just and the unjust. Though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes behold, and not another. If there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ