or seek to prove true, the simultaneous destruction of body and soul,—a proposition so at variance with memory, which carries up the past into the present, and imagination, which brings the future to the present, and reason, which dignifies and distinguishes man by standing in the present and reconciling with it both the future and the past. Would any desire to prove true the extinction of these powers of mind, if it were not that they feel oppressed by the severities of superstition, and feel it better the soul should die, than live the unreasonable future life defined by the unwarrantable dogmatism of church theologies? Death is natural as birth, and should be as little the cause of apprehension or of dread. But men feel it were better the soul should die for ever, than live here in servile bondage to the perpetual "dread of something after death." The great poet-master of our language represents this apprehensiveness in those well-remembered words:

"Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;
To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit,
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice;
To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,

And blown with restless violence round about
The pendent world; or to be worse than worst
Of those that lawless and uncertain thoughts
Imagine howling! — 't is too horrible!

The weariest and most loathed worldly life,
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment
Can lay on nature, is a paradise

To what we fear of death."

Yes, to what we fear of death, and not to death. Are not these vague, unwarrantable theories,

itself.

for they are all theories of what lies after death,are not these the occasion of most or all the inclination to disprove the immortality of the soul, the continued existence of the human spirit?

Thus far we have considered the question apart from all theologies and all church systems, and we shall continue so to consider it in the Discourse with which we will conclude the more direct reply to the inquiry, "If a man die, shall he live again?" In that Discourse I will present an argument which to me appears direct and forcible, and with that argument I will submit this momentous subject to your heart and to your judgment.

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

In considering, on former occasions, the prevailing doctrine of rewards and punishments, I have objected to the doctrine of one unchangeable state of eternal happiness and one unchangeable state of eternal misery, that it cannot account for, and is irreconcilable with, the countless natural differences and moral inequalities of this mortal state.

If this existence be preparatory to an immutable state of happiness and an immutable state of misery, into one or the other of which every soul at death must pass, then the clearest dictate of reason, and the only idea of strictest justice, imperatively require that all human beings should enter upon responsible existence with precisely equal capacities and exactly similar opportunities, - that every soul, starting from the same point, might fairly and justly, in the exercise of moral freedom, entitle itself to the one condition of eternal enjoyment, or subject itself to the other condition of eternal suffering. Such a

theory of future rewards and punishments of necessity requires the suspension of the natural law which connects parent with child, and brings every one of a million of human souls into being under circumstances so widely dissimilar. One begins responsible action amid the comforts of affluence, another amid the discomforts of deepest poverty; one amid intelligence and refinement, another amid rudeness and the grossest ignorance; one with a system fair and healthy, another with a system deformed and diseased; one with intellect vigorous and active, another with intellect feeble and sluggish; one from the first moment to develop under the most salutary influences, another from the first moment to develop under the most pernicious examples. Now all these differences strict justice requires should be completely obviated by miraculous power, if every soul is to procure for itself one of two fixed and eternally contrasting conditions from the hour of death.

Supposing two such unchangeable states, into one or the other of which all souls do actually pass, there is, manifestly, the most arbitrary, partial, and cruelly unjust arrangement in the present allotments of human life; for, as far as we can determine, no two of all the throngs of human souls begin their moral being with exactly equal capacities, and, in all respects, equally favorable opportunities. Moreover, as we see, an immense proportion of souls leave this life before reaching any sense of responsibility. Now, in either case, whether these innumerable infant souls are all removed to the eternally blessed or the eternally cursed condition, it is equally unjust to those who survive; for either all should be brought

with equal powers to a period of responsible action or moral probation, or all should be transferred before the period of moral agency to the same eternal state, and not a large proportion left to linger out this life, exposed to perils, to the danger of ruining themselves and insuring their own perdition. To me this appears an argument of resistless force against the doctrine, that this life is a probationary state for an unchangeable future heaven, or an unchangeable future hell.

Such a final allotment of human souls leaves the endless vicissitudes of this present life involved in inexplicable disorder, and wrapped in impenetrable gloom. We can see nothing but an arbitrary power forcing us irresistibly into a confused, mysterious, often uncertain and miserable existence, and then, whether permitted to remain till childhood, or youth, or manhood, or old age, at once checking all the ordinary laws of our being, and by a supernatural force, at death, transferring us at once into unspeakable and endless bliss, or into unutterable and endless woe.

Now what I desire you to perceive is this, that this argument from the varied allotments of our present life, against such an unchangeable destiny of death, operates with all its tremendous moral force against the doctrine of the destruction of the soul at the same time with the death of the body.

Is death to the body death also to the soul? Then this mortal life is our eternal life; for it is all our life, and is as arbitrary, partial, and unjust, as the prevailing view of immutable happiness and immutable suffering hereafter. No soul has the choice