What makes them only smile, makes him adore. Nought, but what wounds his virtue, wounds his peace. "The dispute about religion," says Young, in one of his prefaces, "may be reduced to this- Is man immortal, or is he not?"" And he adds-" I am satisfied that men, once thoroughly convinced of their immortality, are not far from being Christians.' In proof, therefore, of that most fun damental truth, he offers arguments derived from principles that infidels admit, and which appear to him irresistible and irresistible they are in his hands, which are those of a giant. It is melancholy to think that even in our own day, a philosopher, and one of high name too, should have spoken slightingly of the universal desire of immortality, as no argument at all in proof of it, because arising inevitably from the regret with which all men must regard the relinquish ment of this life. By thus speaking of the desire as a delusion necessarily accompanying the constitution of mind which it has pleased the Deity to bestow on us, such reasoners but darken the mystery both of man and of Providence. But this desire of immortality is not of the kind they say it is, nor does it partake, in any degree, of the character of a blind and weak feeling of regret at merely leaving this present life. " I would not live alway," is a feeling which all men understand-but who can endure the momentary thought of annihilation? Thousands, and tens of thousands--awful a thing as it is to die-are willing to do so "passing through nature to eternity"-nay, when the last hour comes, death almost always finds his victim ready, if not resigned. To leave earth, and all the light both of the sun and of the soul, is a sad thought to us all-transient as are human smiles, we cannot bear to see them no more-and there is a beauty that binds us to life in the tears of tenderness that the dying man sees gushing for his sake. But, between that regret for departing loves and affections, and all the gorgeous or beautiful shows of this earth-between that love and the dread of annihilation there is no connexion. The soul can bear to part with all it loves the soft voice the kindling smile-the starting tear-and the profoundest sighs of all by whom it is beloved but it cannot bear to part with its existence. It cannot even believe the possibility of that which yet it may darkly dread. Its loves-its passionsits joys-its agonies are not itself. They may perish, but it is imperishable. Strip it of all it has seen, touched, en joyed, or suffered-still it seems to survive-bury all it knew, or could know in the grave-but itself cannot be trodden down into the corruption. It sees nothing like itself in what perishes, except in dim analogies that vanish before its last profound selfmeditation-and, though it parts with its mortal weeds at last, as with a garment, the life of the soul is felt at last to be something not even in contrast with the death of the body, but to flow on like a flood, that, we believe, continues still to flow after it has entered into the unseen solitude of some boundless desert. Young brushes away all such silly sophistries like cobwebs. "O death! Come to my bosom, thou best gift of Heaven! If needful to the selfish schemes of Heaven To sting us sore, why mock'd our misery ? These glorious orbs, that mortals may compute To wonder, and too happy to complain! "Our doom decreed demands a mournful scene; Why not a dungeon dark, for the condemn'd? Why not the dragon's subterranean den, For man to howl in? Why not his abode Of the same dismal colour with his fate? A Thebes, a Babylon, at vast expense Of time, toil, treasure, art, for owls and adders, As congruous as, for man, this lofty dome, Which prompts proud thought, and kindles high desire; If, from her humble chamber in the dust, While proud thought swells, and high desire inflames, The poor worm calls us for her inmates there; And, round us, death's inexorable hand Draws the dark curtain close-undrawn no more. "Undrawn no more!-Behind the cloud of death, Once, I beheld a sun; a sun which gilt An outcast from existence and this spirit, This all-pervading, this all-conscious soul, Which travels nature, flies from star to star, Magnificent! If intellect be, indeed, doomed utterly to perish, why may not we ask God, in that deep despair which, in that case, must inevitably flow from the consciousness of those powers with which he has at once blessed and cursed us-why that intellect, whose final doom is death, and that final doom within a moment, finds no thought that can satisfy it but that of Life, and no idea in which its flight can be lost but that of Eternity? If this earth were at once the soul's cradle and her tomb, why should that cradle have been hung amidst the stars, and that tomb illumined by their eternal light? If, indeed, a child of the clay, was not this earth, with all its plains, forests, mountains, and seas, capacious enough for the dreams of that creature whose course was finally to be extinguished in the darkness of its bosom? What had the soul to do with planets, and suns, and spheres," and all the dread magnificence of heaven?" Was the soul framed merely that it might for a few years rejoice in the beauty of the stars, as in that of the flowers beneath our feet? And ought we to be grateful for those transitory glimpses of the heavens, as for the fading splendour of the earth? But the heavens are not an idle show, hung out for the gaze of that idle dreamer Man. They are the work of the Eternal God, and he has given us power thereia to read and to understand his glory. It is not our eyes only that are dazzled by the face of heaven-our souls can comprehend the laws by which that face is overspread by its celestial smiles. The dwellingplace of our spirits is already in the heavens. Well are we entitled to give names unto the stars, for we know the moment of their rising and their setting, and can be with them at every part of their shining journey through the boundless ether. While generations of men have lived, died, and are buried, the astronomer thinks of the golden orb that shone centuries ago within the vision of man, and lifts up his eye, undoubting, at the very moment when it again comes glorious on its predicted return. Were the Eternal Being to slacken the course of a planet, or increase even the distance of the fixed stars, the decree would be soon known on earth. Our ignorance is great, because so is our knowledge; for it is from the mightiness and vastness of what we do know that we imagine the illimitable unknown creation. And to whom has God made these revelations? To a worm that next moment is to be in darkness? To a piece of earth momentarily raised into breathing existence? To a soul perishable as the telescope through which it looks into the gates of heaven? "Oh! star-eyed science, hast thou wander. ed there To waft us home-the message of despair?" No; there is no despair in the gracious light of heaven. As we travel through those orbs, we feel, indeed, that we have no power, but we feel that we have mighty knowledge. We can create nothing, but we can dimly understand all. It belongs to God only to create, but it is given to man to know-and that knowledge is itself an assurance of immortality. "Is it in words to paint you? O ye fallen! Fallen from the wings of reason and of hope; Erect in stature, prone in appetite; Patrons of pleasure, posting into pain; Lovers of argument, averse to sense; Boasters of liberty, fast bound in chains ; Lords of the wide creation, and the shame; More senseless than th' irrationals you scorn; More base than those you rule; than those you pity, Far more undone! O ye most infamous Of beings, from superior dignity; Deepest in wo, from means of boundless bliss! Ye cursed by blessings infinite; because Most highly favour'd, most profoundly lost! From the full flood of evidence against you? "Lorenzo! this black brotherhood renounce; To send the soul, on curious travel bent, In each recess of space and time, at home; Renounce M. Évremont! Ay, and many a Deistical writer of higher repute now in the world. But how came they by the truths they did know? Not by the work of their own unassisted faculties-for they lived in a Christian country; they had already been embued with many high and holy beliefs, of which their souls -had they willed it-could never have got rid-and to the very last the light which they, in their pride, believed to have emanated from the inner shrine-the penetralia of Philosophy-came from the temples of the living God. They walked all their lives long-though they knew it not, or strived to forget it in the light of revelation, which, though often darkened to men's eyes by clouds from earth, was still shining strong in hea ven. Had the New Testament never been-think ye that men in their pride, though "Poor sons of a day,” could have discerned the necessity of framing for themselves a religion of humility? No. As by pride we are told the angels fell-s exaltation of itself-which the spirit and genius of Christianity subdues. It is not sufficient to say, that a natural sense of our own infirmities will do so for seldom indeed have Deists been lowly-minded. They have talked proudly of humility. Compare their moral meditations with those of our great divines. Their thoughts and feelings are of the "earth earthy;" but when we listen to those others, we feel that their lore has been God-given. "It is as if an angel shook his wings." Thus has Christianity glorified Philosophy; its celestial purity is now the air in which intellect breathes. In the liberty and equality of that religion, the soul of the highest Philosopher dare not offend that of the humblest peasant. Nay, it sometimes stands rebuked before it-and the lowly dweller in the hut, or the shieling on the mountain side, or in the forest, could abash the proudest son of Science, by pointing to the Sermon of our Saviour on the Mount-and saying, "I see my duties to man and God here!" The religious establishments of Christianity, therefore, have done more not only to support the life of virtue, but to show all its springs and sources, than all the works of all the moral Philosophers who have ever expounded its principles or its practice. We have been thinking of Night the Fourth-the Christian Triumph. But in Night the Sixth, and Night the Seventh-the Infidel Reclaimed-Young flies on a high and steady wing through the whole argument "that vindicates the ways of God to man ;" and shows prodigious power in his elucidations of the great truth, from the constitution of our Conscience and our Passions. Conscience! Speak not of weak and fantastic fears-of abject superstitions-and of all that wild brood of dreams that have for ages been laws to whole nations. Though we might speak of them-and without violation of the spirit of true philosophy, call upon them to bear testimony to the truth. But think of the calm, purified, enlightened, and elevated conscience of the highest natures-from which objectless fear has been excluded and which hears, in its stillness, the eternal voice of God. What calm celestial joy fills all the being of a good man when conscience tells him that he is obeying God's law! What dismal fear and sudden remorse assail him, whenever he swerves but one single step out of the right path that is shining before his feet! It is not a mere selfish terror-it is not the dread of punishment only that appals him-for, on the contrary, he can calmly look on the punishment which he knows his guilt has incurred, and almost desires that it should be inflicted, that the incensed power may be appeased. It is the consciousness of offence that is unendurable-not the fear of consequent suffering; it is the degradation of sin that his soul deplores-it is the guilt which he would expiate, if possible, in torments; it is the united sense of wrong, sin, guilt, degradation, shame, and remorse, that renders a moment's pang of the conscience more terrible to the good than years of any other punishment-and it thus is the power of the human soul to render its whole life miserable by its very love of that virtue which it has fatally violated. This is a passion which the soul could not suffer-unless it were immortal. Reason, so powerful in the highest minds, would escape from the vain delusion; but it is in the highest minds where reason is most subjected to this awful power-they would seek reconcilement with offended Heaven by the loss of all the happiness that earth ever yielded-and would rejoice to pour out their heart's-blood if it could wipe away from the conscience the stain of one deep trangression ! These are not the high-wrought and delusive states of mind of religious enthusiasts, passing away with the bodily agitation of the dreamer; but they are the feelings of the loftiest of men's sons and when the troubled spirit has escaped from their burden, or found strength to support it, the conviction of their reasonableness and of their awful reality remains; nor can it be removed from the minds of the wise and virtuous without the obliteration from the tablets of memory of all the moral judgments which conscience has there recorded. These feelings, then, are all intimately connected with the conviction which man has of his being an accountable creature. We believe that all his moral actions proceed from good or evil motives-and that there is a great moral law which he recog |