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racter, and supposing these exceptions to be authenticated beyond the possibility of a doubt, to what do they really amount? Is it any more to be wondered at, or does it any more interfere with the argument from general consent, than do those extreme individual exceptions to general sentiment and feeling, in every community, of which we have spoken? We meet, for instance, in a Christian community, with a man who, by a course of vice and outrageous impiety, has apparently destroyed all capability either of fully appreciating the fact of eternal life or of believing in its existence. But we never take him into the account. when we speak of the natural sentiment of that community. We should as soon think of including the vagaries of the lunatic or the sillinesses of the idiot. We are told of a community of such men in a savage tribe, who, through successive generations of moral debasement and corruption, have sunk themselves to the same condition; and in the general account, we treat this case as we do that of the individual-the one being as monstrous and unnatural, yet as easily explained, as the other. Subtracting all such exceptional monstrosities— and when we remember the stupefying influences of heathenism, the real wonder is that they are not more numerous-there is still this general consent of the human race, in all ages, upon this point. Wherever and whenever the mind of a community has been sufficiently exercised to come to any opinion at all, it has been in favor of the idea of a future life. In every system of religious belief this is one of the doctrines. It has been held by itself when it seemed impossible to form any such system. And its influence may often be traced in the conduct of those who profess to reject it. If there be any one fact over which man, as man, has rejoiced in hope or quaked with fear, it is this of the soul's immortality. How this conviction has been reached makes but little difference as to our present purpose. If we say that it originated in the dictates of a primeval revelation, its authority is of course beyond question. If we trace it to the obvious and general dictate of reason, its authority with reasonable men is no less unquestionable. If it be found in the universal dictate of conscience, still more sacred becomes its authority. If we go lower down and find it in the region of animal or social instinct, no less clearly is it thereby proclaimed

to be founded in some great natural truth, to which those instincts, unperverted, are responsive. How it is that human nature in any one, or all of these its principles combined, and in every age, should concentrate itself upon this idea of a future life, and in many respects treat it as founded in truth, constitutes a difficulty, upon the supposition of its falsehood, which admits of no explanation. Just as we infer that the eye was made to see, because when uninjured and free from dis ease it always sees, or that the ear was created for hearing because in the same condition it always hears, so we infer of the unperverted human mind that it was constructed to believe this doctrine because it always does believe it. And as God never works uselessly or without a purpose, so we infer that as He has created the mind with an original susceptibility for this truth, so He has provided it with this truth, as material upon which to be nourished and exercised. That we sometimes meet with the double vision of superstition, or the stone-blindness of skepticism, no more interferes with this general conclusion, than do the occasional instances of physical blindness and deafness disprove the existence of the power of vision and hearing, or of the material in nature upon which they are properly exercised.

III. But there is an additional fact, in connection with this latter, which can scarcely be overrated as to its importance: the peculiar correlation of this doctrine of immortality to a certain state of the natural and moral affections; the closeness and clearness with which it is held by a certain class of character. If it is true that the belief of immortality purifies the soul, it is no less true that as this soul is thus purified it values more highly, and believes more firmly, and clings more closely to the fact which is the instrument of its purification; and that a pure soul is naturally predisposed to its reception. There is a most important sense, in which it may be said, of a depraved being like man, vox populi vox diaboli: when the grand author of evil, through the multitudinous clamors of passion, of interest, and of appetite, drowns the expostulations of reason and conscience. There is again a most important sense, in which it may be said, vox populi vox Dei, where the undisturbed sentiments and convictions of our race universally

centre in some great conclusion. But we can say this with much more confidence when we can refer such conclusion not only to the general sentiment of mankind, but to the stronger special sentiment of mankind, in its wisest, purest, most serious, and deliberate moments. And it is in this sense, that the voice of the best of all peoples, not only consensus omnium sed consensus bonorum omnium, giving utterance to the voice of God, has proclaimed the fact of man's immortality. It is not merely the dictate of human nature, but human nature exalted, and enlarged, and purified; acting in its best phases, in its most sacred, social instincts, its highest acquirements of reason, its purest exercise of conscience. Nor can the importance of this distinction be over-estimated. Suppose, for instance, that the recognition of a future life had only been explicitly made, or had been more strongly held during some terrible outburst of crime and impurity, as at Paris in the close of the last century, or during some such continued season of moral corrup tion and debasement as prevailed in England through the closing years of the reign of Charles the Second. Suppose, again, that it had been the darling faith of the worst specimens of heathen antiquity, the Cleons, the Neros, and the Caligulas, that it had been repudiated by the best, the Platos, the Socrateses, and the Ciceros, what an immense difference, leaving revelation out of view, would there be in its claims upon our reception! Universal man in his wisest, most sober, and purest moments, has by word and action, affirmed the fact of his own future existence. This creates a natural presumption in its favor. A presumption against which there is nothing to be set on the other side; one which can only be disposed of by its being shown that the Author of our nature has constituted this nature upon a scheme of falsehood—has adapted that nature in its best and soundest moments to receive, and love, and act upon that which is false, and only in its moments of debasement, disorder, and passion to recognize, receive, and love that which is true.

And here we are met by two other objections: first, the general objection of the tendency of the human mind to superstition; secondly, the special objection that this argument of universal belief, if sound, will also establish the doctrine of

visible apparitions of the departed dead. Doubtless there is this tendency to superstition, in reference to things supernatural. But this, which all admit to be a perversion, only points back to an original principle of human nature-faith in things supernatural upon proper grounds and sufficient evidence. It would. scarcely be a greater, outrage to receive every such superstition as out and out true, than to assert that they are all out and out false; that there are no great outward truths, and no inward truthful susceptibilities out of which they have been perverted. And so also as to the particular superstition of frequent visible apparitions of the departed. This superstition, so far as it is one, is based upon the great truth of man's existence after death, and the historical fact that in certain special exigencies apparitions of the dead have been manifested. Taking the Old Testament simply as a history, and leaving out of view certain statements of heathen historians, this latter fact can not be denied, nor can any one who has the slightest conception of our ignorance of the realm of spirit, or of the grounds of man's existence after death, say that such apparitions are imposible. The perversion of the ignorant and vulgar, which constitutes the superstition, is that of the frequent, every day appearance of the departed dead, the apparitio intersit upon all occasions. The scriptural and true idea, as we conceive, is that of such appearance exceptionally, "in vindice nodo," as for instance in the case of Samuel, of Moses and Elias, and of the departed saints, who rose and went into the Holy City at the time of our Saviour's resurrection. But it is the same great fact of man's existence after death, upon which this belief, either in its proper or exaggerated form, is founded, and to which it bears testimony. And what is well worthy of remark, is the fact that just in proportion as the Christianizing, elevating, and purifying process goes on, which throws off these exaggerations, in the same proportion is there a deepening and strengthening of belief and conviction in regard to the truth, which lies at the basis of these exaggerations, that of man's future existence.

IV. Thus far the argument has had only to do with man's physical and intellectual nature. But there is another sphere of his being, in which we may look for proof, in the same

direction. There is a moral intimation of man's existence hereafter. In looking around upon human society, we find a rule or law prevailing, that ordinarily virtue is prosperous and happy, vice is disastrous and miserable. Our inward moral judgments approve of this state of things, delight in it as morally right and proper. God thus bears testimony in the ordinary movements of human society, and in the inward convictions of our moral nature, as to His own character; shows Himself to be on the side of virtue, and opposed to vice. In these facts we get our premises for any argument or anticipation in regard to His future mode of treating His creatures. Looking only at these facts, we should conclude that virtue and vice would always be thus treated. And upon the assumption that man's life ends in physical dissolution, it would seem that they ought to be thus treated. Exceptions would not be of a piece with His ordinary administration, and they would involve grievous wrongs to one class, which would be irreparable.

But it requires very slight observation to enable us to see, either that our argument is unsound, our assumption unfounded, or that a new class of facts, taken in connection with that argument, must modify our conclusions, at least in reference to man's present state. We find startling exceptions to this general rule, of conscience and human society. And yet with these exceptions we can not give up our ideas of the justice of God, and our expectation that he will prove finally consistent with the ordinary administration of his present government. Every such apparent exception, in the present world, especially when it extends to the end of life, points us therefore to another state of existence. This great moral mystery of suffering righteousness, and prosperous wickedness can only be disposed of upon one of two suppositions. Either, "that all things float up and down as they are agitated and driven by the tumbling billows of careless chance and fortune," or they are portions of a well-arranged whole, imperfectly seen by us here, and fully completed by superintending Wisdom and Justice hereaf ter. Here are the facts. Can any thing be proposed outside of this alternative? "I saw the prosperity of the wicked. There are no terrors in their death-their strength is firm." "Behold, these who prosper in the world are the ungodly."

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