LESSON XXV.-FRIDAY.

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL.

Among other excellent arguments for the immortality of the soul, there is one drawn from the perpetual progress of the soul to its perfection, without a possibility of ever arriving at it; which is a hint that I do not remember to have seen opened and improved by others who have written on this subject, though it seems to me to carry great weight with it. How can it enter into the thoughts of man, that the soul, which is capable of such immense perfections, and of receiving new improvements to all eternity, shall fall away into nothing almost as soon as it is created? Are such abilities made for no purpose? A brute arrives at a point of perfection that he can never pass; in a few years he has all the endowments he is capable of; and were he to live ten thousand more, would be the same thing he is at present. Were a human soul thus at a stand in her accomplishments, were her faculties to be full blown, and incapable of farther enlargements, I could imagine it might fall away insensibly, and drop at once into a state of annihilation. But can we believe a thinking being that is in a perpetual progress of improvement, and travelling on from perfection to perfection, after having just looked abroad into the works of its Creator, and made a few discoveries of his infinite goodness, wisdom, and power, must perish at her first setting out, and in the very beginning of her inquiries ?

Man, considered in his present state, seems only sent into the world to propagate his kind. He provides himself with a successor, and immediately quits his post to make room for

him.

He does not seem born to enjoy life, but to deliver it down to others. This is not surprising to consider in animals, which are formed for our use, and can finish their business in a short life. The silk-worm, after having spun her task, lays her eggs and dies. But in this life, man can never take in his full measure of knowledge; nor has he time to subdue his passions, establish his soul in virtue, and come up to the perfection of his nature, before he is hurried off the stage. Would an infinitely wise Being make such glorious creatures

for so mean a purpose? Can he delight in the production of such abortive intelligences, such short-lived reasonable beings? Would be give us talents that are not to be exerted? Capacities that are never to be gratified? How can we find that wisdom which shines through all his works, in the formation of man, without looking on this world as only a nursery for the next, and believing that the several generations of rational creatures, which rise up and disappear in such quick succession, are only to receive their first rudiments of existence here, and afterwards to be transplanted into a more friendly climate, where they may spread and flourish to all eternity.

There is not, in my opinion, a more pleasing and triumphant consideration in religion, than this of the perpetual progress which the soul makes towards the perfection of its nature, without ever arriving at a period in it. To look upon the soul as going on from strength to strength, to consider that she is to shine for ever with new accessions of glory, and brighten to all eternity; that she will be still adding virtue to virtue, and knowledge to knowledge; carries in it something wonderfully agreeable to that ambition which is natural to the mind of man. Nay, it must be a prospect pleasing to God himself, to see his creation for ever beautifying in his eyes, and drawing nearer to him, by greater degrees of resemblance.

Methinks this single consideration, of the progress of a finite spirit to perfection, will be sufficient to extinguish all envy in inferior natures, and all contempt in superior. That cherub, which now appears as a God to a human soul, knows very well that the period will come about in eternity, when the human soul shall be as perfect as he himself now is; nay, when she shall look down upon that degree of perfection, as much as she now falls short of it. It is true, the higher nature still advances, and by that means preserves his distance and superiority in the scale of being; but he knows that, how high soever the station is of which he stands possessed at present, the inferior nature will at length mount up to it, and shine forth in the same degree of glory.

With what astonishment and veneration may we look into our souls, where there are such hidden stores of virtue and

knowledge, such inexhausted sources of perfection! We know not yet what we shall be, nor will it ever enter into the heart of man to conceive the glory that will be always in reserve for him The soul, considered in relation to its Creator, is like one of those mathematical lines that may draw nearer to another for all eternity, without a possibility of touching it; and can there be a thought so transporting to consider ourselves in these perpetual approaches to Him, who is not only the standard of perfection, but of happiness?-Addison.

LESSON XXVI.-MONDAY.

OROGRAPHY.

In the structure of the mountains of Asia we find sometimes an African and sometimes an American character, side by side with a type peculiar to this division of the globe. This is marked especially by the fact, that the main stem of the mountain system is placed in the centre. From the east to the west side, the central region swells to an immense table-land, which is divided by the deep inroads of the lowlands of Turan and Hindostan into the Western and Eastern Highland, though these two highlands are not separated, as the Hindoo-Koosh forins a lofty connecting isthmus between them.

In Eastern Asia we see a broad plateau emerge from surrounding mountainous tracts, not with simple terrace descents like those of Africa, nor with uniform border chains, such as those of America. Neither is it one undivided table-land, of uniform elevation. Its interior is subdivided by a fourfold system of great parallel chains. The Himalaya, with its ranges rising amphitheatrically, forms the lofty southern border; the northern boundary consists of the much-intersected system of the Altai; and in the interior, the Kuen-lun and Thian Shan mountains rise as dividing parallel chains. The more northerly of these, the Thian Shan, does not indeed cross the plateau without interruption, but in its eastern half suffers a depression, which permits a communication between the various regions

of the high plain; nevertheless, its eastern continuation is seen unmistakeably in the system of the In Shan, before that system turns northward. The transverse range of the Kuen-lun stretches through the whole southern breadth of the plateau, as far as the countries which contain the sources of the Hoang-ho, where it meets stupendous and partly latitudinal mountain-heights; while further to the north the Nan Shan again distinctly marks the longitudinal direction of the system. In its southern division Thibet, the plateau attains a height of nearly 11,500 feet; towards the northeast and north-west, especially the latter, it declines to 2,100 feet, and even less; for in the neighbourhood of the Lake of Balkash even a definite boundary ridge is wanting, so that Zungary forms a passage between eastern Mongolia and the lowland of Turkestan. The chains of Yun-ling and Khing-han, with a course more or less meridional, and abutting on the Chinese and Mantchourian Alpine districts, form the eastern boundary of the Eastern Highland; the Bolor, which runs more distinctly in the same direction, constitutes its western border. This eastern highland, exclusively of the independent mountain systems of Kamtschatka and Further India, embraces a space of 7,160,000 square miles, which is a little more than the area of South America, and twice that of Europe.

Far less extensive is the highland of Western Asia, occupying a base of only 1,500,000 square miles. It presents a

three fold character. In the east stretches the broad tableland of Iran, which is sharply divided from the lowland of Hindostan by lofty meridional chains of mountains, and towards the Indian Ocean is enclosed, in the manner of the southern table-land of Africa, by high terraces, but which have only an imperfect boundary on the north; for the parallel chains of the Hindoo-Koosh dip westward into the low pasture-lands of Khorassan, before the Elburtz rises, as a high mountain-wall, on the southern shores of the Caspian, Sea. There is thus also a communication between the great highland and the lowland of Turkestan, a fact of high historical importance. South of the Trans-caucasian isthmus, mountain-ranges, running both diagonally and longitudinally, cross one another, and support wild Alpine districts, which

may be comprehended under the general name of the MedianArmenian plateaus, and considered as the main central member of the western highland. Its third member is the highland of Anatolia, holding a middle place between the rent surface of Armenia and the uniform surface of Persia, and inclosed towards the Black and Mediterranean Seas by littoral mountain ranges, in which the prevailing direction is that of the parallels. Among these the Taurus, which accompanies the south coast, is particularly conspicuous.

If we connect the Taurus chain with that of central Armenia, which forms the dividing ridge between the plateaus of lakes Van and Urumiah, and then with the Elburtz, the Hindoo-Koosh, the Kuen-lun, and the Peling Mountains, we are justified in regarding it as the most westerly member of a vast mountain axis, which runs through the whole extent of Asia from west to east, almost without interruption. Thus, while North and South America have each a latitudinal mountain tract 4,600 miles long, Asia possesses a longitudinal tract of equal length, which, separating the north from the south, has marked out a course from east to west for the migration of nations, and the progress of civilization. Exactly in the centre of this mountain axis, where the crossing of the Soliman mountains and the Bolor Tagh causes the stupendous elevation of the plateau of the Hindoo-Koosh, is the central point on which turns the history of the Asiatic races; there rises the landmark between the east and west of Asia, as also between the Indian and Scythian world; there Indian, Chinese, and Mahommedan tribes, those three fundamental elements of Asiatic life, encounter one another; there the tropical and northern characters of nature press closely one upon the other without being able to join hands across a mediating land, and Russian and British influences meet from two entirely different sides.

Both the plateaus united by the Hindoo-Koosh, and the lowlands separated by it assume, at certain intervals, the desert character; we have the Gobi and Iran as highland deserts, Scinde and Turan as lowland deserts. Higher Asia also displays volcanic activity, westward in Ararat and Demavend, eastward throughout the whole of the interior of the continent, and, in the case of Peshan and Ho-tcheau