would be happy to think he might be rid, if it were but of a single compunction, in this way: but what should hinder it from recurring after death as well as after sleep, and after a thousand years as well as after one, to resume its place in the ranks of its kindred constituents, as between love and jealousy perhaps, or between friendship and avarice? There is but one impediment that can be thought of.

If the subject of an intermediate state was not so con→ troverted and improbable as it is, there would still be the same objection to its distinct acknowledgment here, as to acknowledging the period of manhood with the present state, v. g. that it is not actually distinct from the periods or states on either hand; and therefore upon all accounts enough may now have been said on that head.

3. But whatever may be thought or supposed of an intermediate state, to a man of reflection, a principle cause of doubt and discomfort in the present will accrue from his uncertainty respecting the future: for, perceiving an immense disparity between these two states, he thinks, if he could only know what were good for the future, he might know what is best for the present, and shape his course accordingly, adapting the smaller interest to the greater at all events, if (which cannot often occur) they should seem to disagree at any time, and if he could but be also satisfied as to 1, the reality of a future state; 2, his proper interest in that state.

1, And certainly it seems but reasonable to inquire into the evidences of its Reality, before we proceed to speculate, or to raise any expectations on a state, which many appear to doubt, while others advocate it, and some even of these do not much honour, however they may profess to believe it. For most of them are only reasoners at the best and the evidence of reason will be found very chimerical and insufficient in this case. Divine justice

would seem to be one of reason's best arguments for a future state; but that is too loose in its application, since

the same principle would equally authorize the future state and endless bliss of brutes with that of our honoured species. Divine bounty is another good argument, but less plausible: we have found so much of this attribute in our present life, that we think, it can never fail our wishes, and therefore that another and an happier life must be reserved for us because we wish it; but let us think too of divine bounty abused, and we shall not be apt to reckon so fondly on such evidence thereafter. Then the intellec tual advocate steps forward again in aid of our wishes, which are the only advocate with some, and reminds us of our instinctive reliance on futurity, shewn in a natural concern for posthumous reputation, for offspring, and for other incidentals: but this too proves no more than : any other prepossession; and prepossession alone is not evidence. The truth is, then, that the evidence of a future state, as just observed, is not to be gathered from reason, but will be more a matter of revelation and record. And such evidence as this, it may be presumed, we also have; the fact being clearly revealed in the Old Testament, and recorded in the New. And if one did not believe this, one might save one's self the trouble of thinking or speculating on the subject. For, as St. Paul well observes, "if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain" (Cor. I. xv. 14). And vain, we may also add, must have been the faith of all Christendom for so many ages in relation to a future state. But "blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resur rection of Jesus Christ from the dead" (Pet. I. i. 3), and so placed the fact upon record.

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Taking then the belief of a future state primarily from revelation and record, Reason may now step in, (for now is her time,) and testify with the Word of God concerning our proper interest in that state, and our fittest preparation for the same. "He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good" (Mic. vi. 8). And a man may also conclude for

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himself, that to retain and accumulate in a future state the most important article that he can enjoy in the present, would be the best for that state, and consequently, its improvement, the best for this. If he derives any happy principle, like justice, mercy, or humility, from a former state, or from the beginning of the present, or from any subsequent period, the same will constitute no doubt his greatest present wealth, the most important of his present possessions, the worthiest of a future state, the most to be minded in this. For he who has the means, and knows how to be happy here, is the likeliest man for happiness hereafter. He is wise enough to adapt his pleasures to the state to which he aspires, thinking the longest lived of the company here the most likely to be eternized hereafter; and wonders, how any one who has made his present existence a burden to himself by his follies, and shortened it by profusion, can expect any chance of succeeding to an happier state in reversion; as the squandering of one good patrimony is no just ground for expecting another.

For allowing, that some of our most valuable properties are derived from a former state, as before asserted or supposed, it will not be much, to suppose likewise, that the same may be transmitted again together, or as it were in a body to some future state. We cannot help wishing, that our information on this important subject was equal to the interest which it naturally excites, and that we were not left to guess so much more than we are told concerning it. A man must be very careless and incurious not to think occasionally of the past and future, as well as of the present; at the same time, that it might be said of a forward inquirer concerning those two mysterious states, as it is of the covetous in other respects, "What profit hath he that hath laboured for the wind?" (Eccl. v. 16): for the goodness of God will be the only confidence of the wisest at last, with respect to either the future or the present. But, without quitting that confidence, or presuming too

far either, one might still have one's hypothesis on the subject of futurity.

Judging by the account of man's expulsion from paradise, it would seem as if those select properties were then all suppressed or left behind together, whereupon it is reasonable to infer, that they would so continue in their latency or separation from the body or swinish multitude of constituents: and also upon its restoration be so resumed, i. e. altogether, or if not altogether, yet in very near succession; as the properties of purity and peace and love, and others, both known, and it may be, unknown. And then, according to other passages of Scripture corresponding with the forecited, the last great change, whenever it arrives, will only confirm this second creation, as it will the suppression or dissolution that has not been reversed. So the precursor of our Lord is reported to have said of him, that he would baptize" with the Holy Ghost and with fire" (Mat. iii. 11); would revolutionize the world with the same powers which gave it a beginning: "Whose fan is in his hand (said the prophet): and he will throughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire" (Ib. 12). The good plants are to be transplanted to their permanent stations; the bad, to be not only eradicated, but totally decomposed, as chaff is consumed in the flame.

Perhaps this analogy may be continued a little farther; and there may be room to hope, that the vital constituents escaping from these ill-fated plants may be assimilated again by others, if not by their own posterity. It would be some consolation to know, that we can only be damned organically, and not essentially: for any being is better than no being; any sort of life, than endless dying,—if it be but the life of a beast,-that we lose our mode only (this is spoken very hypothetically), and not our existence; may only be lost to ourselves, and not to the universe. It might even, in so bad a case, be some consolation only to

know, that our earthly or excrementitious life was hidden somewhere, as our heavenly or enduring life is hid with Christ (Col. iii. 3): "in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" (Ib. ii. 3). And yet it is a horrible thought after all, to think of perishing like stubble which the greedy flame devours, or to have the properties that we glory in all dispersed, as the Psalmist expresses it, like "the chaff which the wind scattereth away from the face of the earth" (Ps. i. 5): more especially as we have no assurance either, of any thing like a neutral state after this; but all the authority of Christian Revelation, and even of heathen tradition, as well as the plain dictates of reason, preclude the supposition of such a state, and there is nothing in favour of the same, but the grovelling views and fatal illusions of those who are base and foolish enough to entertain it. Smoke will be smoke, however dispersed ; and if the ungodly be dispersed in like manner, such dispersion, we may be assured, will not contribute either to their comfort or to their impunity. An immortality of this kind therefore would not be a desirable endowment for the subject, if it was not so deplorable as what might still be imagined, and, it may be, as much worse that might not.

Immortality, properly speaking, is only an indefinite, as Eternity is an endless, futurity; it will be either a deathful or a deathless existence in some shape or other after the present; an incalculable series of accidents not necessarily good or evil, but dependent on circumstances: which being unfavourable at present, it may be wished to come in, as indeed it will, with a change. Originally any change in the constitution of the kingdom, or any diminution of its constituents-one word different, or one word less, must have been for the worse; when every word was good so that all the evil in the world was naturally privative, as when dying was the only evil of life, and the only evil threatened. But since the introduction of sin, or the character of evil, life itself is become a burden to many. What makes life a blessing in itself is, when it so