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sidering it to be another principle of the divine economy under which we live, that there shall not be human beings at present anywhere but on this earth; for it is the peculiar construction and position of our planet, its substances, organized classes, laws, and course of things, which, with our bodily frame and figure, combine to make us what we are. These not being the same in any other orb above us, human nature must be distinguished by their effects, from all other modes of sentient existence. In the bony, arterial, fleshy, and nervous systems of our frame, we resemble the birds and quadrupeds about us. But our configuration, limbs, and motivities, have no parallel among these, but transcend them with a superiority that never can be lessened, except by that wilful debilitation and self-degradation, which gross sensualities or habitual intoxication cannot be continued without producing.

It is also a part of the system of our creation, which we do not know to prevail in any other orb, that we consist of a double nature, united in a temporary and dissoluble union, but which never ends until our present life closes. It is this association of our spirit, or thinking principle, with the material body into which we grow, that constitutes human nature. It is the continuance of this combination which makes our human life; it is the termination of it which causes death. Though eastern stories amuse our imagination with some magician characters, who can dart their soul into other bodies, abandoning for a time their own; yet this, in sober truth, we know to be impossible. The union of the reasoning and feeling mind with the corporeal form that we are born with, is inseparable while we live. Not even a trance, or a deathlike fit, or any suspension of our senses or sensibility, is a parting of the one from the other. All such phenomena are but a recession of the principle of life and sensation, from its exterior organizations into its interior functions. But the fracture of the combination is in all cases death; and, once taking place, can never be remedied by mortal power. It is the appointed law, that the union shall form human nature, and its subsistence be human life. There is no life until it takes place, and none after it is severed. When the combination is dissolved, the body decombines into its component elements, which it could not do while its living principle was within it. This, on its separation, departs, we know not

whither. Being no subject of our sight or other senses in any other individuals, we cannot, though watching at their deathbed, trace its movements when it becomes disunited from their material forms. And as we shall necessarily lose the power of utterance when such an event shall occur to ourselves-for, in leaving the body, it quits the nerves and muscles of its vocal organs-no communication can be made of what is taking place at that eventful moment.

It is from revelation alone that we can derive any knowl edge of what awaits us, when we thus die away from our fellow-beings here; and it is the glory and happiness of human nature, that it is distinguished by having from its Creator the promise of another existence, different from its present one, in a new form of body, and in some other locality, and in a new external world. Thus it is another part of cur scheme of being, that we shall have a double life, as well as a double nature; but with this distinction, that the body with which our living principle is here connected, is only to be temporary and dissolvable, but that the frame in which our double nature will be renewed to us hereafter, will be imperishable, and as everlasting as the spirit itself.

Thus it has been planned and appointed, that human nature and human existence shall have in every one this striking peculiarity, that its conscious life shall be divided into two unequal portions, separated by death in this world from each other. One part, the smallest, our present life; the other part in some future state and region, as it shall be assigned to us hereafter, which will not be interrupted again. The body we have now is adapted to the transiency of our present existence, and its durability is therefore purposely made brief and uncertain. The next investment of our living principle must be as different from our present one, as the quality of immortality is from fragility, disunion, and decay.*

The great principle as to our future life, that we shall there again assume our double nature, and be a body and soul, was one of the new truths established in the buman mind by our Saviour and his apostles. There are many indications that most of the Christian doctrines had been more or less intimated to the primeval times, but were superseded by others of human invention. Thus this idea of the soul being reunited to a body, pervaded the whole ancient Egyptian nation, as every mummy testifies to us; but they lost the truth of the re-formation of the body into a superior kind from the elements of the present one, at the final resurrection, to be the resident of the celestial kingdom appointed for it; VOL. I.-H

We do not know that any other orders of intelligent beings are living anywhere else under such a system as this. For any thing that we know, human nature may be the only class in the universe which has this peculiarity. We have no reason to believe that it has been made a law with any residents in the other planets or stars, that their existence shall be divided into two unequal portions, like ours, and that these shall be separated from each other by a destruction of their first material form. We do not indeed know that they possess a compound form like our own; for if they do not, then they cannot experience that change which our death brings upon us. Our death is attached to our material frame, not to our spirit. It is the dissolution of our present body; the separation of that from our living principle or soul: it is not the destruction of that living principle; therefore no being that is not, as we are, compounded of a material form, and of a vital principle, can be subject to a death like ours.

The consideration of these laws of our system of being, will prevent us from letting the immensity of the universe, and of its Creator, induce us to think too meanly of human nature; and from leading us to feel, as some have done, that the whole human race are but contemptible emmets in his sight, and too inconsiderable to be honoured with the smallest portion of his attention. Ancient thinkers had some ideas of this sort.*. It is a favourite topic still with many

and chose to believe instead, that the soul was to live again on this earth after a period of 3,000 years, and to reanimate its former habitual body (Herod. Eut. s. 124); and therefore they embalmed this as it died, and preserved it carefully, to be ready for this re-union, as they did their cats and some other animals. This opinion was so fixed, that no pledge for a debt was so good a security, or so sure of being redeemed, as the mummied body of a parent or relation.--Diod. Sic. 8. This idea of a bodily resurrection or reconstruction, was so new and incredible to the Grecian and Roman mind, that both at Athens and by the Roman governor, Paul was derided for inculcating it. Both the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers exclaimed, "What will this babbler say ?"-Acts xvii. 18.

* Some of their theories could not but lead them to very low estimations of human kind. You will remember the "cum prorepserunt" of Horace: When men crawled out of the first earth, like animals, "a mutum et turpe pecus "-Sat. lib. iii. It was the dogma of Anaximander," that men were first produced within fishes, and were there nourished like their young fry, as the ancients thought; but afterward, when they had acquired strength able to defend themselves, they were ejected out of the fishes' belly on to the land. Hence he affirmed fish to be the parents of mankind, and therefore condemned our feeding upon them."-Plut. Sym. 1. viii. c. 8. The Grecian sage was at least as wise

who doubt or disbelieve a providence, and I have known some valuable minds to be much affected by such an impression. In opposition to this, let us advert to the probability, for the reasons which have been adduced, that there are no human beings in the universe but on our globe. And if not, then the special creation of them on our earth only, is an indication of some special design in our existence, and a reason for the particular notice and care of our Creator. But the absence of all certainty that there are intelligent beings superior to us in any of the radiant orbs we see, or anywhere else, except the ministerial angels, who are always exhibited as in immediate attendance on the Sovereign of all, or in the execution of his commands, should also operate to hinder us from concluding, that there is any thing in creation that is likely to divest us of the regard and care of our provident Maker, or that has any natural claim to preferring consideration from him, or that can make us less important in his sight than any other of his works. Distrust all philosophers who inculcate such ideas; and be on your guard against those who separate nature from its God, or teach its laws and phenomena without reference to him. Philosophers are as apt to err, in many of their opinions, as other people, and have continually been doing so.*

in this as the Egyptian theorists were, who deduced human creatures from the mud of their Nile, or as the Arcadians and Athenians, from the earth for these believed that they sprung out of the ground as they thought grasshoppers did, and therefore wore one of these insects as an ornament in their hair, made of gold and silver. So the Babylonians were taught, that from chaos arose first hideous beings-men with two faces and wings; one body, but two heads; other human figures, with the legs and horns of goats; some with half the body like a horse; others with the heads and bodies of horses, and tails of fishes.--Berossus. Sync. Ch. 228; Cory's Anc. Fr. 24.

* Pliny gives us an amusing instance of something more than an erroneous opinion in his account of Dionysodorus. "I will not omit this paramount example of Grecian vanity: he was a Melian, distinguished for his geometrical science, and died in his own country in old age. His relations, to whom his inheritance descended, buried him, and a few days afterward declared that they had found in his tomb a letter, written in his name to those above. It stated, that he had gone down from his grave to the lowest part of the earth, and that his passage had been 42,000 stadia. GEOMETRICIANS were not wanting (nec defuere geometræ) who inferred that this epistle had been sent from the centre of the earth, and expressed the farthest space from that to the surface; from which computing, they pronounced that the earth was 252,000 stadia in circuit." -Plin. Nat. Hist. 1. ii. c. 112.

Which shall we most admire? the strange and palpable imposture, or

LETTER VI.

Sacred History comprises the Plan, the Purposes, and the Results of the Divine System, as to Mankind-Outlines of the Great Events which have accrued in Human Affairs.

THE sacred history of the world, as it relates to mankind, may be considered under three divisions of our inquiry. The PLAN on which it has been carried on; the REASONS and PURPOSES for which that particular plan has been adopted, and its execution pursued; and the RESULTS or ends which have already been accomplished by it, or which seem evolving from it.

Our knowledge of the PLAN must be derived from a study of the events which have taken place; for it is in these that it will be indicated, as the movements of a great army, and their consequences and effects, enable the attentive observer to perceive the scheme and objects of the commander in the conduct of his campaign.

That a plan has been devised and selected by our Creator for his human world, and steadily acted upon by him in the course of its affairs, seems to be as certain as any fact that is deducible from what we know of him, and from its analogies with the certainties of his physical creations. We assume that our material world has been a reasoned production of his intelligence. But if so, then human life, and the concerns which most affect it, must be directed and governed by him, because the inorganic portions of our earthly system have been visibly made with express reference to what is living and sentient; and all that is so has been manifestly formed with a peculiar consideration of man, the most sentient and intellectual of all. But nothing was more requisite to his welfare and intellectual improvement, than that the great incidents of his social history, and of the course of his earthly life, should be such, and be from time to time so regulated, as to prevent his destruction or degenthat any ancient mathematicians, men whose leaders we are so accustomed to revere, should seriously calculate upon it as authentic informa tion?

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