tion, imagination, or responsibility, will have no future personal or conscious existence.

That this doctrine, as far as it respects the Soul or mind of man, is warranted by Scripture, can admit of no doubt. For we are there told, not only that it shall be associated in a future state with a body termed celestial, in contradistinction to its former terrestrial one, but that it shall resemble the glorified body of our Saviour.

But we may advance a step farther than this; for we are told, that such as was the body of our Saviour after his transit through the gates of death, and at the moment of his ascension into heaven, such it will be on descending to judge the earth; a declaration which renders it probable not only that mind is connected with matter, as the instrument of visible personification even to the footstool of the Deity, but that the revelation of the Supreme Being to man in a future state, as far as his essence can become an object of visible adoration, will be through the medium of that form in which even on earth the fullness of the Godhead dwelt bodily.

How delightful is it to human feelings and associations to reflect, that the great First Cause,

that only source of life, who hath been from eternity, who so fills and actuates all space, that to say where he is not, that is, where being is not, would be absurd, has so condescended to the nature and constitution of his creatures as to promise that, as he connected himself in full energy with the terrestrial organization of man for the purposes of his redemption, so will he in a future state be known to him under a similar form, as God united to man in the utmost effulgence of visible glory. For thus far we may safely infer from the tenor of the sacred writings, which reveal to us Christ as not only solicitous after his resurrection to become an object of identity and recognition to his disciples, as spirit still connected with materiality, though in an infinitely more pure and glorified state, but as declaring that hereafter we shall see him face to face, recognising him not only as the Saviour of the world, but as the express personification of the parent Deity, who, as a perfectly abstract and incorporeal spirit, and as essentially possessing ubiquity, cannot be an object of form or sight.

It would appear then, that, from the source

of being to the lowest portion of animated nature, organized matter has been assumed as the instrument of personal visibility, and as the medium through which the Vis Divina, the primary and sole origin of self-agency, acts. Nor is this incompatible, or inconsistent with the general idea which has been formed of another world, in contradistinction to this gross terrestrial one; for we are well acquainted, in our present state, with matter in so subtle and attenuated a form as not only to possess the most limitless rapidity of movement, but to enjoy the faculty of permeating and even incorporating with all other bodies, as in the instances of the galvanic and magnetic fluids, and the fluids of heat and light. Analogy, therefore, together with the authority of revelation, which has informed us that our bodies in a future state of being shall be glorified and incorruptible, almost necessarily leads us to conclude that matter, in its approach to the throne of the Deity, is susceptible of an almost indefinite degree of purity and subtlety, both in its substance and organization, so as to form a suitable recipient and vehicle of individuation for, that emanation of the Vis

Divina, the human mind, when liberated from its gross and earthly mansion, and which, as being endowed with the faculty of acquiring knowledge by abstract reason alone, must, in its essence, be considered as on a level with the first orders of created beings, and not only, from its origin, incapable of extinction in se, but, as a direct result of its moral responsibility, endowed with an ever-during distinct and personal consciousness, as the medium of punishment or reward, of suffering or enjoyment.

To confound what was formed for the investment of spirit for the purposes of visible individuation, with the intellect that called it into being; to devolve the properties of the agent on the instrument; to make the tool beget the workman, or, in other words, to affirm that the creation of the brain generates mind, and that of the eye vision, is the gross error of the physiological materialists of the present day, and leads, as we have before observed, to the absurd result of a polytheism of mere matter.

Descending, however, from these speculations, in their nature certainly highly curious and interesting, let me declare, in the words of

Sir Thomas Browne, and in relation to that great First Cause, whose attributes and administration we have been venturing to contemplate, that "I know he is wise in all, wonderful in what we conceive, but far more in what we comprehend not; for we behold him but upon reflex or shadow;" adding, in the eloquent lan-* guage of the same writer, and as an apology for the introduction of disquisition on topics thus lofty and mysterious, that "the world was made to be studied and contemplated by man: it is the debt of our reason we owe unto God, and the homage we pay for not being beasts; without this the world is still as though it had not been, or as it was before the sixth day, when as yet there was not a creature that could conceive, or say there was a world. The wisdom of God receives small honour from those vulgar heads that rudely stare about, and with a gross rusticity admire his works: those highly magnify him whose judicious enquiry into his acts, and deliberate research into his creatures, return the duty of a devout and learned admiration. And this is almost all wherein an humble creature may endeavour to requite, and some