couraged by the noblest and worthiest principles of our constitution, we may reasonably conclude, will in due time be gratified under the government of a Being infinite both in power and goodness. At least it must be allowed, that, if other considerations appear favorable to our future expectations, the natural desires of the human mind ought to be allowed some force in strengthening the presumption.

(2.) Let us reflect, in the second place, on the natural sentiment of the mind when under the influence of remorse. A murder (we shall suppose) has been perpetrated, from motives of fraud or revenge, without any human witness, and without any circumstance that could lead to a detection. No punishment is to be apprehended from any earthly tribunal. Is this sufficient to quiet the apprehensions of the murderer? Experience shows us the reverse, and furnishes numberless instances in which the recollection of such a crime, though committed with every circumstance of privacy, has been sufficient to poison all the enjoyments which luxury could offer, and even to render life itself insupportable. In vain the murderer seeks for a refuge from the persecutions of conscience by mingling in the busy scenes of life. He has lost the intrepidity of innocence, and trembles to look even his friends in the face, lest his guilt should appear through all the disguises of his countenance. From society he flies to solitude, which affords a good man a retreat from the storms of fortune; and where the soul, long harassed with cares, and sick of the restraints which the world imposes, indulges the natural current of its thoughts and feelings, and gradually regains its strength and its serenity. But the pleasures of solitude are known to the virtuous alone. To the guilty it is full of terrors. Every walk is haunted with spectres, and the tranquillity and peace he sees around him only render his guilt and his danger the more striking to himself and the more alarming. Even the reflection that his crimes have passed unpunished on earth serves at times to aggravate his horrors. The blood he has spilt seems on that very account to call the louder to Heaven for vengeance; and he conceives his punishment in a future state to be the

more certain and the more unavoidable, that he has made no atonement while here to the society he has injured. Under the influence of such apprehensions a murderer has been frequently known, many years after the perpetration of the crime, to feel his existence so intolerable a burden that he has voluntarily revealed his own guilt and delivered himself up to an ignominious death. The vulgar generally believe that Providence sometimes interferes by a miracle to bring secret murderers to light; but in this, as in other instances, Providence acts agreeably to general laws, and has provided a restraint on this most dreadful of all crimes by that infatuation which remorse produces, and which seldom fails, sooner or later, to lead to a detection. Facts of this sort are surely strong indications of the moral government of God, and afford strong presumptions of a future retribution.

(3.) The observations which have hitherto been made relate entirely to those anticipations of futurity which nature forces occasionally on the minds of all men, even of those who are the least disposed to serious reflection. Let us now consider the presumptions which arise from a more extensive and philosophical survey of our faculties and of our situation in the world.

When we examine the instincts and the external condition of the lower animals, we find them to be exactly accommodated to those desires and wants which nature has given them. What were the ultimate purposes of their creation it is impossible for us to ascertain. Some of them seem to be placed in this world chiefly for the use of man, so wonderfully are their instincts adapted to his purposes; others, perhaps, were intended for no further end than to taste to a certain degree of the bounty of their Maker, and (as Goldsmith expresses it) "to animate the solitudes of nature." But, with respect to all of them, we may remark, an exact accommodation of their condition to their desires and to their capacities of enjoyment. These desires and enjoyments seem to be entirely of the sensual kind, excepting, perhaps, when an animal is under the influence of the conjugal or the parental affections, or in the case of those who delight in the soci

ety of their own species. But whatever desires, or whatever capacities of enjoyment any animal is possessed of, the object fitted to gratify it is supplied by nature, and the animal is guided by an unerring impulse to the employment of those means by which the object is to be attained. The enjoyments may be low in comparison to ours, but they are suited to the creatures for whom they are destined, and they are not degraded in their estimation by any mortifying comparisons with the pleasures which belong to superior orders of beings. Indeed, they do not seem to have the least curiosity about the nature of any of the objects which surround them. As the use of reason for the gratification of their wants is superseded by their instincts, the powers of observation and reflection have been kindly withheld from them; and, as nature has in a great measure taken upon herself the care of their subsistence and accommodation, and employs them as blind instruments for the accomplishment of her purposes, so she seems to have relieved them of any anxiety for the future by limiting their views to the present moment.

How different is all this from the condition of man! He is left in many respects to the guidance of his own understanding, and is incapable of accommodating his conduct to the established course of nature, till he has made.himself acquainted with it by experience and observation. To this observation of nature he is prompted not only by his necessities, but by the principle of curiosity, which leads him to prosecute his researches even when his situation is easy and comfortable; and which therefore does not appear, like the instincts of the brutes, to be subservient merely to the accommodation of his present existence. It may be said, perhaps, that even when our curiosity engages us in inquiries which are merely speculative, we are not entitled to conclude that these inquiries will never be attended with any practical utility; that many discoveries highly important to mankind have been made by men who had no views of their application at the time, and who perhaps lived many ages before these views occurred; and that therefore an important use of the principle of curiosity may be

traced without extending our views beyond the present world. The objection, I acknowledge, is so far just; but still it seems to me that this principle has a manifest reference to higher purposes. If man was intended only to be an inhabitant of this globe, and if the principle of curiosity was bestowed on him only in subserviency to his accommodation here, whence is it that he is in general led to inquire more anxiously about distant and singular phenomena than about those which, from their nearness or frequency, we should expect to be the most interesting? Whence is it that his curiosity extends beyond the surface of this globe, or at least beyond those astronomical facts which may admit of a practical application? Whence is it that he delights in tracing the orbit and computing the motions of a planet invisible to the naked eye, or in predicting the return of a comet many ages after he shall be laid in the dust? But perhaps little could be inferred from our curiosity on these subjects, if we were not so wonderfully supplied with the means of gratifying it. Such, however, are the powers of the human mind, that while the science of medicine remains involved in uncertainty and error; while the structure of the human body is still imperfectly known; while mechanics are not yet agreed about the best form of the plough, we are able to contemplate the provisions which nature has made for supplying light to the superior and more distant planets; we are able to measure the velocity of light itself; and, without passing the boundaries of the visible universe, can transport ourselves in imagination to regions where the earth and all the planetary spaces vanish from the eye. Even, however, when we are arrived at this limit, we feel that the distance we have passed is but a point in comparison of that infinite space which forces itself on the mind with an irresistible conviction of its necessary existence.

With respect to our own globe, how eager is our curiosity to know the transactions of those generations which have occupied it before us! And after exhausting all the treasures of remote antiquity, how do we complain of the shortness of that period which limits the province of history! Our views, too, are often turned forwards to

the dark regions of futurity, where we see time, like space, stretching to infinity, and we cannot help inquiring what events are likely to happen in succeeding ages. Shall one generation of men follow another in endless succession, and each return to its original nothing? Or is this world only a state of preparation for higher scenes, where our intellectual and moral powers may continually advance nearer and nearer to perfection?

I have hitherto taken no notice of that curiosity we feel concerning the great Author of all the wonders we see around us. Few will dispute that it is natural and reasonable in man to inquire concerning his own origin and that of the various tribes of animals he sees continually rising into existence; concerning that power which put in motion the different parts of the material universe, and that wisdom which is the source of its order and beauty. Our inquiries on these subjects are essentially different, both in their nature and object, from all the others in which we can employ our faculties; and our disposition to engage in them affords a presumption in favor of a future state perfectly distinct from those that arise from our restless and insatiable curiosity about the objects of science ; and a presumption, we may add, not liable to the same objections which might possibly be urged against some of the foregoing reasonings. In our astronomical and physical researches, for example, our object is to ascertain the laws of nature; or, in other words, to discover and to classify facts; and consequently, our inquiries, though they lead us into a more extensive field, are precisely the same in kind with those which lay the foundation of the practical arts, and of our conduct in the common affairs of life. It might perhaps therefore be imagined that our curiosity concerning the distant parts of the universe, and the discoveries to which it has led, do not justify the conclusions I formerly deduced from them, as these discoveries are only to be regarded as the accidental and unavoidable result of principles which were implanted in our minds for very different purposes: That although the knowledge of many astronomical facts may not be subservient to our