have pronounced upon his human offspring, this melancholy and irrevocable doom?-to exist for a few days, in sorrow and in dread; then to be no more; and to depart, with the consciousness that we are ceasing to be for ever! Yet when the Heathens saw the body decomposed into its elements-the finely feeling nerves, the beating heart, the throbbing brain, the very seat of thought-mouldering in dust -they were ready to give up the possibility of a revival. Even the polite and philosophic Athenians treated the mention of it with derision-and of the very couverts of the apostle --some doubted, others denied-and some there were, ready to inquire "how are the dead raised up, and with what body do they come?"-if the same body-when its several particles were mixed with the mould of the earth; dissolved in the waters; dissipated in the air; consumed by fire; devoured by ravenous animals-themselves afterwards devoured-and that which had once constituted the body of one man, had, by a series of intricate combinations, entered into the composition of many others-how, by any possibility, could each have his own body restored to him?-or if bodies of different materials, as well as of a different structure were to be assigned to each individual,-what could still remain, sufficient to identify them to others, or to themselves? The apostle's answer to these and all such objections is-"That which thou sowest, is not quickened, except it die." But though every part of the seed, committed to the ground, that can be recognised by the senses-moulders away, yet the principle of life within it, acts with extraordinary vigour and produces an astonishing increase. From the commencement to the decline of life, our bodies are subject to a perpetual waste, and a perpetual renewal. In a few years, scarcely a particle of them may be left unchanged. Still, however, the component parts of our frame may vary; we are conscious of being the same Beings: and it is this continued consciousness in ourselves-together with the marks of it, conspicuous to others— which makes us proper subjects of reward or punishment. Eugene Aram was executed at an advanced period of life, for a murder, which he had committed, at an early period. Now it is probable from anatomical experiment, that scarcely a particle of that material substance, which was instrumental in perpetrating the crime, could still remain to suffer the sentence of the law-nevertheless, his own conscious mind, which dictated his confession, and the testimony of his contemporaries, who had traced him from stage to stage, leave no doubt of the identity of the criminal, or the justice of his doom. In like manner, we are all of us-however changeable in other respects, and however changed, capable of looking back upon the actions of our former life; and forward to their consequences. If we feel ourselves happy or miserable now, we may do the same hereafter; through all the unknown scenes and changes of futurity-to whatsoever lengths this chain of conscious being shall extend; and whereinsoever that sensibility to happiness or misery, which seems to be linked to it inseparably, may consist. Define as you may, this thinking, feeling, substance, which we call ourself -give it what name you please be it matter or be it spirit-be it fixed or fluctuating-it may rise to fresh life and action and intelligence; not only when the gross integuments, by which it is enveloped are removed; but even, if you suppose, the very substances, by which it has been successively fed and nourished, to have become a part of the common earth; nay though "the earth itself be dissolved and the elements evaporate with fervent heat." - If, says a late writer-an embryo, or an infant rise, by the gradual process of na ture, into a Locke, a Bacon, or a Newton, why should this process stop in the first stage; and not give birth to further changes; to higher degrees of intellectual improvement in perhaps an infinite progression?-In the lower orders of creation, this process is an obvious fact.-Who that beholds the bird bursting from the shell-the first crawling, then torpid and apparently dead worm, again stirring with life, expanding the wings, by which it was before enfolded, and triumphantly quitting the dark ground for the bright and balmy air-or, to descend once more to the vegetable creation-the mouldering seed apparently dissolved beneath the ground rising up in the form of a rose or a carnation, an oak or a palm tree-who that contemplates these wonderful vicissitudes-these progressive improvements in the scale of being-can despair that Man, the spectator, the proprietor, the lord of all below, shall himself awake from the slumbers of the grave, with faculties as far transcending those of mortality, as feeble infancy is exceeded by mature age. |