PART IV. PHILOSOPHICA L. THE CONDITION OF IMMORTALITY A SOURCE of HE ancient and modern Epicureans provoke my indignation THE when they boast, as a mighty acquisition, their pretended certainty that the body and the soul die together. If they had this certainty, then, would the discovery be so very comfortable? When I consult my reason, I am ready to ask these men, as Tully asked their predecessors, where that old doating woman can be found who trembles at the "pit of Tophet" and the "fires of hell," and all the infernal hobgoblins, furies with their snakes and whips, devils with their cloven feet and lighted torches ? Was there need of so much philosophy to keep these mighty geniuses from living under the same terrors? I would ask, further, is the mean between atheism and superstition so hard to find? Or, may not these men serve as examples to prove what Plutarch affirms, "that superstition leads to atheism"? For me, who am no philosopher, nor presume to walk out of the high road of plain common sense, but content myself to be governed by the dictates of nature, and am therefore in no danger of becoming atheistical, superstitious, or sceptical, I should have no difficulty which to choose, if the option was proposed to me, to exist after death, or to die whole, as it has been called. Be there two worlds, or be there twenty, the same God is the God of all, and wherever we are, we are equally in His power. Far from fearing my Creator, that all-perfect Being whom I adore, I should fear to be no longer His creature.-Lord Bolingbroke. CICERO, Tusc. Disp. i. § 10, 24, 36, 37, 48, 49, 118. MAN, ELEVATED ABOVE THE OTHER ANIMALS BY HIS CONSCIOUSNESS OF A GOD. M AN was ever a creature separated from all others by his instinctive sense of an existence superior to his own, invariably manifesting this sense of the being of a God more strongly in proportion to his own perfectness of mind and body, and making enormous and self-denying efforts, in order to obtain some persuasion of the immediate presence or approval of the Divinity. So that, on the whole, the best things he did were done as in the presence or for the honour of his gods; and whether in statues, to help him to imagine them, or temples raised to their honour, or acts of self-sacrifice done in the hope of their love, he brought whatever was best and skilfullest in him into their service, and lived in a perpetual subjection to their unseen power. Also, he was always anxious to know something definite about them; and his chief books, songs, and pictures were filled with legends about them, or especially devoted to illustration of their lives and nature. SENECA, Epist. xci, xcii. lxxiii. xli. Benef. vi. c. 23. THE HUMAN SOUL-ITS CAPABILITY OF RELIGION A SIGN OF ITS HEAVENLY ORIGIN AND ITS IMMORTALITY. BUT UT all these things are inconsiderable, and contribute but little to our present purpose, in respect of that our incomparable dignity, that results to the human mind from its being capable of religion, and having indelible characters thereof naturally stamped upon it. It acknowledges a God, and worships Him; it builds temples to His honour; it celebrates His never enough exalted majesty with sacrifices, prayers, and praises; depends upon His bounty; implores His aid; and so carries on a constant correspondence with heaven-and, which is a very strong proof of its being originally from heaven, it hopes at last to return to it. And truly, in my judgment, this previous impression and hope of immortality, and these earnest desires after it, are a very strong evidence of that immortality. These impressions, though in most men they lie overpowered and almost quite extinguished by the weight of their bodies, and an extravagant love to present enjoyment, yet now and then, in time of adversity, break forth and exert themselves, especially under the pressure of severe distempers, and at the approaches of death. But those whose minds are purified, and their thoughts habituated to divine things, with what constant and ardent wishes do they breathe after that blessed immortality! How often do their souls complain within them that they have dwelt so long in these earthly tabernacles! Like exiles, they earnestly wish, make interest, and struggle hard to regain their native country. Moreover, does not that noble neglect of the body and its senses, and that contempt of all the pleasures of the flesh, which these heavenly souls have attained, evidently show that, in a short time, they will be taken from hence, and that the body and soul are of a very different and almost contrary nature to one another; that, therefore, the duration of the one depends not upon the other, but is quite of another kind; and that the soul, set at liberty from the body, is not only exempted from death, but, in some sense, then begins to live, and then first sees the light? Had we not this hope to support us, what ground should we have to lament our first nativity, which placed us in a life so short, so destitute of good, and so crowded with miseries-a life which we pass entirely in grasping phantoms of felicity, and suffering real calamities! So that, if there were not, beyond this, a life and happiness that more truly deserve their names, who can help seeing that, of all creatures, man would be the most miserable, and, of all men, the best would be the most unhappy?-Leighton. CICERO, de Finibus, lib. ii. § 45, 46, 47. De Leg. lib. i. § 22-27. Tusc. Disp. i. § 118, 43, 44, 45, 46, 51, 56, 60, 66, 70-73, 93-99. THE ARGUMENT OF Design INHERENT IN FACTS. THE HE argument of design is, that there is a certain construction which the facts of nature of themselves call for and necessitate, not admitting of any other, and the construction, namely, of design which attaches to visible arrangement, system, and adaptation. This construction, we say, "adheres to the facts," is cemented to them, and cannot be separated from them. That is our position. Look at the inside of an animal body. Is it not, as a matter of fact, a machine? Yes, the apparatus of organs, pipes, vessels, is a simple fact; design is the construction which we say cleaves to the fact. We have not gone to the clouds then for design; we have not invented the notion; we have not coined it; it has not been spun out of our brain; it has come to us out of plain, solid, external, material, tangible facts. It is stamped upon those facts. We have not sought it by speculation, but outward nature has forced it upon us. We have not first conceived the idea independently of nature, and nature got the impress from our fancy; but the idea has been got out of nature in the first instance, and we are only the recipients of it.— Quarterly Review. CICERO, de Natur. Deor. ii. § 38, 87. THE PROBABILITY OF THE B RESURRECTION ARGUED FROM THE CONSTANT VICISSITUDE OF NATURE. τοῦτο μὲν νιφοστιβεῖς χειμῶνες ἐκχωροῦσιν εὐκάρπῳ θέρει τῇ λευκοπώλῳ φέγγος ἡμέρᾳ φλέγειν. ESIDE the principles of which we consist, and the actions. which flow from us, the consideration of the things without us, and the natural course of variations in the creature, will render the resurrection yet more highly probable. Every space of twenty-four hours teacheth thus much, in which there is always a revolution amounting to a resurrection. The day dies into a night, and is buried in silence and in darkness; in the next morning it appeareth again and reviveth, opening the grave of darkness, rising from the dead of night: this is a diurnal resurrection. As the day dies into night, so doth the summer into winter; the sap is said to descend into the root, and there it lies buried in the ground; the earth is covered with snow, or crusted with frost, and becomes a general sepulchre: when the spring appeareth, all begin to rise; the plants and flowers peep out of their graves, revive and grow and flourish this is the annual resurrection. The corn by which we live, and for want of which we perish with famine, is notwithstanding cast upon the earth, and buried in the ground, with a design that it may corrupt, and being corrupted may revive and multiply; |