mortality of the soul, are the remains of an unwritten oral revelation, which has been handed down traditionally from generation to generation, becoming more obscure and more indistinct by the additions and alterations of every succeeding age. It is with this doctrine just as it is with the striking similarity of traditions to be found in almost every nation relative to the creation, the happiness of the first human pair, their subsequent fall, the deluge, &c. In endeavouring to answer the question under debate in the negative, we propose, first, examining two or three arguments that are generally supposed to be sufficient of themselves to establish the truth of the soul's immortality, and then appeal unto the evidence on this subject afforded by the history of the most refined and intellectual nation of antiquity.

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First. It is sometimes argued that, as the soul is not matter, is immaterial, it must therefore be imperishable." This argument seems to make short work with the question, but we certainly cannot see any force in such reasoning. We are not assured by the nature of the premises, neither do we apprehend how the conclusion follows. We know that every immaterial being is not necessarily indestructible: immortality is surely not an essential attribute of an immaterial nature. Immortality must ever depend upon the will of the Creator, and not upon any inherent quality in the immaterial nature; a creature can only be immortal as he is upheld in immortality by God. There is no evidence apart from revelation which would lead us to suppose that any creature may not also have a termination of its being. This difficulty was felt by the philosophers of ancient Greece, India, and Rome, and hence all their arguments for the soul's immortality proceeded on the assumption of its pre-existence as a portion of the Divine Being, and to whom it was to be rejoined. Thus we see that their idea of immortality was really the immortality of the Deity himself, and not that of the soul of man as an individual being. To use the words of Dr. Chalmers, "We can perceive no force or practical evidence in those abstract or metaphysical generalities which are sometimes employed to demonstrate the indestructibleness of the thinking principle, so as to be persuaded that it shall indeed survive the body, and separately maintain its powers and its consciousness on the other side of the grave." But in revelation, almost on its threshold, we are informed that God "breathed" into man the "breath of life, and man became a living soul;" and this gleam of the grand attribute of immortality is constantly kept in view throughout the Old Testament, until fully revealed in the New, where, in the "recorded fact of our Saviour's resurrection, we see a popular and far more substantial and satisfactory argument for the soul's immortality than any furnished by any metaphysical speculation." It is to this fact also that the apostle Paul appeals as the sure foundation of the Christian's hope of a

future resurrection and glorious immortality. The ancients never dreamed of the resurrection of the body; they considered that one source of bliss in the future state was to have "no bodies:" so on their principles the resurrection would be of no benefit to them; and, indeed, when the doctrine was proposed to them, they scouted it as the height of absurdity.*

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Second. Another argument for the soul's immortality is drawn from what may be termed the moral state of the mind, more particularly that property of expansion and progress which is affirmed of it, both in respect to its virtues and its powers. This of itself does not establish the fact of the soul's immortality. We fear that the flowery and poetic description of the moralist in respect to this has no proof and no experience to support it. There is beauty in their representations when they talk of the good man and his prospects; of his progress through life as a splendid career of still increasing virtue, and his death as a gentle transition to another and a better world, where, without the encumbrances which here clog the soul, the same progress in virtue towards perfection will continue in an accelerated degree. We would willingly believe it, and much more, if it were proved. What is the foundation on which so superb a superstructure is reared? Merely the illusions of fancy! If it be a real progress to eternity, where is the proof? We can see none: rather the contrary. Death intervenes, and puts a stop to all such development. Why so cruel an interruption to the progress? What means this awful and mysterious death? Bears it not in every circumstance all the marks of a termination? Why is the good man not suffered to carry on in his triumphant progress? Why comes this dark and inexplicable event to be interposed between him and the full accomplishment of his destiny?" Nature affords no answer to these queries. Reason starts back aghast at their overwhelming profundity. Death, to the mind of every man unenlightened by revelation, is a dark, unknown uncertainty, and terrifies the boldest heart. Is it called a “step”? There is nothing in a name to allay our suspicion. What evidence have we that it is not the end of life, the termination of man's existence? "We see the gradual decay of the faculties which should be ripening and expanding; those virtues which are represented as in a state of constant perseverance, we see giving way to the power of disease, withering into feebleness; and instead of that which confers grace and dignity on man, we see the peevishness, discontent, and fretfulness of age. We see the body bending to the dust, extended in all the agony of helplessness and pain. To call this a triumphant procession to eternity, or to disguise those actual horrors which the ear hears, and the eye witnesses, by the gildings of a flimsy imagination! We ob. 1 Cor. xv.; Acts xvii. 16-34.

*Gen. ii. 7;

C

warmet that the son must be mimorta. digi tu sams for mortain which it s ameted. is felt 1 #::50 BIL cw the argument amears anythme because mortair is destrante are we thence Tus would murecht & siender basis for #vass a ConciuJUL. There counties is a capacity for auc rule a desire for it, existing in the breast of but we are not certam that in the majority of cases Sue Grate exvende to more than a lengthening of the present ints or that mat Jools beyond the present une a future state, in ℗ me ne mual. truy live for ever, before he has beer informed of the fact of retention, written or unwritten. But our present 0908% 1ɛ 19% 80 mue to question the existence or origin of this Gor, be to snow that of itself it is not sufficient evidence for tue woula mummortality. Although we allow that a passion for samorality is inherent in man, we consider it in the abstract, to me a true to witch, with all his philosophy and reasoning, he could not of tuituself attain. It is one thing to believe a truth

# Tas * Congregational Sermons," by the late Rev. Dr. Chalmers, Sermon 39.

because of its harmony with our consciousness, and another thing to discover that truth; it is one thing to desire a doctrine to be true, and another thing to be assured, on undoubted evidence, that it is certainly true. The dread of annihilation is awful to the thoughtful man; but this is no proof that he shall not some day cease to be. That every man entertains the same dread of annihilation is mere assumption; a great mass of mankind never seriously entertain the thought that they are destined to a future and an eternal existence. Their whole life is a practical denial of this truth; all their thoughts are concerned about, and bound up with, the present life, and death they look upon as their end. Man, unenlightened by revelation, we think, could never arrive at the idea of continuous existence. Hence we see that those nations which enjoy no written revelation, have an idea that in the state of departed spirits beyond the grave they shall live through a long and indefinite number of ages; but what will eventually become of them they know not; their belief does not extend to immortality: but those who ventured to shoot their thoughts beyond this infinite number of ages supposed, that they would eventually either be rejoined to the Supreme Being, or gradually sink into a state of unconsciousness, virtually annihilation. This anticipation of a future state, we too suspect, is also the remnant of a traditional revelation. "That men wish to be immortal may be true, notwithstanding all men die. That all men wish to exist after death is also true; but it is illogical to infer from thence that all men shall exist

surely as

any

human being,

hereafter for ever, because all wish it, as to infer that none shall die, because we have a natural aversion to death. This would be founding faith on desire, belief on wish, demonstration on feeling," and this when experience seems to point the contrary. without the aid of revelation, to prove by his unassisted reason The fact appears to be, that it is impossible for a the immortality of the soul. We do not know it from expetive principle implanted in the mind. or mankind would not doubt their immortality more than their present existence. The fact that even with the light of scriptre men are found doubting this truth, proves the inability of Revelation alone can assure us of

rience;

their

it must either be wholly a matter of belief, or an instincThe latter it cannot be,

Powers to discover it.

66 without God in the world."

the fact; and where its light does not shine, man is found living "without hope," as well as Let us nor tum to the testimony of history, by way of illustrating the foregoing arguments. It is certain that the belief of the soul's immortality is of very ancient date; it precedes all

history, and,

the first oral revelation, preserved and handed down by tradition from the earliest ages, as its reception has been almost universal. Without adducing any testimony from the history of the more

as we before observed, seems to have been part of

ignorant and barbarous portion of the human family, we shall restrict ourselves to inquire what were the sentiments of the speculative philosophers of ancient Greece,-that most refined and intellectual nation of antiquity, and who had the idea given them to start from, relative to the immortality of the soul. We find that many of them denied the cognate truth of a future state of retribution, and that all had their doubts of the soul's immortality. Such as held the immortality of the soul, supported it by metaphysical arguments drawn from its supposed nature as a portion of the Divine Being-"not made by him, but issuing from him and out of him-a part of himself, and discerped from him-proceeding from him as a sort of emanation— a portion of the divine essence put into or immersed in a human body-that the divine essence was a subtle ether expanded through all nature, and that the soul was a small part taken from this celestial ether, and was immortal because that out of which it was discerped is immortal." This is a summary of the arguments used by the philosophers of ancient Greece to establish the soul's immortality. The sentiments of the wise men of India, Rome, and Egypt were very similar; and these notions naturally gave rise to the doctrine of transmigration of souls, as believed by the Greeks, Hindoos, and other eastern nations. Thus, according to them, two things were always included in the soul's immortality, viz., its pre-existence and its post-existence as a portion of the Divine Being. There were none of the ancients, unenlightened by revelation, "who held the soul's future permanency after death, who did not also hold its preexistence; they clearly perceiving, that if it were once granted that the soul was generated, or made, it never could be proved that it might not also become corrupted," and so end its existence.* In the Phædon of Plato, Socrates endeavours to prove that the soul existed before its entrance into the body, and that the knowledge we have now is only a reminiscence of that which we had in a pre-existing state, and that the soul, because of its nature, shall exist when separated from the body. Thus we see that they did not understand the immortality of the soul in its individuality. They also differed as to the time of the re-union of the soul with God; some supposing it to be immediately after death, others, the Pythagoreans, not till after many transmigrations, while the Platonists held a middle opinion, and rejoined pure and unpolluted souls to the Divine Being immediately after death, but those who had contracted much defilement were sent into other bodies to purge and purify themselves before they returned to their parent substance. Those who doubted the pre-existence of souls also doubted their immortality, and inferred, that, as the soul did not exist previous to the body, but

* Cudworth's "Divine Legation of Moses Demonstrated," vol. i., p. 406.