for the most part to be fallen to a like state of imbecility; but this is not the case in its dreams, which are known to take up no small portion of the hours of sleep. At such times it does not appear to stand in need of the same repose with the body; otherwise it would seek, and possess it. Nor is its action to be considered an inefficient and sluggish one; which might afford ground for the conjecture, that the half awakened body had partially liberated and revived the fettered and extinguished mind. On the contrary, when the powers of the body are utterly suspended, the soul is often exceedingly on the alert; it rapidly passes from subject to subject, attended sometimes with sad, and sometimes with raised and joyful affections.

But this is not all; often in the hours of sleep the intellect exhibits an increased invention, a quickened and more exalted energy in all its powers. Many writers have remarked, that the conclusions of abstruse investigations have been suggested to them at such times. Not a few would conclude themselves persons of genius, if they could pronounce the arguments and the harangues in the awakened soberness of the morning, which they had framed in the visions of the night. So frequent and well known is this quickened mental action, that a certain writer has ventured to assert, with as much truth at least as is commonly found in antitheses, that the ligation of sense is the liberty of reason.*

§. 40. The great works of genius an evidence of immateriality.

But there is one more train of reflection, which may help to throw light on this subject. It is not enough, if

This view of the soul has been taken by various writers. Addison, who entertained ennobling sentiments of our nature, has dwelt upon it at some length. He often touches on other topics, connected with the exercises of the soul; but he does it with such exceeding ease and grace; we enter so readily into the train of his reflections; that we are apt to allow him less originality and depth, than he merits. See Numbers of the Spectator III, 487, 554, 593, &c.

we would fully understand its nature, to contemplate the soul merely in seasons of bodily prostration and sickness, in suffering, and in the hour of death. However capable the mind may be of discovering the greatness of its powers under these pressures and disadvantages, it would be too much to expect at such times a continued effort and elevation. And yet it is only a continuance of elevated effort, which can secure the highest results. When the senses are unclosed, when the powers of the physical system are unchained throughout, and are healthy and active, the human mind may be expected with fuller confidence to erect those vast creations, which we cannot but regard as an evidence of its purely spiritual nature. Results so ennobling are not congenial with what we know of matter. It is almost as revolting to our feelings as our understanding; to refer those works, which have stood the test of ages, to no higher origin, than what Mr. Hume calls a little agitation of the brain, and others would call, with but little difference of meaning, a secretion or developement either of the brain, or of organization in some other material part.

Among the numerous efforts, which are now referred to, it is difficult to make a selection. Many of them will occur of themselves. Standing forth, amid the successions of time, a monumental mark, they have as yet never failed to attract the gaze and wonder of men.— -What framed the demonstrations of Euclid? The mind. Where was the authorship of the political institutions of Solon and Lycurgus, and of that still greater effort of political wisdom the American Constitution? In the mind. Was it the body or the soul of Homer, the intellect or the brain of the blind old bard, that infused the breath of immortality into the Iliad and Odyssey? What gave birth to the vast and perfect combinations of The Jerusalem Delivered, the Fairy Queen, and the Paradise Lost? Where shall we look for the origin of the Philippics of the Ancients, or in later times of the speeches of Fox, and of the orations of Bossuet?

In these cases, and in all others, where human genius

has triumphed in like manner, there is one short answer; man has an intelligent soul; man possesses an active and creative mind; in the words of Holy Writ, there is in man a spirit, and the inspiration of the Almighty hath given understanding. Such we suppose to be the answer of mankind, of common sense, and of human nature, as well as of the Bible. It is an answe, which matter would never give, and which is itself a prof of the spirituality and nobleness it asserts. Giving ourselves up to the infiuence of the vast conceptions, embalied in the works and institutions of human genius, we find it as difficult to attribute them to a purely material cause as, it is to adopt the theory of the atheist, and ascibe the beautiful and complicated machinery of the universe to a fortuitous concurrence of atoms.

§. 41. Of the immortaliy of the soul.

We are,

With the subject of the immatrial nature of the soul, that of its immortality is closely connected. therefore, naturally led to prescit a few suggestions on this last topic, although it will notbe necessary to enter into it with much minuteness.- Ve suppose the soul to be immortal, or in other words to have its existence continued beyond the present life,becauscit is immaterial. Those, who hold that thought and feeing are in some way the direct result of material organizaion, admit, that the soul, or rather what they speak of a the soul, dics with the body; and certainly they would be inconsistent with themselves, if they did not do so. Their theory by their own admission imperiously requires, that man's noble and capacious intellect shall dissolve and scatter itself in the ashes of the grave; lost and annihilated, until it shall be created anew, if that should ever happen. But the opposite system, which we have endeavored to show to be the true one, holds out a different view of the destiny of our spiritual nature. It is true, the immortal existence of the soul does not follow with absolute certainty from the mere fact of its immateriality; but it is at least rendered in some degree probable. Certainly we have no direct

evidence of the discontinuance of the soul's existence, as we have of that of the body. What takes place at death is only a removal of the soul's action from our notice, but not, as far as we knov, a cessation and utter extinction of it. The supposition, therefore, is a reasonable one, that the soul will continu to exist, merely because it exists at present, inasmuch as its immaterial nature does not require the suspension of itsexistence at death, and as we have at least no direct evidene of such an event.-Death, in the language of Mr. Stewirt, only lifts up the veil, which conceals from our eyes the invisible world. It annihilates the material universe to air senses, and prepares our minds for some new and unknown state of being.

In the second plac, considering man, as he is, to be a moral and accountablebeing, we feel as if his destiny were not fulfilled in the present life. It would unsettle all our hopes, trust, and happiness, if we did not believe in a great moral plan, the compltion of which is as certain as the permanency of the omniscient Being, from whom it originated. But its compleion in the present state is by no means evident; vice anl virtue are here conflicting; and the eye of moral and reigious faith looks anxiously forward to some future alotment, where the one shall meet its rebuke, and the other be crowned with its reward. Our present situation, considered in a moral point of view, strongly suggests, and even demands for the soul an hereafter.

§. 42. Remarks of Aldison on the soul's immortality.

Furthermore there is something in the expanding and progressive nature of the soul, which strongly favors the supposition of its future and even unlimited duration. This important thought we find dwelt upon in the writings of Addison in the following terms." How can it enter into the thoughts of man, that the soul, which is capable of such immense perfection, and of receiving new improvements to all eternity, shall fall away into nothing almost as soon as it is created? Are such abilities made for no purpose? A brute arrives at a point of perfection

that he can never pass in a few years he has all the endowments he is capable of; and were he to live ten thousand more, would be the same thing he is at present. Were a human soul thus at a stand in her accomplishments, were her faculties to be full blown, and incapable of farther enlargements, I could imagine it might fall away insensibly, and drop at once into a state of annihilation. But can we believe a thinking being, that is in a perpetual progress of improvements, and travelling on from perfection to perfection, after having just looked abroad into the works of its Creator, and made a few discoveries of his infinite goodness, wisdom, and power, must perish at her first setting out, and in the very beginning of her inquiries?" (Spectator, No. 111.)

But after all we must rest as to this point chiefly on Revelation. It is possible by various arguments to render the immortality of the soul in a high degree probable, but we do not profess to prove it beyond question; for there is nothing necessarily and in its own nature eternal but God himself. The permanency of created things does not depend necessarily on their being material or immaterial, but on the will of their Creator. If every star shines, and every flower blooms by the will of God; it is not the less true, that every soul lives by the same will. We might, therefore, remain in some degree of doubt on the subject of the soul's immortality, did not the scriptures convert our hopes and expectations into certainty. We are told, that life and immortality, (which is only a Hebraistic mode of expression for immortality of life,) are brought to light in the Gospel.