a sea of present impressions, but is not lost, but comes floating up by suggestion of the present, or when we retire from the obtrusion of the present. The future, again, is obscure only through imperfection of knowledge, and can be anticipated with certainty, according to the accuracy of science, as astronomy and other sciences show. So that of any spirit, it seems to me, which hath no body to occupy it with present sensation, the thoughts must ever live, and never be forgotten; and in every spirit which hath perfect knowledge of any department of creation, the future must be as certain as the present and the past. To God, to whom appertaineth knowledge infinite of what is, that which is to come is present and certain; to God, to whom all things are equally known, all things must be equally present. At any point of time he must be the same as at any other point of time, not more knowing, not more wise. To imagine forgetfulness in him were to imagine fluctuation and change. Time is a current down which he passeth not; he is like the ocean out of which it is fed, and into which it returns again.

There can be no doubt, therefore, that God, who gave to every man his proper measure of faculties, and placed every man in a field more or less fertile of opportunity to good and temptation to evil, and lit up in every man's breast a greater or a smaller light of understanding, and gave to some no revelation, placed others under false religions, and others under superstitious forms of the true religion, and, finally, gave to us Protestants the whole sum of saving knowledge, is able to observe and note each one according to the various given conditions of his existence, and treat each one hereafter according to the nicest discrimination of justice. Each one, therefore, whatever degree of intellect he possesseth, and in whatever chamber of life he dwells, may depend upon it that his Maker, who places and sustains him there for the performance of the best duties he can discern, doth take knowledge of his goings out and his comings in, doth search the heart and try the reins, and remark every word while yet it resteth half-formed upon the lips.

But there still remaineth one most important preliminary question: How we ourselves shall be conscious of the jus tice of the decision which God hath the knowledge and the wisdom to discern? For it is of the essence of justice, that the various offences of which one is accused should be brought home to his consciousness and conviction, before

he can be fairly condemned; and if this be not done, the mind rises in its strength against the award of judgment, and regards itself a martyr to the cause of justice. Nay more, it is equally essential to justice, that the offender have room to plead in his own behalf every thing in extenuation of his guilt. Now, saith the perplexed mind, how shall this take place at the last arraignment, when we are raised from our graves and mustered to the grand assize?-Even before we leave the coasts of time, the greater part of our transactions, good and bad, have passed into oblivion; the dotage of old age hath perhaps come on, and reduced life into a fugitive dream :-How then, when we are awakened from the tomb, shall the memory of all that we have done be recovered, that we may be brought to the bar in a state to hear and meet our accusations, and acquiesce in the righteousness of judgment? And, being at the bar, shall we have a hearing for ourselves? Life, even with the aids of revelation, is an intricate affair, and the best guided are of ten in perplexity, while without revelation, it is a matter almost of haphazard whether we go right or wrong. Customs, over the origin of which we had no control-opinions, which we found bearing the world before them-misgovernment of rulers, lashing subjects into madness-weary toil, consuming the time and very faculty of thought-stormy passions within the breast-gross darkness without, covering the age and place of our nativity-these things masteredus, (as whom can they not master!) and these pleas we have a right to be heard on, otherwise, that judgment of yours is a mass of iniquity and a medley of confusion.

Now, here is a nice question requiring a nice solution, and leading into inquiries which are almost entitled to a se'parate place in this argument of Judgment to Come. We are given to understand from Scripture, and natural justice itself requires, that there should be no change nor alteration for the better or the worse effected upon the soul after death, seeing that it is to be judged for the things done in the body, whether they have been good or evil. As death seizeth us, judgment must find us. As the tree falls, so it lieth. Now, wicked men get seared in conscience as with a red-hot iron, and for the most part die hard and whole of heart as the nether millstone. There would need a resurrection of soul as well as body, to make it conscious to God's righteous judgment, without which consciousness the award can have no moral power. Into this difficult inquiry I enter, not without hopes of casting light upon a subject hitherto dark and un

treated, which will need no small patience of investigation, and will reward it with most impressive results, most necessary to the understanding of the issues after death.

There must pass upon the soul when disembodied, various changes of which it is not impossible, though difficult, to discern the nature and the effects; for though none have returned to tell, we all suffer partial deaths, from the effect of which it is possible to reason as to the effect of dissolution itself. We take it for granted that the soul passes through unhurt, that no part of her existence is destroyed; she hath the same contents of thoughts, feelings, and hopes, on the other, as on this side the dark confines of the grave. She loses the enjoyments of the body and the presence of her friends, and her power of conversing with material scenes, but no part of her consciousness is destroyed. Now, by this change, there must pass upon the soul various effects, whereof the nature and direction, though not the quantity, may be discerned from the partial deaths which we are constantly undergoing by loss of friends, beloved objects, confinement, sickness, and other mutilations of our entire condition. Let us see what effects these occasional obscurations of her outward estate have upon the thinking, feeling principle within, and thence we may learn how it fares with the soul when she is disembodied. The knowledge of this will enable us to cast light upon the previous question.

The first thing I perceive in death is the great change it will make in enhancing the past and future over the present. I think it will go hard to annihilate the present altogether. In our present condition things that are past are spoken of as dead or out of existence, and things that are to come are spoken of as unborn, and things present alone as being in real existence. But this popular way of conceiving and speaking is not according to truth. For things when they are past are not dead to us, but live and act upon our condition in a thousand ways; they live in memory, and go to compose all our knowledge and experience and wisdom; they affect us with repentance and remorse, or with joy and self-complacency, according to their character of good or ill; they prepare us for the present by the habits which they engender, and for the future by the resolutions to which they give birth. Neither are future events, though unborn to sense, without life or influence over the mind. They already live in hope and fear, and desire and schemes; they cause the largest share of our anxiety and arrangement, and determine the better part of our happiness or misery. The soul is spread out both behind and

before, and with its wings stretcheth both ways into time, and struggleth hard to compass the round orb of eternity. It is an error, therefore, both in conception and language, to speak of the present as the only period actually existing before the soul; it is the only period actually existing before the senses of the body, and from this the loose popular way of speaking hath originated. The vision, the noise, and the feeling of present things are so engaging as to have cast the past and the future into the insignificance and dimness of morning and evening twilight. Present things hit the sense, and our senses carry such a weight in the empire of the mind, being its five great intelligencers with the outward world, that they have deluded her into the notion that they are the five elements of her existence.

Now, that she hath an existence independent of them, is manifested by her occupation in silence and solitude, when she will close her senses and have a glad or gloomy season of active cogitation; nay, she will grow into such absorption with her inward being as to lose the consciousness of things passing around; she will sit in bustling places, yet hear no noise; move along the crowded streets, yet behold no spectacles; consume her meals, yet taste no savours; and though you surround the body with discomfort, and sting the senses with acutest pain, the soul which hath past heroism and virtue to reflect on, or future triumphs to anticipate, will smile in the midst of torture, and grow insensible to torment ;-in all which cases, the life of the past and the future is triumphing over the life of the present. In truth, the present, both for its briefness and the briefness of all its sensations, is incomparably the least significant part of human existence, and it approximates a man to the lower animals according as his affections are set thereon. With a true man, the present is prizable only as it cometh out of the womb of past anticipation, bringing things hoped for to hand, and as it may be wrought up into the tissue of our schemes for well-developing the future. It is like the lees of the cask, to which you come not till you have first drunk the extract of pure and joyful juice, and which are best employed in being turned over to strengthen and impregnate other wholesome decoctions.

Seeing, therefore, that the present would fall altogether out of sight were it not for this constant conversation which the soul is forced by the senses to maintain with outward things, and even by that necessity scarcely keeps its ground in wise and enlightened spirits; it is manifest that when that

necessity ceaseth, as it doth at death, the past and the future will come to be all in all to man. In proof of which, behold the existence of one who is immured in a solitary dungeon, and shut in from the invasion of the outward world-his present existence is nothing, his past is all; he goeth over and over the days of his life, the accidents and actions of which come forth as out of twilight. He remembers, and recalls and recovers from the wastes of oblivion, until he wonders at the strength of his memory. Set open to him a hope of deliverance, and consuming the gloomy days and weary months between, he already lives with the future yet unborn. And the present is used only to consume his food, which he almost nauseates, and he notches upon his tally or marks upon the wall one solitary mark, its only memorial.

Now you are prepared to understand how it will be with man when he is disembodied. The body which containeth the senses lies mouldering in the grave; the hollow places where the ball of the eye did roll in its beauty, and the ear sat pleased in her vocal chambers, are passages for the worms to creep in and out, to their feast upon the finer organs of the brain, where the soul had her council-chamber; and the finely-woven nerves of taste and smell, which called upon every clime of the earth for entertainment, with all the beauty which nature pencilled with her cunning hand upon the outward form of man, are now overspread with the clammy and contagious fingers of corruption, and some feet of earth hide their unsightly dissolution from the view and knowledge of mankind. The link is broken and rusted away which joined the soul to the enjoyments or the troubles of the present world. No new material investments are given to her, whereby to move again in the midst of these material things; no eye, nor ear, nor wakeful sense, by which intrusion may come as heretofore into the chambers of her consciousness. Till the resurrection she shall be disunited, and then, being rejoined by her former companions, they shall be submitted to material scenes, again to suffer and enjoy. What is there now to occupy the soul? there is no world, for with the world she hath no means of conversing; she is separate, she is alone; she dwelleth evermore within herself. There are no sensations nor pursuits to take her off from self-knowledge and self-examination. In Peter's emphatical language, She is in prison; ("Jesus went and preached to the spirits in prison;") that is, she hath no power of travelling out amongst things, but is shut up to her own remembrances, thoughts, and anticipations.