CHAPTER XVII.

THEN death, a natural death?—Aye, a natural death: when Nature hath run her appointed course, a natural death;

An insensible decline of life; an easy extinction of desires; a progressive decay of the form; a desire of death; a releasement of the spirit, glad of eternal life: the good man's death.

F

INVESTIGATION INTO PRINCIPLES.

CONSIDERATIONS ON THE SOUL,

OR SPIRIT OR PRINCIPLE OF LIFE IN MAN.

CHAPTER I.

"All the religions of the world have ever had for basis of their credence the "survivance of the soul. The apparition of spirits, or shades of the dead, is an "immediate and plausible consequence." CESAROTTI. BLAIR.

THE soul, or spirit, or principle of life, descending to us, necessarily thorough our parents; that principle must refer to a beginning.

And that beginning is found in our original parent. To say how remote, or how near, is saying nothing to the question. If our imagination is perplexed in retracing it to its fount, let the beginning be with Adam, or suppose it to have been yesterday; the time past is the same.

Then this original parent, endued yesterday with life, is to be considered before he was yet endued; that is to say, in his unanimated state.

And to know that state, deprive him of life! You then bring him back to his original state: To what? To earth! to an handful of earth.

Then our original parent was an handful of earth, endued with life; senseless before it received the principle of life; and brought back to the same senseless state, when deprived of it.

Life, therefore, is distinct from our earth; distinct from us, who are a portion of that earth; as existing before its union with the human form, and as being separable from it.

Life, therefore, is independent of our form; although our form depend upon life.

As long as life continueth to inhabit our frame, all objects are sensible to its touch; sensibility, therefore, should seem to be the prerogative of life.

As soon as life retireth from the hnman form, all sensibility retireth with it; the form remaineth, but without sense. Sensility, therefore, is not essential in matter, or form; but exclusively in life.

Then what is this principle of life?

CHAPTER II.

THEN, what is this principle of life?

That which existed before its union with the human form ; That which enlivened the human form during its natural term of life;

That which is still living with the human form, although the original parent form be dead;

That which, if it so please God, may continue to enliven the human form for ever.

Shall we continue still to ask, what is it? That which may last for ever; that which was before Adam; which came to him; which came to us from Adam; and may remain, if it so plesse God, with the sons of Adam for ever: That which may last for ever, must it not, in the very essence of terms, be everlasting?

CHAPTER III.

THAT a principle should be everlasting; may, must be everlast

ing; to possess a capacity of lasting for ever; is self evident in

terms.

That the chronicles of human life are retraceable for ages: that the age of human life is established at thousands of years, although the term of individual life is short; and that generations have succeeded to generations in death, as in life; and that life is still the same surviving principle, invigorate, in all; is in evidence to all!

Can life, therefore, cease? The life diffusing spirit; the life of every thing that liveth; the life of man; a particle of the universal principle of life; can that cease? can life itself cease? Can a world be conceived, without life? Life, which is from the beginning?

CHAPTER IV.

LIFE, which is from the beginning, can that cease? A particle of the universal principle of life, can that cease? Can eternity cease? Can any thing cease?

Then man, the soul of man, the sensible part of man, can never die !

That which giveth intelligence to man; sentiment; conscience of his being; that can never die.

That which quickeneth his form can never die. The form would never die, if the action of life were not impeded to act by the perishable nature of form; it is the order of Nature.

In our sons, the form is continued; it is our own life transmitted with that form.

There life continueth her action upon form, because the order of nature hath placed the susceptibility of action in the renovation of form.

The body dieth necessarily when its organs, impaired by the ordinary attritions of life; or by accidents even; refuse their functions to the active efforts and impulsions of life: it is the law of nature! So ordered and intended in the original plan of human life.

For, be it permitted to enquire, were the form, every individual form, susceptible of eternal life, as it is susceptible of a given term; could the body live for ever? Oh, that man should ever die, is of many a wretched man the cry!

Yet, in admitting for a moment the possibility of the thing, to satisfy this longing after life; what do we find in the enquiry but presumption; what in the result but dissappointment?