1. OF SECTION II. F the condition or character of the Soul after death, in the opinion of the Heathen, I shall mention one or two particulars only, sufficient to shew, that it was always supposed to retain, at least, a consciousness of its own identity. There were, indeed, a few philosophers who affirmed, that as the human soul had originally emanated from the Deity, so was it finally absorbed in the Deity again: And there were others who maintained, that it perished with the body. But the popular belief, unquestionably, was, that the deceased were conducted to mansions of happiness or misery, retaining all their propensities and faculties and affections. And that the Spirits in Hades, once acquainted upon earth, were able to recognize each other, and were even interested in the transactions of their earthly friends, seems to have gained equal credit with polite and barbarous nations. In the philosophical mind of Plato, the virtuous and the vicious in Hades, had all their moral consciousness and character-had the purity of innocence still spotless -the stain of guilt indelible: And the assassin is exhibited in agony, soliciting pardon from the victim of his passions, with ceaseless importunities. It were easy to accumulate instances, from the Pagan poetry, of human attributes and affections, as translated from earth to Hades. Of his victorious champions* Pindar sings-" that "their ancestors in Hades would rejoice to hear of the "laurels they had won." It was the prayer of Penelope,† "to be released "from the bonds of life, that she might go to Hades, "and there again meet her Ulysses." And, what passed in the Elysian interview between Æneas and his father Anchises, can leave no doubt of the supposed continuity of the Soul's existence and its identity of charácter. Of a general resurrection and final judgment, if there had been any traditional ideas, as transmitted from the primitive ages, every trace of such ideas among the Greeks and the Romans was obliterated. The great obstacle to conversion with St. Paul's audience at Athens,' * See Pind. Olymp. 8. Ol. 14. Nem. 4. was the doctrine of the resurrection. Not that the Athenian sophists or the Athenian populace disbelieved the existence of the Soul. But they mocked at the notion of a body raised again. And,* "how are the "Dead raised up? with what body do they come ?"— said the people of Corinth. "How can disembodied "Spirits now in Hades, be again invested with bodies?" This, indeed, is of little consequence to our argument. Nor doth it avail us to notice the Pagan opinions of the state of the Soul after death, any further than as they may illustrate the position, that all mankind, whether Jews or Gentiles, concurred in the belief of the Soul's sensibility and consciousness as an incorporeal substance-a belief to be referred (like that of the soul's locality in Hades) to their first progenitors, and, therefore, probably derived from the fountain of Truth. 2. In opening again the sacred volume, our curiosity will not be gratified in the enquiry, where or "what “shall we be?”-if we expect plain intimations or exact descriptions. Yet Scripture hath revealed much in coincidence with the general sense and feeling of mankind-in terms, I think, sufficiently express and clear, to discredit some prevailing theories, which I shall briefly state, before I *1 Cor. xv. 35. H come to what I consider the genuine doctrine-sufficiently express and clear, to discountenance, for instance, the notion of the Soul's being for awhile extinguished, or of its being suffered to drop into a temporary annihilation-sufficiently express and clear, to confute every argument in favour even of its sleep or insensibility. They who think, that the Soul can have no consciousness after death, or (in other words) acquiesce in the melancholy idea of its extinction, seem to have been too conversant with the dogmas of materialism. In a living state (they tell us) our perceptions depend on the organs of sense.* The organs of sense, of course, perish with the body. With the body, therefore, the perceptions must perish. But, supposing that an immaterial percipient principle cannot exist, we ask, "what becomes of "the intelligent principle? May we not contemplate in the Soul the energies of pure intelligence?" The persons, however, to whom I allude, would insinuate, that the Soul was created for the body and the body for the Soul-that, as before our birth, the Soul had no conscious subsistence, so, after death, it would retain none-and that its consciousness and personality can The modern Theory of the Materialists has been entirely overturned by reasonings from facts-from experience. See "Memoirs of the Lit. and Phil. Society of Manchester"-Vol. jv. for a valuable Paper of Dr. Ferriar, proving by evidence apparently complete and indisputable, that every part of the Brain has been injured without affecting the act of thought. only be restored at the moment of its reunion with the body. But, surely, the Soul's activity,-its energies continued whilst the body is motionless in sleep-should point out the improbability of its annihilation whilst the body is motionless in death. Its independence on the corporeal frame should seem to result from its very nature and essence. The main argument with others who would throw the Soul into sleep, is deduced from premises which we in common acknowlege. In the present life, it has been insisted on, we are placed in a state of probation, to be judged hereafter for the things done in the body. On the dissolution of the union between the Soul and the body, a period is put to this moral responsibility. All moral action, therefore,―as superfluous or hardly practicable where the tests of virtue are no more-hath necessarily ceased. And moral energies are scarcely conceivable without moral action : nor intellectual energies, without the moral. From this suspence, therefore, of its faculties and affections, the inference is, that the Soul must sink into a state of insensibility. This insensibility, it seems, is synonymous with sleep. But they are not always used as convertible terms, since to relieve the dreariness of sleep-to distinguish it from that" long unbroken sleep," over which the plaintive poet poured his tears of elegy, |