a rich reward to any one who should discover a new pleasure; as if to teach us, that when all the sweets of the world have been tasted, and all the contents of the world have been subdued and possessed, man's soul, unsatisfied with its material possessions, thirsts and longs for something nobler, brighter, greater and better, than the world itself.

Again; if there be no hereafter, how are we to account for those thoughts, vaster than the earth, that spring up in every one's mind, and of which every one is more or less conscious?

Is it not true, that thoughts, more glorious than anything that the world can furnish, do occasionally leap from our hearts, like angels too bright and too beautiful for earth? Is it not true, that we just catch from astronomy, what is sufficient to excite our curiosity, to know more of its brilliant and ever burning orbs, and the more we know, the more still we strive and thirst to know? Is it not true, that we form at times conceptions of human excellence, ideas of loveliness and moral worth, that never have been and never can be realized on earth? What are all these? They are presentiments of heaven-harbingers of immortality-voices, crying even "in the wilderness" of the materialist's heart, that man is not to perish with the brute. They proclaim, in tones too distinct to be misunderstood, that there will

come a time, when all those stars which he has imperfectly seen shall be stretched out before him, like isles upon the ocean of infinitude-when all those ideas of excellence-those thirstings after perfection-those aspirations after joy and peace, shall be satisfied from the river of God, which flows from the throne of God, and of the Lamb for ever and ever.

Progression is the order of all that we see in the world; and this furnishes a presumption of our immortality.

A striving after something that is above it, is the order and the characteristic of every created thing. Take the lowest form of this; take the metal in its ore. Look at those crystals, that appear upon the copper or the silver ore; they are just the striving of that substance, to reach the next grade of excellence, the vegetable product. If we turn to the flower, the tree, and the fruit, as for instance the sensitive plant, we find vegetable presenting the foreshadow and striving after animal life. animal life, we find some

And if we go to creatures treading and striving to

upon the very heels of man, reach his dignity and glory. And when we come to man, is all this to be arrested? Is he to be an exception and an anomaly in the noblest analogies of the universe? Is he to be a petrifaction? We know that it is not so. We know and feel, that from being mortal here, he shall

He

be immortal hereafter his body only dissolved in the dust, or laid in the silent grave. shall see another day, a day (to leave the paths of human reasoning and have recourse to the inspiration of God), "when they that are in the graves shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and shall come forth, they that have done good unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation."

I have given you all the reasons I could collect. They are not wholly original; they are gathered in the course of reading. They are facts and reasons which I submit to you; and I conceive that, when we lay them together, and weigh and consider them, they amount to a moral presumption the most overwhelming, that man's soul shall live hereafter-that when God "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life," He gave him an immortal soul.

If we appeal to Revelation, the matter is soon ended. There the intimations are plain. But all that I have shown you is, how far nature will go. And I trust I shall be able to show, that we can prove from nature also, that there is a God; and by and by, that the Bible is a book sent from that God-the intimations of which are the intimations of truth.

CHAPTER II.

DOES CREATION PROVE THE EXISTENCE OF GOD?

any

DOES creation evidence a God? It does; but on this subject I must make a preliminary distinction. It is this, an atheist there may be, but an anti-theist there cannot possibly be. That is to say, a man may declare that he does not find evidence that satisfies him of the existence of a God, but no man may dare to say absolutely, there is not a God. The former, is merely the expression of that individual's necessarily most limited, imperfect, and restricted experience but the latter proposition would imply, that the individual had soared among the stars, and ransacked the contents of the worlds that are there-that he had descended to the caves of the ocean, and explored the unknown treasures and stores that are there-that he had travelled through the mines and strata of the earth, and explored the hidden recesses, and depths, and mysteries there--that, in short, he had been in time past possessed of omnipresence and of omniscience, and in the exercise of two attributes of Deity had not discovered a God. The fact is, such an individual must be himself

God, in order to be in a position to announce the proposition-There is not a God.

This distinction is most important. All which the atheist can say is, "I do not find proofs of a God;" and this depends upon the sagacity of his mind-upon the extent of his survey-upon the honesty of his researches, and the continuity of his application, and is at the best a very venturous and precarious announcement. But no man can declare, "There is not a God;" because such a declaration would imply that the individual making it is omniscient, for if there be one star that studs the firmament unexplored by him, that star may be the lesson-book that proclaims the existence of a God; and if there be one corner in the boundlessness of infinitude unexamined, it may disclose a God; and therefore, until the individual has swept the illimitable recesses of space, he cannot sit down and declare there is not a God.

I may also observe, that the atheist is not to be blamed because he has not found out the existence of God; but he is to be blamed if, having powers fitted to investigate-if, having facts submitted for collocation-if, having evidence pressed upon his judgment and his conscience he refuses to examine, and concludes in wilful and obstinate ignorance that he cannot find a God. And the charge that will be adduced against such a man at the judgment bar,