VII. LETTER proportionably altered with it, and must have become very different, from what he has hitherto been and still is. Hence it is, that in our next state of existence, being destined to revive in a very dissimilar economy of external phenomena, our souls may become, and we are assured that they will be, very different indeed, in almost all respects, from what they are in this their terrestrial residence." These reflections lead us to perceive that man is altogether, both in mind and body, and habits and character, a special device and fabrication of his Creator. It has not only been determined that such an order of beings shall exist in the universe, but that he should be made to be specifically what he is, in his general nature and qualities; and therefore a very particular frame of body, and a very peculiar natural from "Nothing more prevented the ancients from forming just opinions on either the Divine or natural philosophy of things than that general impression of the Earth being a living animal, and a species of Deity. This idea was not confined to one age or school, but continued to be adhered to by most, until the Christian doctrines effected that radical change in the human mind, under which it has been growing up the fourth century, tho very slowly at first, from the quantity of weeds it had to remove, to the present times. One of the latest forms of this opinion we see in one of the philosophers of the Eclectic school, which professed to select and combine the knowlege and excellencies of all the others. It is PROCLUS who gives this epitome of what his Translator, in 1793, calls his beautiful account of the Earth, in his inestimable dialogues.' The true Earth is not this corporeal and gross bulk, but an animal endued with a Divine soul and a Divine body. For it contains an immaterial and separate intellect; a divine soul energizing about this intellect; an ethereal body proximately depending upon this soul; and, lastly, this visible bulk which is on all sides animated, and filled with life from its inspiring soul; and thro which it generates and nourishes lives of all various kinds. For one species of life is rooted in the Earth, and another moves about its surface. So that Earth is a Divine Animal, full of intellectual and animastic essences, and of immaterial powers.' Taylor's Introd. to Plato's Timæus, p. 416. VII. world, have been contrived and created to make him LETTER such, and both are stedfastly continued to be what they are in order that he may as yet, and in this world, be always what human beings universally are. It is clear that our external world is a very specific world, because it is the opinion of our ablest philosophers that neither of the planets appear to resemble it. The phenomena that we can descry in or about any of these, do not entitle us to believe that such persons, as the human beings of this earth, are or could be in existence upon them. We are therefore a special imagination and choice of our Divine Author's mind, and so is our beautiful earth. Interesting and happy beings are no doubt occupying the other spheres that shine about us, but they are not such as we are, nor do we resemble them.10 10 It is interesting to observe how minds of the most different force, tastes and character, yet concur in feeling the benefit and in enforcing the cultivation of sincere religion. Two books of very opposite nature now lie before me-a volume of Mr. Burke's works and the German Prince Puckler Muskau's Tutti Frutti. Yet on this point they coincide. Mr. Burke. We know, and what is better, we feel, that RELIGION is the BASIS of civil society; and the source of all good and of all comfort. 'We know, and it is our pride to know, that Man is by his constitution a religious animal—that Atheism is against not only our reason, but our instincts, and that it cannot continue long. 'Taking ground on that religious system, of which we are now in possession, we continue to act on the early received and uniformly continued sense of mankind. This sense has not only built up States, but hath solemnly and for ever consecrated the commonwealth, and all that officiate in it. "This consecration is made, that all who administer in the government of men should have high and worthy notions of their function and distinction; that their hope should be full of immortality; that they should not look to the paltry pelf of the moment, nor to the temporary and transient praise of the vulgar, but to a solid and permanent existence in the permanent part of their nature, and to a permanent K 3 LETTER permanent fame and glory, in the example they leave as a rich inheritance to the world. VII. 'Such sublime principles ought to be infused into persons of exalted situations, and religious establishments ought to be provided, that they may continually revive and enforce them. Every sort of moral, civil, and politic institution, aiding the rational and national ties that connect the human understanding and affections with the Divine, are not more than necessary, in order to build up that wonderful structure, MAN, whose prerogative it is to be, in a great degree, a creature of his own making, 'And who, when made, as he ought to be, is destined to hold no trivial place in the Creation.' Prince Puckler Muskau.-On visiting his family vault, he remarks, 'I fell on my knees and prayed—all the gloomy feelings which had agitated me, vanished before the consciousness of God's protecting providence, and a silent soothing sorrow alone remained. Mysterious power of prayer: it gives us strength to resist every affliction and to endure it, nay, to find in the more intimate communion with God to which it leads, something which of itself lifts us triumphantly above every earthly suffering. 'Yes, we stand in need not only of earthly reality, but also of a realm of imagination—not alone of increasing progression, but also of wise restriction-not only of religion, but also of its sacred rites. 'It is manifestly revealed to each of us in his heart that there is something higher and more interesting than what the world can afford.' LETTER VIII. REVIEW OF THE RESULTS OF THE DIVINE PLAN WHICH HAVE VIII. THE plan of the Deity as to Man, being thus far LETTER obvious, that his soul, or intellectual principle, should be on this earth within a specially-devised body-specially devised with a view to the effects that were, during its earthly life, to be produced by means of it to the soul; and being ordained to possess this incorporated existence here, in a world full of numerous things, moving and stationary, each of which should become objects of our conscious attention as the senses become affected by them; our next inquiry will be, what were the intended results of such a special apparatus? Have the meditated purposes been accomplished? or have the provisions failed to produce the ends for which they were designed? The just answer of our reason seems unquestionably to be, that it is not possible to suppose, that any part of creation has failed to produce the effect which it was intended and ordained to occasion: because, both the end and the means were always in the choice, and wholly at the command, of their Maker; and nothing has been made or is, but what He determined and caused to appear. He knew before He formed any thing what it would be and do; and also what He himself meant, VIII. LETTER and whether His object was attainable or not, and also by what causations it would be effected. He would not devise and order what He knew He could not accomplish, for that would be a self-contradiction and an absurdity: nor would He devise or apply means which would not effectually operate as such. He was under no compulsion to fix on any one end, or to design any one object, more than another; nor to use any thing as means which would not prove to be so. Any form of creation would be equally creation by Him; and all kinds of it that He made, must always have been His choice and will. It What was impossible to be done, could not be done. What would be ineffectual means to perform what was possible, would be discerned by Him to be so, as soon as the thought of it could occur. is the deduction of our common sense, that with His visible intelligence, He would never design and attempt what would not be realized, and that Omnipotence never would employ inefficient means or causes, to effectuate His desired and intended ends and purposes. Thus we may be sure that His creations have in every respect fulfilled His purposes and expectations; instantaneously, those ends which were meant to be immediate; progressively, those which were designed to be progressive; in their due period of succession those which could only successively occur, and the remote and ultimate, at their foreseen and appointed distance. His object and plans are manifestly of all these different kinds, and it is the confusion of our minds which confounds them together, and will not discriminate their several classes; not His unclouded and sovereign intelligence in which |