Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

LETTER XXVII.

CURSORY OUTLINE OF THE FORMATION, INCREASE, AND
DECLINE OF THE JEWISH NATION-AND VIEWS ON THE
DIVINE PURPOSES AND ATTAINED ENDS IN ITS SEVERAL
STAGES.

MY DEAR SYDNEY,

WE now approach, more particularly, the most deeply-interesting subject which has occurred in the history of Mankind, and with which their Sacred History has been vitally connected.

Intellectually interesting, from the grand and pathetic compositions which are attached to it, and which, on their peculiar subjects, no other ancient literature in any of the past nations of the world either equalled or resembled, it is also that, to which our personal well-being-probably the everlasting continuity of our existence-is inseparably attached; I mean the formation of the Jewish nation, and that gradually-developed, but most momentous train of operations and results which were appended to it, and have issued from it; and which have been destined to be still flowing, with increasing importance, on the human race, and which will never cease to be evolving either to all, or to selected portions of them, till Time itself shall expire, if Time ever can have a terminating period.

This, however, will never be. Time cannot end. It is associated with Eternity, and will differ from that, only in being that continued succession of the periods, into which the intelligent beings of every orb, for their convenience, distinguish it, of which Eternity is really composed.

LETTER
XXVII.

LETTER
XXVII.

Time in this world, is but that portion of the neverbeginning and never-closing Eternity, which has elapsed since human beings became conscious of life and duration; and which they have divided into succeeding periods and chronological sections, and annual, monthly, daily, and even minuter subdivisions, for their own use and arrangements.

Time is not therefore confined to this world. It is universal Eternity. It encircles and comprehends the whole infinitude of being, at the same time that we are here marking and parcelling it out, with our peculiar notations, for our own benefit.

We should not forget this, altho we are always doing so. We rarely think of this world and of ourselves, but as living members of our globe only. We scarcely ever advert to our larger position and grander relations. Our feet, station and body are on this earth, and we are at all times immediately concerned with the objects, that are at each moment affecting our present senses. But just as the street, or house or field, in which we at any time are standing or moving, is part of a great country, and that a portion of a greater earth, so our globe itself is, in like manner, a similar compartment of a most numerous and most mighty universe, of which we are thereby also an integrant member, and with which we are in actual copartnership. Our earth, like our house, is but our present local and temporary station. We shall soon move from the one, as we are every day moving from the other. Our real country is the universe; and we pass from this spot of it, but to go into some other region of its vast extension; into other latitudes and longitudes of its grand celestial hemisphere. Our geographical

XXVII.

parallels and meridians are but those of the heavenly LETTER ubiquity, applied locally to our surface. But this partial application is but an application to ourselves, of the great realities which are marking all space, and embracing all being. As soon as death ends. our concern with our earthly soil, our more important relations will then begin with other portions of the celestial chorography. We shall then be in other stations of its longitudes and latitudes. We belong to them, wherever they, may prove to be, as certainly, and we shall find as sensorially, as we do now to our present homes and families. We have all two places of abode, of which we cannot divest ourselves; one on this side of our grave,-- and one thro that, beyond it. This we cannot at present see, as we who live in England cannot see China or the Polar Sea; but these distant objects exist as assuredly as our London and its island. So is our next home as certainly subsisting somewhere, and awaiting us, altho it is now as invisible to us, as the regions and inhabitants of the moon still continue to be.

It is the absolute certitude that we are living members of a great universe-that we belong to other worlds, as well as to our own-that we are here but in an assigned station, and only for a limited time-present citizens here, to be future citizens elsewhere-that we shall be moved from our globe, in which we have been born, to some other compartment of created space; and that we are at all times subjects of the One, sole and all-ruling Sovereign, whose choice and appointment will decide our future locality, as He has here, for the time being, fixed our present one, which makes all revelations from Him so inexpressibly momentous, and dear to us; and which

XXVII.

LETTER gives such an indissoluble interest and consequence to His Jewish and Christian revelations, as the only ones which have any likelihood of being communications from Him. If these are not such, we have none. No intelligent man who compares them with any others, either written or traditional, that have ever pretended to be so, can, on a fair intellectual comparison, have any doubt on this point.

I have done so; and I feel it impossible, without renouncing knowlege, science and judgment, to deem any thing to be a record and representation of the Divine revelations to us, if the Jewish and Christian Scriptures be not so. Hence it is, that the causes, principles and meaning of the formation and course of the Jewish nation become so important to us, and will be so to all who love to believe, on rational grounds, what they are disposed or commanded to do, on the impulses of feeling, faith or duty.

This subject becomes also most profoundly connected with our welfare, because we are members of an eternity as to time, as well as of an universe as to space. While we live, we are joint tenants with all the myriads of intelligent existences of the present moments which we are enjoying, and of the eternity, of which these are but our fluent conscious portions.

We cannot withdraw ourselves from this relation. An Eternity is attached to our mental being, as certainly as matter is to our bodily frame. This also is not at our command. It is our granted and appointed nature. Immortality has been ordained to be as inseparable from us, as feeling and consciousness.

This is of inexpressible importance to us; for, with life and its immortality, sensibility will always

XXVII.

be in unseparating union: so will all the joys or LETTER sorrows which will accompany that quality of our most sensitive spirit. But the sensibility of our immaterial principle is so exquisite, that no theme of thought, and no object of pursuit, ought to be more steadily pursued by us, while we are in this beginning period of our experience, than the study, how we can now avert every painful condition from it in the next stage of its being, which lies beyond the grave; and how we may, by our present wisdom and care, secure to it there that succession of comfort and felicity, which it needs as well as ardently desires. For, as its more ethereal state must be even more sensitive than its present one, if it be not then happy in proportion to its augmented faculties of thought and feeling, how miserable must not every other condition be to it! These considerations give to the Jewish history a value and an importance, which can never be over-rated; for it was in this that the Divine revelations were begun, and their first portions successively made, which explain the real position and relation between Man and God. Hence also originated that second grand compartment of Divine light and truth, and beatifying promise, by which every one becomes enabled to make the immortality of his sentient principle, an eternity of all that will most ennoble a reasoning being, and most enrapture an intellectual sensibility.'

1

Dr. Young has strongly and finely expressed the importance of our deathless nature.

Immortal! Ages past, yet nothing gone!
Morn without eve! a race without a goal!
Futurity for ever future! Life

Beginning still, where computation ends!

[blocks in formation]
« AnteriorContinuar »