V. between us keeps us from them. Could we navigate LETTER the atmosphere and super-ascending ether to them, as we cross the ocean to Australia or Polynesia, how numerous would be our voyages to these celestial islands! If our future bodies should be less affected by that gravitating force which now binds us to our surface, or should possess energies of motion which should be capable of overcoming it, the transit would be certain, if what we wished were then permitted to us. That we may have connection and knowlege of their contents or inhabitants hereafter, has been the speculation and the hope of some of the worthiest minds, which have shone in human life :3 and altho it will be always most natural to us all to think chiefly of the earth we are living on, and to cultivate attachments to it, as the scene and storehouse of our present pains and pleasures, yet it is not possible to many, and is as unwise in all as it is unnecessary, to confine our thoughts and wishes, exclusively, to its gratifications and pursuits. 2 We cannot, however, but smile at some of the strange fancies which have been indulged on this subject. In the voyage of Domingo Gonsales, the author, a learned Bishop, seems rather seriously to intimate, that aërial voyages are possible, because locusts come to us from the moon, and because swallows, cuckoos, nightingales, and other birds that migrate from us, really fly up thither when they leave us, and particularly that a wild swan in the East Indies does so. If, then, a flock of these birds could be harnessed, they might carry up with them the weight of a man!!' If we may invent our facts, we may support any theory. Yet our scientific Bishop Wilkins mentions this flight of his brother prelate, as if he did not quite disapprove of it. Disc. New World, p. 160. Our really valuable Bishop Wilkins, whom I wish to mention with every respect for his love and cultivation of natural science, has made it his fourteenth proposition, and elaborately argued in its behalf, "That it is possible for some of our posterity to find out a conveyance to this other world; and, if there be inhabitants there, to have commerce with them.' Disc. New World,'p. 135-160. LETTER We feel capable of something nobler; we seem born for what is superior. Dreams, and whispers, and wishes, and imaginations of greater and better objects and occupations, frequently come uncalled into our consciousness: and it is then delightful to have any ground to recollect, that in our Almighty Father's house there are many mansions, and that we have been invited to reside in some of those which, tho not cognizable now, are preparing for our hereafter. It is even pleasurable to think that we are in one of them only here, and that therefore there are many more to know. It then becomes a satisfaction to us to perceive, that we are here but as tenants, for a term of no long duration. We have, indeed, only a tenancy at will, and the option is not with ourselves to stay or quit when we think proper. But it is a consolation to remember, that the Lord of one is the Lord of all, and that every other home to us will be as much His world, as the present one which we are enjoying. There is enough around us here, to make us happy in the thought of being any where in His creation; and the sacred history of all that He has made and done for mankind, in the globe which He has here given us, will, as we become more acquainted with it, dispose us to rejoice that He takes upon himself to remove us from it, to some other place of His own appointment, and at such period of our individual existence, as He thinks most proper. Who that is wise would not rather leave the choice of both points to Him, than exercise it for ourselves in such an ignorance of all beyond what we see, as every one of us must remain in, until our departure from it? Here the advice of the greatest Roman satyrist comes appositely to us, which he expressed to his fellow citizens, as their most prudent conduct LETTER towards their Divinities: Leave them to manage for thee, and to grant What their unerring wisdom sees thee want.* From our God we shall always have what is best for us, tho it may not be what at the time would be most gratifying to us. But we may entrust and desire His wisdom to be the judge and disposer in this respect for us; and upon the same principle of that exhilarating truth, which even Juvenal could discern, that the human race is even dearer to its Maker, than we are to ourselves." We cannot gaze upon the stars without the thought that the scite of our future abode may be among them, however impossible it is here to ascertain its locality. The conviction of this uncertainty never destroys the hope. We admit that the home of the living dead, is inscrutable to all who have not passed that bourn, from which no traveller has returned. We know that we shall change into invisibility when we die, from the natural invisibility of our living principle here. But the same mind which carries us now to the orbit of Uranus, and reasons upon the immeasurable space, and innumerable orbs that appear beyond it, pursues likewise the unseen spirit after it has withdrawn from the human eye, and believes that it is stationed and survives elsewhere." Nil ergo optabunt homines? Si consilium vis; * Nam pro jucundis, aptissima quoque dabunt Dii. Carior est illis homo, quam sibi. Juv. Sat. x. ver. 346-50. The great Cyrus is made by Xenophon thus to express this sentiment to his sons on his death-bed: My children! respect each other, if you desire to please me. You should not think that I shall be as nothing when I have quitted my human life. You cannot indeed see my soul V. V. LETTER It will be always laudable, as well as felicitating, to indulge this feeling, tho we need not, like some of the ancients, presume to say where. We leave the discovery of our future home to the time assigned for our becoming acquainted with it. The dead only know the destination and residence of the dead; they form a class of beings quite different from what they were in their earthly vitality, and the great secret remains with them as impenetrable as ever. In the meantime it is quite sufficient for every present purpose of our existence, to know that we, like our forefathers, shall in due time be dismissed from what we are now sensorially connected with; and that, as our whole population here is but a (sde eμnv Tvxnv εwparɛ); but from what it does now, you can perceive that it exists. O my sons! I never can be persuaded that my soul is living while in its mortal body, and yet perishes when it is separated from that. I see that it gives life to our frames while it is within them, and I cannot believe that it ceases to be intelligent, because the body becomes insensate. Being then more pure and entire by leaving it, the probability is, that it will be wiser than before. When the man is dissolved, every part returns to what is congenial with it, except his soul (λŋv ans vxnc); this alone remains, always moveable, as well while it is present here, as when it departs hence.' Xenoph. Cyrop. 1. viii. c. 47. Cicero has quoted and translated this passage at the close of his 'De Senectute,' as if it had peculiarly gratified him. 8 Socrates, in Plato's expansion of his last discourse before his death, places the pure earth we are to inhabit hereafter among the stars in the ether. Phed. p. 170. He composes it of materials 'more pure and splendid than those in ours; some are purple, of wonderful beauty, others of a golden color, others whiter than snow.' p. 172. The inhabitants live without disease, and far longer than we do. They excel us in sight, hearing and understanding. They have groves and temples of the gods, who reside familiarly with them.' p. 173. The fancy more popular among the philosophers and others, seems to have been, that the moon was to be the residence of the disembodied soul; at first it is to wander for a time in a middle region, between the earth and the moon; wicked ones to suffer till they were purified, and then to go into her orb;' for the moon is the element of these souls; because souls resolve into her, as the bodies of the dead into the earth.' Plutarch, de Facie Lunæ 1184. V. section of a most multitudinous quantity of intel- LETTER ligent existence, scattered thro myriads of other worlds, yet we all compose one family of one common parent. We have this affinity indelibly with each other, tho we are not yet associated by personal acquaintance; and from this circumstance we may reasonably infer, that amid all our dissimilarities, there must be many analogies between us and them, which mark our grand paternal ancestry and our mutual kinship. Yet still, as neither our natural nor our civil histories can be alike, neither can our respective sacred histories be more identified. They have each their own, and ours must be limited to ourselves. Theirs will be adapted to their distinct modifications of being, as ours has been to those which characterize our present nature, our social relations, and our connexion with the external world amid which we move and act. But altho our divine philosophy must relate principally to ourselves, it will be right to study it with the recollection, that our globe is but one of the uncounted hosts, which surround the throne of our marvellous Creator; and that He is at all times the Sovereign Lord, the Preserver and the Benefactor equally of all. That He sustains them in being, as well as ourselves, we see by their continued existence; for, altho some changes have been noticed by astronomical observers ;" and the scientific assistances to • Thus Hipparchus, about 135 years before the Christian era, saw a new star in the heavens (Pliny, l. ii. c. 24), which is the first of this description which has been recorded. In November 1572, a second splendid appearance of this sort took place in Cassiopeia, which lasted till March 1574, when it vanished from the sight. Tycho Brahe thought it to be 800 times bigger than the earth. Tych. de Nova Stelle. A smaller |