probable) incorporeal, it cannot be subject to that decomposition of parts which occasions the dissolution of the body. Our whole corporeal frame undergoes, we know, an entire change, probably more than once, during the course of our lives; yet the soul continues all the while invariably the same. Why then may it not also survive, unaltered, that total change of the body, which is occasioned all at once by death, as well as the gradual one which is produced by other causes? The presumption most certainly is, that it will, unless any proof of the contrary can be given, which I conceive it will not be very easy to do. * Our Almighty Creator may undoubtedly, if he thinks fit, by an extraordinary act of his power, put a period even to our immaterial part, when its frail companion dies. But there is no imaginable reason for supposing that he will. The body itself is not totally destroyed by death. It is only reduced to a different state of existence. It loses life and motion, and its organical mechanism is broken in pieces; but its component elementary materials still remain ;

* See Butler's Analogy, c. 1.

and there is no instance, as far as we know, of any one particle of matter being annihilated throughout the universe. Why, then, should we imagine that the soul will, after its separation from the body, be deprived of all existence, when nothing else in nature is? To assert, as Lucretius and others have done*, that it cannot exist, or retain perception, thought, and reason, without the assistance of the body, and the organs of sense, is a conclusion too unphilosophical for the present age to admit. In this visible world, indeed, and the state of existence here assigned to the soul, the concurrence and assistance of a certain system of organized matter are rendered necessary for carrying on, and producing to view its various operations. But to infer from hence, that such a system will also be indispensably necessary in another state, in that invisible world which immediately succeeds this, and where there may be various modes of existence totally unknown to us at present, is to

* Lucretius, l. iii. v. 559. and 631. Neque aliud est quidquam, cur incredibilis his videatur animorum æternitas, nisi quod nequeunt, qualis animus sit vacans corpore intelligere. Tusc. Quæst. l. i. c. 22.

affirm, what no human being (unless, like St. Paul, he has been caught up into the third heaven) can possibly prove. On the contrary, it has been shown, that the actual existence of such a thing as an immaterial, unembodied, intellectual essence, is so far from involving any contradiction, that it is by many thought to be demonstrable. *

The very nature, then, of the human soul itself, as far as we are capable of comprehending it, gives us the strongest ground to believe that it is immortal. But it ought at the same time to be observed, and it is an observation of great importance in this question, that although the supposition of an immaterial soul surviving the dissolution of the body is, as we have seen, a doctrine in the highest degree probable, and undoubtedly adds no small credibility and force to the other evidences of a future state; yet the great proofs, the great natural and moral proofs, I mean, (for to these only our present inquiries extend) of this most comfortable truth, rest on quite a different foundation; on that firm and immoveable

*See above, p. 111.

foundation, the belief of a moral governor of the universe, infinite in wisdom, justice, goodness, and power. A Being such as this, let the nature of the human soul be what it will, can raise it if he pleases, from any supposable situation after death, to another state of existence, and restore to it that perception of its identity, that consciousness of its former sentiments and conduct, which will render it a proper subject of punishment or reward. Should it therefore appear (as in the two following discourses I trust it will) that from considering the nature and attributes of God, the faculties of man, and the constitution of the world in which he is placed, there are the best grounds for believing that he is an accountable being, we may rest assured, that of whatever materials his sentient part is composed, Omnipotence will not want the means of placing him hereafter in an accountable state.