that disgrace and suffering which is the just consequence

of sin.

10. This opens the way to the next question: Is the punishment adequate? Is death neither more nor less than sin deserves? Death, in the penal sense, is not annihilation. It involves the suspension of all those exercises of volition in which the body is instrumental. The activities that are abused are withdrawn. This forfeiture is incurred by the simple fact of transgression, without regard to the degree of guilt. It is common, therefore, to all transgressors. But is this the whole of penal death? If a friend lend me an implement, by which I am enabled to accomplish an end which I could not attain without it, I am bound to return it, with thanks; and I feel myself, moreover, indebted to him in proportion to the value of the implement in effecting the desired end. If the Author of my being, to whom I am responsible for all my actions, give me a talent which is conducive to my well-being, and I employ it aright, I am indebted to him for the talent and for the good it has done me; but if I employ it in doing wrong, I am responsible to him, moreover, for the wrong I have done. By withdrawing the gift, he leaves me still indebted for the good I might have had, and accountable for the wrong I have committed; and his relation to me as Judge binds him to call me to account, and requite me for the wrong done. Hence it is plain that penal death involves not merely a negation of enjoyment, but a positive measure of suffering, in proportion to the offence. The fatal consequence of sin is twofold one part internal, and the other external. The internal is the anguish of an accusing conscience, which will reach its full force when all delusions will have passed away, and the guilty soul stands face to face with God and with the truth of things. This will be exactly proportional to the guilt; for it will simply be the due sense of that guilt. The external is the amount of the penal suffering apportioned by the unerring judgment of God. This is the real penalty, as the internal inquietude is simply the sense of demerit, the

consciousness of deserving the precise measure of pain. We are guided to this conclusion by the simple principle of equity in the divine administration.

11. The retribution that awaits the sinner hereafter presupposes the existence of the individual after death. We learn from experience, and particularly from chemistry, that no particle of matter ceases to exist, whatever transformations it may undergo after the law of its kind. And we have no reason to doubt that the same perpetuity of existence belongs to that most subtile and potential of all essences, the organific principle of life in plants and animals. The far-reaching minds of Socrates and Plato perceived that the present question respected not merely men, but the diversified tribes of the animal and vegetable kingdoms.1 The vital principle existing in the first progenitor appears to be one for the whole species, not originating an indefinite series of wholly new entities resembling the primary individual, which would be, in sooth, an act of creation, but developing itself in a whole progeny of units, shrinking again into itself as member after member dies off, and only becoming physically inoperative when the last individual perishes. What becomes of this specific principle of vitality when thrown out of the gear of nature by the death of the last specimen in which it operated - whether it bides its time to reappear in some new sphere of activity, or recedes into the general reservoir of animal or vegetable vitality, is a question beyond the range of human experience. We merely know from geological facts that innumerable species of plants and animals have ceased to exist, and that new species have taken their places under the altered conditions of the superincumbent surface. And we are unable to assign any purpose which the specific form of the vital principle can serve when the individuals of the species have all died out. We have no reason to suppose that it is kept apart for revival in a higher stage of development, when we discover a new world of analogous species occupying the old ground 1 Platonis Phaedo, 41. 38

VOL. XXIX. No. 114.

with its successively diversified material of subsistence. This affords the shadow of a presumption that the vital principle disengaged by the extinction of a species, reverts to the general principle of vitality, whether animal or vegetable, to reappear in new forms on a differently constituted soil. And, as we have no experience, and cannot conceive the possibility of the naked principle of vitality, when detached from an organic form, constructing an organ for itself out of the raw material of things, we descry the necessity of the immediate intervention of the Creator, by a law which to us belongs to the miraculous, to bring the organific principle once more into connection with an organic form which will be the head of a new species.

12. There are manifest indications, however, that it is different with the rational principle in man- that the personal soul does not so merge into the special or the general element of life, but continues to have an individual existence. A person is a rational entity, a being possessed of an intellectual and moral nature. We may, therefore, sum up these indications under two heads-the intellectual and the moral. Under the head of the intellectual, we shall mention three things. 1. By an intuitive glance man penetrates the secret of creation, and discerns the Creator, dimly and afar off, it may be, as the source as well as the end of his being and his happiness. This raises him immeasurably above the plants of the field and the beasts that perish. He knows God. There is a metaphysical relationship, an intellectual intercourse, between him and his Maker, which does not hold for the inferior animals — a peculiar bond, in which man is for the Lord and the Lord for man. 2. He can form a purpose a purpose which may reach beyond his animal

wants and his present stage of existence a purpose which would require many times the age of Methuselah to work out, and may therefore penetrate into the indefinite range of eternity. The natural philosopher forms plans of investigation which he is morally certain would demand ages to prosecute to their final issues. Now, though thousands of

human projects end in disappointment, yet it would be unphilosophical to suppose that the purposing faculty was given in vain. It plainly forebodes a perpetuity of existence for the individual soul. 3. The human soul is capable of progressive development, and has never arrived at a point of improvement beyond which it cannot go. It is not so with the inferior animals. It has been often remarked that the young bird builds its nest at the first attempt as perfectly as the parent, and that it never improves upon its first achievement. No real houyhnhnm has ever advanced beyond the instinct of the species. A few animals, domesticated and trained by man, have acquired some habits that were not common to the species; but they have never outstept a certain limit; they have never reached more than an instinctive reflection of human reason. On the contrary, when man arrives at his full stature of body, his mind continues to grow, not only in the appliances of art, but also in the generalizations of science. This progressive faculty argues a perpetuity of individual existence. When these three points of the intellectual character of the soul are weighed together, they vastly enhance the argumentative force of each, and form an undeniable indication of its individual perpetuity.

13. The moral nature of the soul presents a new and independent argument for the continuance of its individual existence. It is manifest that when the great change of death takes place, the moral account of the man has yet to be settled. This life has been but his probation. He has been permitted to run his course of free-will without any arrest, though not without due warning of the consequence of disobedience. The long-suffering Father has made the sun to shine and sent the rain upon him in the present life, without reference to his moral conduct. Yet in the kingdom of heaven the principles of justice are paramount in their authority and immutable in their force. The righteous Governor of the universe cannot fail to vindicate the law and require an account at last, and man cannot escape from

his accountability. Since these things must be so, the soul must survive the shock of dissolution, and at the close of its earthly career await its doom. To allow it to pass into annihilation would be contrary to the course both of nature and of justice. And to leave it to merge with its personal obligations into the specific principle of human life, and cease to be an individual, would defeat the ends of justice and confound the moral order of the universe. But if the soul survive this critical point of its history, there is no reason why it should at any after period of duration lose its existence or its individuality.

14. It is to be remembered that we are not now proving the perpetuity of the human principle of life. That has been already established on the common ground that that which has a hold of existence does not cease to exist. We have now been engaged in summing up the chief indications in the personal nature of a single scion of the human race that he must be destined to a perpetual individuality. We have noticed four of these indications, which appear decisive of this question-three of the intellectual, and one moral. The individual man is capable of making acquaintance with his Maker, of forming a purpose transcending the period of this earthly life, of making progress in knowledge and wisdom without any definable limit, and, lastly, of pursuing a course of moral conduct, the issues of which inevitably reach beyond the mortal stage of his existence. Thus the general law of the perpetuity of that which exists and the special fact of the personality of the soul combine to form an argument that cannot be set aside, for what is commonly called the immortality of the soul.

15. We have now endeavored to establish, by the aid of reason alone, the premises of this great syllogism: I am guilty; the holy God must doom the guilty to death. The conclusion, I am doomed to die, is manifestly inevitable, if the premises be conceded. We do not affirm that every man actually reaches these articulate propositions; we only hold that if he rightly use his reason in this momentous investiga