nor flattering popular notions, nor excufing eftablished practices, but calculated, in the matter of its inftruction, truly to promote human happiness, and, in the form in which it was conveyed, to produce impreffion and effect; a morality, which, let it have proceeded from any perfon whatever, would have been fatisfactory evidence of his good sense and integrity, of the foundness of his understanding and the probity of his defigns; a morality, in every view of it, much more perfect than could have been expected from the natural circumftances and character of the perfon who delivered it; a morality, in a word, which is, and hath been, moft beneficial to mankind, Upon the greateft therefore of all poffible occafions, and for a purpose of ineftimable value, it pleased the Deity to vouchsafe a miraculous atteftation. Having done this for the inftitution, when this alone could fix its authority, or give to it a beginning, he committed its future progrefs to the natural means of human communication, and to the influence influence of thofe caufes by which human, conduct and human affairs are governed. The feed being fown, was left to vegetate; the leaven being inferted, was left to ferment; and both according to the laws of nature laws, nevertheless, difpofed and controlled by that Providence which conducts the affairs of the univerfe, though by an influence infcrutable, and generally undiftinguishable by us. And in this, Chrif tianity is analogous to most other provifions for happiness. The provifion is made; and being made, is left to act according to laws, which, forming part of a more general fyitem, regulate this particular fubject, in common with many others. Let the conftant recurrence to our obfervation of contrivance, defign, and wifdom in the works of nature, once fix upon our minds the belief of a God, and after that all is eafy. In the councils of a Being poffeffed of the power and difpofition which the Creator of the universe muft poffefs, it is not improbable that there fhould be a future future ftate; it is not improbable that we hould be acquainted with it. A future ftate rectifies every thing; because if moral agents be made, in the last event, happy or miferable, according to their conduct in the ftation and under the circumftances in which they are placed, it feems not very material by the operation of what caufes, according to what rules, or even, if you please to call it fo, by what chance or caprice, these stations are affigned, or these circumstances determined. This hypothesis, therefore, folves all that objection to the divine care and goodness, which the promilcuous distribution of good and evil (I do not mean in the doubtful advantages of riches and grandeur, but in the unqueftionably important diftinctions of health and fickness, ftrength and infirmity, bodily ease and pain, mental alacrity and depreffion) is apt on fo many occafions to create. This one truth changes the nature of things: gives order to confufion: makes the moral world of a piece with the natural. Nevertheless, a higher degree of affur ance than that to which it is poffible to advance this, or any argument drawn from the light of nature, was neceffary, especially to overcome the fhock which the imagina tion and the fenfes receive from the effects and the appearances of death; and the obftruction which from thence arises to the expectation of either a continued or a future existence, This difficulty, although of a nature, no doubt, to act very forcibly, will be found, I think, upon reflection, to refide more in our habits of apprehenfion, than in the fubject; and that the giving way to it, when we have any reasonable grounds for the contrary, is rather an indulging of the imagination, than any thing else. Abstractedly confidered, that is, confidered without relation to the difference which habit, and merely habit, produces in our faculties and modes of apprehenfion, I do not see any thing more in the refurrection of a dead man, than in the conception of a child; except it be this, that the one comes into his world with a system of prior consciousnesses about about him, which the other does not; and no person will fay, that he knows enough of either fubject to perceive, that this circumftance makes fuch a difference in the two cafes, that the one fhould be easy, and the other impoffible; the one natural, the other not fo. To the firft man the fucceffion of the fpecies would be as incomprehenfible, as the refurrection of the dead is to us. Thought is different from motion, perception from impact: the individuality of a mind is hardly confiftent with the divifibility of an extended fubftance; or its volition, that is, its power of originating motion, with the inertnefs which cleaves to every portion of matter which our obfervation or our experiments can reach. Thefe diftinctions lead us to an immaterial principle: at least, they do this; they fo negative the mechanical properties of matter, in the conftitution of a fentient, ftill more of a rational being, that no argment, drawn from these properties, can be of any great |