only to hover over thee for a moment and then withdraw in terror. All contributions to this theme are marked by an essential vagueness, and every avenue of approach seems darkened by im penetrable shadow. What questions rise like living waters to the fountain’s brim when our eyes are turned from bouyant life and cruel death to the life beyond ! Shall the soul exist in a state of separation from the body ? The poet Goethe was once standing in a posi tion from which he had a majestic view of the setting sun. Remaining in perfect silence for many minutes, at last he said with mystic but tremulous emphasis, ‘‘ Untergchcnd sogar ist's tin nier dieselbige Sonne." “Setting, nevertheless the sun is always the same sun. I. am fully con vinced that our spirit is in a being of a nature quite indestructible, and that its activity contin ues from eternity to all eternity.” Here was a man familiar with all philosophies and all research and this was his conclusion. Setting, neverthe less, the soul is always the same soul. It is in disputable that we too, a little while ago were not in the world, and a little while hence, shall be here no longer. The sun hastens to the West as fast at noon as in the last moment before sun set. But if the spirit survives the shock of death shall it move along its path to deeper death and gloom, or to radiant life and. light? Shall trans cendant souls step from the gateway of the air to the lucid palaces of the stars ? The considerations which lead to the deep con viction that the soul is immortal cannot be doubted. In the light of them, death parts with its false fears, and the soul enters into the new life in all the radiance of a fresh and beauti ful youth, never again to be supported by the coarse substance of earth, but destined hence forth to nourish its ethercalized existence on the nectar of eternal bliss. Nature and revelation unite in establishing this conviction. The analogies of nature present to THE FREE LANCE. us the presumption in the same direction. The transformation of insects has furnished beautiful applications to the progress of the soul from the darkness of its earthly sphere to the light and glory of its future existence. To the ancients the sculptured butterfly was the type and emblem of immortality. When from the lowest state of the crawling worm there comes forth the exquisite form of beauty, rising on airy wings of down, into the light of a summer day, the presumption is furnished, that we whose pursuits through life have been after an undying name and whose hap piness has been derived from the acquisition of an intellectual power and finite knowledge, shall rise hereafter into a state of being where immortality is no longer a name, and ascend to the source of unbounded power and infinite wisdom. In the direction of the same presumption we have irrepressible longing in our hearts. We wish for immo’rtality. The thought of annihilation is horrible; even to conceive it is almost impossible. This wish in itself is almost an argument. It is not likely that God would have given all men such a feeling if he had not meant to gratify it. Every natural longing has its natural satisfaction. If we thirst, God has created a liquid to gratify thirst. If we thirst for life eternal it is just as reasonable to suppose that thesis an eternal life to satisfy that craving. •*. Again, corroborating this feeling we have the traditions of universal belief. There is not a nation, perhaps, which does not in some form or other hold that there is a country beyond the grave where the weary are at rest. Now that which all men everywhere and in every age have held, it is imposible to treat contemptuously. How came it to be held by all, if it be only a de lusion ? Thus from nature, reason, and experience we are led to declare as did the dying Socrates, “Then, cebes, beyond question the soul is im mortal and imperishable, and our souls will truly exist in another world.” In favor of this, and fixing the same conviction, is man’s power of thought. The soul of man in
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