But were it possible, how long and insuperable would be the task to enumerate all the ingredients which compose the present cup of bitterness? And is this the consummation of things? Will supreme and essential goodness no way distinguish such as have invariably pursued his honour, and the interest of his government, from those who have industriously violated the order he has appointed in things? who have blotted the face of nature with havock, murder, and desolation; and shewn a constant intention to counteract all the benevolent designs of providence? It is confessed that the virtuous, happy in the possession of virtue alone, make their exit from the present scene with blessings to the Creator, for having called them to existence, and given them the glorious opportunity of enjoying what is in itself supremely eligible. They are conscious that this felicity can receive no accession from any external lustre or advantage whatever. Yet it seems highly necessary in the divine administration, that those who have been dazzled with the false glare of prosperous wickedness, should at last be undeceived; that they should at last behold virtue conspicuous, in all her native splendor and majesty as she shines, the chief delight of God, and ultimate happiness of all intelligent nature.
The language of religion, and our own hearts, on this important argument, is equally comfortable and decisive.
It accumulates and enforces whatever can inspire us with confidence in that God, who is not the God of the dead, but of the living; who reigns in the invisible, as well as in the visible world; and whose attention to our welfare ceases not with our lives, but is commensurate to the full extent of our being.
Indeed the votaries of the soul's mortality may as well be honest for once, and speak out what so many fools think in their hearts. For what is God to us, or we to him, if our connection extends but to the pitiful space allotted us in such a pitiful world as this is? To be sure, no absurdity will be rejected, which can smother the feelings, or keep the vices of profligates in countenance; but, if only made like worms and reptiles beneath our feet, to live this moment, and expire the next, to struggle in a wretched life with every internal and external calamity, that can assault our bodies, or infest our minds; to bear the mortifications of malignity, and the unmerited abhorrence of those who perhaps may owe us the greatest and tenderest esteem, and then, sunk in everlasting oblivion, our fate would stand on record, in the annals of the universe, an eternal exception to all that can be called good.
Suppose a father possessed of the most exquisite tenderness for his son, delighted with his similarity of form, his promising constitution, his strength, gracefulness, and agility, his undisguised emotions of filial affection, with the various presages of a superior genius and understanding. Let us suppose this father pleased with the employment of improving his faculties, and inspiring him with future hopes of happiness and dignity: but that he may give him a quicker sensibility to the misfortunes of others, and a more unshaken fortitude to sustain his own, he often prefers younger brethren, and even strangers, to those advantages which otherwise merit, and the force of nature would determine him to bestow on so worthy an offspring. Let us go further, and imagine, if we can, that this father, without the least diminution of tenderness, or any other apparent reason, destroys his son in the bloom of life, and height of expectation: Who would not lament the fate of such a youth with inconsolable tears? Doomed never more to behold the agreeable light of Heaven! never more to display his personal graces, nor exercise his manly powers, never more to feel his heart warm with benevolent regards, nor taste the soul-transporting pleasure of obliging and being obliged! Blotted at once from existence, and the fair creation, he sinks into silence and oblivion, with all his sublime hopes disappointed, all his immense desires ungratified, and all his intellectual faculties unimproved.
Without mentioning the instinctive horror which must attend such an action, how absurd to reason, and how inconsistent with the common feelings of humanity would it be to suppose a father capable of such a deed. Forbid it, God! forbid it, Nature! that we should impute to the munificent father of being and happiness, what, even in the lowest of rational creatures, would be monstrous and detestable!
(5) The truth is, that form which all mankind have deemed immortal, is so far from being the frailest, that it seems in fact the most indissoluble and permanent of any other we know.
All the rational and inventive powers of the mind happily conspire to proclaim her infinitely different in nature, and superior in dignity to every possible modification of pure matter. Were mankind joined in society, was life polished and cultivated, were the sciences and arts, not only of utility, but elegance, produced by matter? by a brute mass? A substance so contrary to all activity and intelligence, that it seems the work of an omnipotent hand alone to connect them. What judgement should we form of that principle which informed and enlightened a Galileo, a Copernicus, or a Newton? What inspiration taught them, to place the fun in the center of this system, and assign the various orbs their revolutions round him, reducing motions so diverse and unequal, to uniform and ****** laws? Was it not something like that great eternal mind, which first gave existence to those luminous orbs, and prescribed each of them their province?
