Still heaven is, our hearts affirm against every disappointment; and whether behind or before us, as memory or as hope, 'tis to be ours,—our port and resting place sometime in the stream of ages.
"All before us lies the way; Give the past unto the wind; All before us is the day, Night and darkness are behind.
Eden with its angels bold, Love and flowers and coolest sea, Is less an ancient story told Than a glowing prophecy.
In the spirit's perfect air, In the passions tame and kind, Innocence from selfish care, The real Eden we shall find.
When the soul to sin hath died, True and beautiful and sound, Then all earth is sanctified, Upsprings paradise around.
From the spirit-land, afar All disturbing force shall flee; Stir, nor toil, nor hope shall mar Its immortal unity."
[N] "'Tis well known that according to the sense of antiquity, these two considerations were always included in that one opinion of the soul's immortality—namely; its pre-existence as well as its post existence. Neither were there ever any of the ancients before christianity, that held the soul's future permanency after death, who did not likewise assert its pre-existence,—they clearly perceiving that if it was once granted that the soul was generated, it could never be proved but that it might be also corrupted. And therefore the asserters of its immortality commonly began here—first, to prove its pre-existence, proceeding thence afterwards to establish its permanency after death."—Cudworth.
[O] Let us remember that immortality signifies a negative, or not having of mortality, and that a positive term is required by which to express a change, since nature teaches that whatever is, will abide with the being it is, unless forced out of it by something positive. And as it appears that man's soul has these grounds in her which make all visible things to be perishable, it is obvious that his soul is immortal and the cause of mortality itself.—Sir Kenelm Digby.
Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications.