SEWARD.
I feel, sir, that I have already taken more than my own part in this conversation. We should have to inquire, sir, whether in His known attributes, and in the known modes of His government, we could ascertain any causes making it probable that He will thus prolong our existence—and we find many such grounds of confidence.
NORTH.
Go on, my dear Seward.
SEWARD.
If you please, sir, be yours the closing words—for the Night.
NORTH.
The implanted longing in every human bosom for such permanent existence—the fixed anticipation of it—and the recoil from annihilation—seem to us intimation vouchsafed by the Creator of His designs towards us;—the horror with which Remorse awakened by sin looks beyond the Grave, partakes of the same prophetical inspiration. We see how precisely the lower animals are fitted to the places which they hold upon the earth, with instincts that exactly supply their needs, with no powers that are not here satisfied—while we, as if out of place, only through much difficult experience can adapt ourselves to the physical circumstances into which we are introduced—and thus, in one respect, furnished below our condition, are, on the other hand, by the aspirations of our higher faculties, raised infinitely above it—as if intimating that whilst those creatures here fulfil the purpose of their creation, here we do not—and, therefore, look onward;—That whilst our other Powers, of which the use is over, decline in the course of nature as Death approaches, our Moral and Intellectual Faculties often go on advancing to the last, as if showing that they were drawing nigh to their proper sphere of action;-That whilst the Laws regulating the Course of Human Affairs visibly proceed from a Ruler who favours Virtue, and who frowns upon Vice, yet that a just retribution does not seem uniformly carried out in the good success of well-doers, and the ill success of evil-doers—so that we are led on by the constitution of our souls to look forward to a world in which that which here looks like Moral Disorder, might be reduced into Order, and the Justice of the Ruler and the consistency of His Laws vindicated;—That in studying the arrangements of this world, we see that in many cases dispositions of Human affairs, which, upon their first aspect, appeared to us evil, being more clearly examined and better known, resulted in good—and thence draw a hope that the stroke which daunts our imagination, as though it were the worst of evils, will prove, when known, a dispensation of bounty—"Death the Gate of Life," opening into a world in which His beneficent hand, if not nearer to us than here, will be more steadily visible—no clouds interposing between the eyes of our soul and their Sun;—That the perplexity which oppresses our Understanding from the sight of this world, in which the Good and Evil seem intermixed and crossing each other, almost vanishes, when we lift up our thoughts to contemplate this mutable scene as a place of Probation and of Discipline, where Sorrows and Sufferings are given to school us to Virtue—as the Arena where Virtue strives in the laborious and perilous contest, of which it shall hereafter receive the well-won and glorious crown;—That we draw confidence in the same conclusions, from observing how closely allied and agreeing to each other are the Two Great Truths of Natural Religion, the Belief in God and the Belief in our own Immortality; so that, when we have received the idea of God, as the Great Governor of the Universe, the belief in our own prolonged existence appears to us as a necessary part of that Government; or if, upon the physical arguments, we have admitted the independent conviction of our Immortality, this doctrine appears to us barren and comfortless, until we understand that this continuance of our Being is to bring us into the more untroubled fruition of that Light, which here shines upon us, often through mist and cloud;—That in all these high doctrines we are instructed to rest more securely, as we find the growing harmony of one solemn conviction with another—as we find that all our better and nobler Faculties co-operate with one another—and these predominating principles carry us to these convictions—so that our Understanding then first begins to possess itself in strength and light when the heart has accepted the Moral Law;—But that our Understanding is only fully at ease, and our Moral Nature itself, with all its affections, only fully supported and expanded, when both together have borne us on to the knowledge of Him who is the sole Source of Law—the highest Object of Thought—the Favourer of Virtue—towards whom Love may eternally grow, and still be infinitely less than His due—till we have reached this knowledge, and with it the steadfast hope that the last act of this Life joins us to Him—does not for ever shut us up in the night of Oblivion;—And we have strengthened ourselves in inferences forced upon us by remembering how humankind has consented in these Beliefs, as if they were a part of our Nature—and by remembering farther, how, by the force of these Beliefs, human Societies have subsisted and been held together—how Laws have been sanctioned, and how Virtues, Wisdom, and all the good and great works of the Human Spirit have, under these influences, been produced;—Surely Great is the Power of all these concurrent considerations brought from every part of our Nature—from the Material and the Immaterial—from the Intellectual and Moral—from the Individual and the Social—from that which respects our existence on this side of the grave, and that which respects our existence beyond it—from that which looks down upon the Earth, and that which looks up towards Heaven.
Printed by William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh.