(Vol. vii., pp. 429. 560. 608.; Vol. viii., pp. 43. 550.)
Your correspondent H. C. K. (Vol. vii., 560.) quotes a passage from Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici, sect. xlii. The following passage from the same writer's Christian Morals is much more to the point:
"When the Stoic said ('Vitam nemo acciperet, si daretur scientibus'—Seneca) that life would not be accepted if it were offered unto such as knew it, he spoke too meanly of that state of being which placeth us in the form of men. It more depreciates the value of this life, that men would not live it over again; for although they would still live on, yet few or none can endure to think of being twice the same men upon earth, and some had rather never have lived than to tread over their days once more. Cicero, in a prosperous state, had not the patience to think of beginning in a cradle again. ('Si quis Deus mihi largiatur, ut repuerascam et in cunis vagiam, valdè recusem.'—De Senectute.) Job would not only curse the day of his nativity, but also of his renascency, if he were to act over his disasters and the miseries of the dunghill. But the greatest underweening of this life is to undervalue that unto which this is but exordial, or a passage leading unto it. The great advantage of this mean life is thereby to stand in a capacity of a better; for the colonies of heaven must be drawn from earth, and the sons of the first Adam are only heirs unto the second. Thus Adam came into this world with the power also of another; not only to replenish the earth, but the everlasting mansions of heaven."—Part III. sect. xxv.
"Looking back we see the dreadful train
Of woes anew, which, were we to sustain,
We should refuse to tread the path again."
Prior's Solomon, b. iii.
The crown is won by the cross, the victor's wreath in the battle of life:
"This is the condition of the battle[[9]] which man that is born upon the earth shall fight. That if he be overcome he shall suffer as thou hast said, but if he get the victory, he shall receive the thing that I say."—2 Esdr. vii. 57.
Our grade in the other world is determined by our probation here. To use a simile of Asgill's, this life of time is a university in which we take our degree for eternity. Heaven is a pyramid, or ever-ascending scale; the world of evil is an inverted pyramid, or ever-descending scale. Life is motion. There is no such thing as stagnation: everything is either advancing or retrograding. Corruption itself is an activity, and evil is ever growing. According to the habits formed within us, we are ascending or descending; we cannot stand still.