As light, existing in remote stars, has not yet reached our earth, so the electricity is now residing in myriads of bodies, which will never be elicited; and thus (if I may extend the simile) the principle of life, whatever it be, may have an independent existence during life, may leave the body and yet not perish. Is not this a fine illustration of the living of the soul without the body; for here even a grosser matter, yet invisible, is evinced by its passage from one thing to another, although it is inert when involved in the substance?
Ida. May I not fear that the errors of philosophy, grounded on the difficulty of conceiving the nature of a self-existent spirit, will not stop until they lapse into the belief of annihilation?
For there are many suspicious sentiments even in the pages of well-meaning writers; such are the dangerous sentiments which Boswell has ascribed to Miss Seward: “There is one mode of the fear of death which is certainly absurd, and that is the dread of annihilation, which is only a pleasing sleep without a dream.”
There may be nothing terrible in the condition of annihilation, yet the moral effect is deplorable; indeed, to doubt the eternal existence is to argue that man’s life is but a plaything of the Deity. The notion of annihilation is so abhorrent, that he who believes it dooms himself indeed to a miserable existence; for the crowning solace of a Christian life is holy hope, and belief in the priceless gift of immortality.
“Know’st thou th’ importance of a soul immortal?
Behold this midnight glory—worlds on worlds!
Amazing pomp: redouble this amaze!
Ten thousand add; and twice ten thousand more;
Then weigh the whole; one soul outweighs them all,
And calls th’ astonishing magnificence