we travel through the dim obscurity of preexistent time, our retrospective view at length fades, and is lost in the sublime idea of uncreated power.

Or we look onward from the present timeon-on, to a mysterious futurity, when we and ours shall be forgotten. We cannot build up without reflecting that there is also a time to pull down, and in laying the foundation of an edifice, or in witnessing its erection, it is natural to ask, "Where shall I be, when of these stones not one remains upon another?" We plant the sapling oak, and watch it year by year, slowly extending in its circumference and its height, and we think of the time when children now unborn shall play beneath its shade, when we shall have been gathered to the only place of earthly rest, and when the very soil in which that tree is planted, shall have become the property of those who never heard our names. It is by extending such reflections as these, ad infinitum, that imagination passes from small to great, from infancy to age, and from time to eternity; and thus we form all the idea that we are capable of conceiving of that which has no beginning, and can never end.

There is one other mental conception-the

idea of a God, intimately connected with those here specified, which mankind have endeavoured by every means, natural and artificial, reasonable and absurd, pleasing and terrible, to introduce into the mind, before the mind is prepared for receiving it; and hence follow the unworthy notions, the irreverent language, and the low attributes, by which the majesty of the Divine Being is too frequently insulted.

If we might so speak without presumption, we should say, that God, jealous of his own honour, had chosen in this instance, sometimes to baffle the ingenuity of man, by first throwing open to the human mind, the contemplation of his attributes, and then by his own appointed means, inscrutable to our perceptions, concentrating them all in one sublime, and ineffable thought, which flashes through the brain like a quickening fire, and bursts upon the soul with the light of life.

I would still be understood to speak poetically. I know that there are modes of reasoning by which men of sound understanding must almost necessarily arrive at a belief in the existence of a God. But rational evidence, and the evidence of sensation, are two different things. We often assent to facts of which we

do not feel the truth. And it is this feeling as it gives vitality to belief, that I would call the impression from which we derive the most lasting and distinct idea of a God. Yet at the same time that I speak of such impressions as evidence, which the Divine Being vouchsafes to give us of his own existence, I speak of them only as corroborating evidence, following that of reason, and of no sort of value where they directly contradict it. Separate from the mental process by which the idea is first conceived, this evidence refers rather to the state of the mind as a recipient; and such impressions as are here spoken of poetically, may therefore, exist independent of rational conviction. Without such conviction, however, they are liable to lead to the most egregious and fatal errors, but with it they establish truth, and render it indelible.

It is of much less importance to the poet, than to the philosopher, whether impressions of this abstract nature, arise out of the immediate operation of divine power, or from a combination of conclusions previously drawn, which the mind is often able to make use of without being aware of their existing in any rational or definite form, and which we can never fully under

stand, unless the study of the human mind should be reduced to a practical science. The poet may often use expressions which accord with the former notion, just as he would describe the hand of Omnipotence covering the mountains with eternal snow, but let us hope that he is wise enough seriously to entertain the latter; and if sometimes he makes a sudden transition from effects to causes, without regarding the intermediate space, let us do him the justice to believe that it is from the very sublimity of his own genius, which stoops not to take cognizance of means, but rather in searching out the principles of sensation, thought, and action, plunges at once into the fountain of life, and refers immediately to the great first Cause.

Thus the full and entire conviction of the being of a God, may come upon us precisely as God pleases, and force itself upon our hearts in the way which he sees meet to appoint. Galen is said to have received this impression from unexpectedly meeting in his solitary walks with a human skeleton; and just as easily may the infidel be reclaimed from his ignorance by any other means adapted to the peculiar tone and temper of his

own mind-by the chaunting of a hymn, or the peal of rolling thunder-by the prayer of an innocent child, or the destruction of a powerful nation-by the gathering of the plenteous harvest, or the desolation of the burning desert -by the faded beauty of a falling leaf, or the splendour of the starry heavens-by the secret anguish of the broken spirit, or by accumulated honours and unmerited enjoyment-by the blessings of the poor, or the denunciations of the powerful-by the visitations of divine love, or by the terrors of eternal judgment—in short, by the natural sensations of pain or pleasure, arising from any of the causes immediate or remote, by which the attributes of Deity may be forced upon the perceptions of the soul, and concentrated in the idea of one indivisible, and omnipotent Being.

Subsequent to the idea of a God, arise distinct perceptions of moral duty-of what we owe to him as the creator and preserver of the world, as well as the founder of the laws by which our lives ought to be regulated. We have before observed, that immediate self-gratification is the earliest motive upon which we act, but we now become sensible that this motive must give place to others of a more