the offence, but its consequences, should be accurately known. Is it to be imagined, that the ancient subjects of God's righteous government, could have given so remote and abstract an interpretation to the language in which the consequences of disobedience were uniformly denounced? Could our first parents have supposed that the warning sentence, "for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die," signified any thing more than the loss of vitality, and its expected blessing? Could their conceptions extend beyond the grave, into regions of eternal misery? Could they conceive that the true emphatic signifi cation of death, was not extinction of being, but protracted woe? That, in reality, it implied LIFE, conscious Existence, eternal Life, an eternal Life of Wretchedness? After the offence was committed, it was said to him, "in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken; for dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return." But could he possibly suppose that this sentence respected the body alone? Could his whole attention be directed to the physical and mundane effects of this dissolution, designedly, or inadvertently concealing from him, the infinitely more terrible punishment of an immortal Soul, that was impending?

The same argument is applicable to every menace that was uttered, from the first promul gation of the divine laws, to the termination of the political existence of the Jewish nation. Upon the hypothesis we oppose, the grand, the terrible punishment, of the most profligate of the human race was concealed from them. The Divine Being shewed infinite compassion and anxiety, as it were, lest they should suffer the temporal calamities to which disobedience exposed them; but not a sentence of concern is expressed about their eternal state! As their extreme danger was not revealed to them, they could not have any documents from which to draw the inferences. No one was able to supply them with a glossary by which they were to understand that death, destruction, being consumed, &c. &c. really signified a life of eternal wretchedness. The phraseology so frequently employed, ought for ever to preclude this idea. The ancient Hebrews were not versed in psychology. They had not studied the nature of the soul. Surrounded and absorbed by objects of sense, they could not be expected to speculate concerning the spiritual nature and immortal destiny of man, by the light of reason. Philosophic minds of a later period, possessing leisure and disposition

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to speculate upon these abstruse subjects, could not arrive at any certainty; and it is exceedingly absurd to imagine, that a distinct and influential knowledge of a future state of immortality, should be diffused over the ages of the greatest obscurity; or that just inferences concerning this future state, should be drawn from multitudinous expressions of a contrary import.

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They could only interpret all the judgments denounced against the ungodly, as referring either to the absolute destruction of animal existence; or to such a dissolution, as still leaves the subject in a state of anxious uncertainty. Those who never reflect, cannot reason. they live like brutes, they expect to die like brutes. They pursue the objects of gratification, which are immediately before them, without any prudent concern about consequences. When dangers arrive, they are struck with those panics which an instinctive love of life will occasion, as often as life is in imminent danger. A panic which is common to the brute creation, as well as to rational beings; and it is without their examining into the moral cause of their fears, or knowing what degree of reference they may have to protracted punishment in a future world

Those who thought deeply upon these subjects were still in a state of uncertainty. They were unable to decide between the expectation of total irremediable destruction, or some unknown mode of existence, in some unknown regions of some unknown world. This was obviously the case with the most considerate and moral writers under the hierarchy. Sometimes they expressed a degree of hope respecting futurity, at others they seemed to despair; but all their expressions of despair referred to a state of non-existence, not of existence in misery. Surely, says the pious David, "it shall be well with the righteous." "Although he slay me, I will trust in him." Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff they comfort me." These and similar expressions, probably, relate to the inward desire and obscure expectations of future existence, under the government of so wise and powerful a Being. On the other hand, the author of the Ecclesiastes entertains the most sceptical doubts. laments that there is no devise, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither we go. In his beautiful description of the gradual decay. of the human frame by advancing years, he concludes, "then shall the dust return to the dust,

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as it was, and the spirit, or breath of life, shall return unto the God who gave it :" obviously referring to the expression of Moses, God breathed into man the breath of life, and he became a living soul. "The hearts of the sons of men are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live, after that they go to the dead."

The wisest among the heathen philosophers, those who had carried their speculations the farthest, scarcely ventured to hope. Those who had not imbibed atheistical principles, as Plato, Socrates, Cyrus, Cicero, &c.-They who revered the gods, who considered man as formed by an intelligent power, and admired his conformation, were astonished at its singularity. They beheld him infinitely superior in the endowments of his corporeal frame, and in the faculties of his mind, to the brute creation around him, and as inferior in peace, contentment, and happiness. They beheld him endowed with powers surpassing the conceptions which many had formed of their Gods, and exposed to evils which manifest the impotency of these powers. Such wonderful contrarieties lead them to suspect that the system was incomplete. This induced some philosophers to accuse the justice of the Gods; but the wisest and most moral