who shall tell-nay who shall dare even to surmise-His substance? Where even the attributes are so incomprehensible, who can comprehend their source? His substance? None can ever know it, but Himself. Material? Immaterial? Away with vain and idle words! What he has created-The Creator cannot be. His substance (may my dazzled intellect presume to breathe it?) seems Life, Infinitude, Perfection, Causation, Multiplicity in Unity,* like Him self. We have his own Divine authority for saying that He is Existence. He is, that He is. Past, future, present, blend for Him alone : He is th' eternal HATH BEEN, still TO COME. f To Him a day is as countless years-innumerable years are as a single day. Without exclusion of the past or future, his divine existence would seem to be an ETERNAL NOW.What a number of sentences it has taken me, to avow that of the mysteries of the Divine nature I know absolutely nothing! Yet may those sentences be not altogether thrown away. While *Yet may not this be a mere enumeration of attributes, or properties, after all? † Anonymous Versifier. they acknowledge and demonstrate an ignorance which I would not dissemble, I trust, that with deep prostration of the heart, they pour forth a worship-tribute of ineffable veneration. The subject is certainly overwhelming; and I should regret having introduced it, but that effusions of piety are no ill accompaniment to such examinations as we have engaged in. They go to prove that our inquiries have done no harm: that they have not interfered with our faith or our devotion.-But our minds are on the stretch. How may we best relax them? To what lower topic, and as it were restingplace, shall we descend? When your former question drew me off, I had thought of shortly treating with you, the subject of the soul's existence, after its separation (by death) from its corporeal comrade. You believe then in this unembodied existence of the human Mind. I do; and for this-with me always sufficient -reason, that I conceive myself to have scriptural authority for so doing. The case of Lazarus, it is true, appears, at the least, to afford little calculated to throw light upon this ques tion. To the parable of the rich man and another Lazarus, because it is a parable, I do not refer. The benign promise, made by our Redeemer, to the believing malefactor who was suspended by his side, is however an authority for the soul's separate existence, on which I may rely; and, by the way, for the post mortem existence of the pardoning Saviour, as well as of the repentant thief. But lastly, it seems manifest that the soul of this blessed Saviour had intelligent existence, in the mysterious interval, between the laying down his life, and the taking it again by resurrection;-during which interval his body was inanimate, and in the grave;-for God's Holy One was to see death, though not to see corruption. The Divinity of Christ not having prevented his being perfect man, I therefore cite his spiritual and intellectual existence, during the time that intervened between his expiring on the cross, and again reanimating his lifeless frame,-I say I cite it as an authority to prove that the human soul may have a conscious and intelligent existence, in the interval between its separation * * John, x. 17, 18. from the body, and their reunion, at the general resurrection. In this intermediate existence I confidently believe; but the subject being an obscure one, I will not unnecessarily push the discussion of it farther. Pardon me, if I observe, that you seemed, a little time ago, to dwell on the indispensable need which Mind appeared to have, of the instrumentality of corporeal organs, towards performing its intellectual operations, and giving manifestations of itself. You seemed to me to say, "that body was but spirit's shell; Was I mistaken? Did I misunderstand you ? You did not misunderstand me; and you perhaps touch upon one of the difficulties of this obscure part of the subject. But recollect, that it was only during mundane life, that I represented mind as thus seeming to require the aid of body, and to be unable to work without it. I spoke of the modes, by which alone it was permitted to one embodied spirit, to hold communication with other equally embodied spirits. * Anonymous Versifier. When the soul has shuffled off its mortal coil, the very separation from body may have removed obstacles to its intercourse with other intelligences, which were the consequence of its strict union, now dissolved, with corporeal organization. Its post mortem intercourse, too, will be with spirits disembodied, like itself. Besides, if it be the behest of God, as it appears to be, that souls should have a conscious, a moral, and intellectual existence, when separate from that organised matter with which they had been in conjunction, can we doubt, that for those means which organization had supplied, the will, and power of God will, if requisite, have substituted others, abundantly adequate to the end which Divine Wisdom had proposed?— What these means are, or whether any be required, of course we cannot tell, until it be our turn to visit the "undiscovered country;" and as in general it is one, from whose bourn No traveller returns, we can furnish no information to those whom we shall have left behind.-But I somehow long to get back to |