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weight with me: either that of our own ancestors who paid such sacred honors to the dead, which surely they would not have done, if they thought those honors in no way affected them; or that of those who once liyed in this country and enlightened by their institutions and instructions Magna Græcia (which now, indeed, is destroyed, but then was flourishing); or of him who was pronounced by the oracle of Apollo to be the wisest of men, who did not express first one opinion and then another, as in most questions, but always maintained the same, namely, that the souls of men are divine, and that when they have departed from the body, a return to heaven is opened to them, most speedy in proportion as each has been most virtuous and just."

These eloquent words convey the sentiments not only of Cicero himself, but also of great sages of Greece and Rome.

"This belief which we hold" (in the immortality of the soul), says Plutarch, "is so old that we cannot trace its author or its origin, and it dates back to the most remote antiquity.'

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The same views were held by the ancient Egyptians, the Chaldeans, and Persians, indeed by all the nations of Asia whose history has come down to us, and by the Germans, Gauls, Britons, and other ancient tribes of Europe. If we question

1 De Amicitia, Chap. IV.

2 De Consol. ad Apollonium.

3

See Grotius, De Verit. Relig. Christi, L. I., ¿ 22.

the Indian of North or South America on this point, he will tell us of the happy hunting-grounds reserved in after life for the brave.

We may find nations without cities, without the arts and sciences, without mechanical inventions, or any of the refinements of civilized life; but a nation without some presentiment of the existence of a future state, we shall search for in vain.

Even idolatry itself involved an implied recognition of the immortality of the soul; for how could men pay divine honors to departed heroes, whom they worshipped as gods, if they believed that death is the end of man's existence?

We may, indeed, find a man here and there who pretends to deny the existence of a future state. But like the fool that says in his heart, "There is no God," this man's "wish is father to his thought;" for if there is in the life to come a place of retribution, he feels that it will be so much. the worse for him. Or even should we encounter one who really has no faith in a future life, we should have no more right to take him as a type of our intellectual and moral nature than to take the Siamese twins as types of our physical organization. The exception always proves the rule.

Now, whence comes this universal belief in man's immortality? Not from prejudice arising from education; for we shall find this conviction prevailing among rude people who have no education whatever, among hostile tribes, and among nations

at the opposite poles of the earth and who have never had intercourse with one another.

We must, therefore, conclude that a sentiment so general and deep-rooted must have been planted in the human breast by Almighty God, just as He has implanted in us an instinctive love for truth and justice, and an inveterate abhorrence of falsehood and injustice.

Not only has mankind a firm belief in the immortality of the soul, but there is inborn in every human breast a desire for perfect felicity. This desire is so strong in man that it is the mainspring of all his actions, the engine that keeps in motion the machinery of society. Even when he commits acts that lead him to misery, he does so under the mistaken notion, that he is consulting his own happiness.

Now God would never have planted in the human heart this craving after perfect felicity, unless He had intended that the desire should be fully gratified; for He never designed that man should be the sport of vain and barren hopes. He never creates any thing in vain; but He would have created something to no purpose if He had given us the thirst for perfect bliss without imparting to us the means of assuaging it. As He has given us bodily eyes to view and enjoy the objects of nature around us, so has He given us an interior perspective of immortal bliss, that we may yearn for it now and enjoy it hereafter.

It is clear that this desire for perfect happiness never is and never can be fully realized in the present life.

Let us take up one by one the various sources of human enjoyment. Can earthly goods adequately satisfy the cravings of the human heart and fill up the measure of its desires? Experience proves the contrary. One might have the wealth of Croesus of old, or of Vanderbilt in our own times, and yet his happiness would be far from complete; for he would still be oppressed by the desire for greater riches, or haunted by the fear of losing what he has acquired, or of being torn from it by death. "O death, how bitter is the remembrance of thee to a man that has peace in his possessions?" 1

Can honors fully gratify the aspirations of the soul? No. For though the highest dignities were lavished upon a man still, like Aman, the minister of King Assuerus, he would be discontented so long as there was in the Republic one that refused to bend the knee to him. And if he sat upon the most exalted throne on earth and were ruler of kingdoms, he would, like Alexander the Great, sigh for other empires that he might conquer them. Honors bring corresponding cares. The more brilliant and precious the crown, the more heavily it presses on the brow that wears it.

I have seen and contemplated two of the greatest rulers on the face of the earth,--the civil ruler of sixty-five millions and the spiritual ruler of two hundred and fifty millions of people. I have conversed with the President and the Pope in their

1 Eccles. XLI., 1.

private apartments; and I am convinced that their exalted position, far from satisfying the aspirations of their soul, did but fill them with a profound sense of their grave responsibility.

Can earthly pleasures make one so happy as to leave nothing to be desired? Assuredly not. They that indulge in sensual gratifications are forced to acknowledge that the deeper they plunge into them, the more they are enslaved and the less they are satiated by them. The keen edge of delight soon becomes blunted.

No one is better qualified than Solomon to express from experience an opinion on the power of the pleasures of sense to promote human happiness. Every creature ministered to his personal gratification, he yielded to every excess, he denied himself nothing that his heart desired; and, as the fruit of all this, he declared that he was weary of life, and that all was vanity and vexation of spirit.1

We find great comfort in this life in the society of loving friends and relatives. But how frail is the thread that binds friends and kindred together! The bond may be broken by treachery; it must be broken by death. This thought haunts like a spectre, and casts its dark shadow over the social and family circle.

Another source of exquisite delight is found in the pursuit of knowledge. And this pleasure is more pure, more solid, and more lasting than sensual

1 Eccles. II, 17.

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