I have just risen from my knees, returning thanks to our heavenly Father for this providential opening my heart is quite full. Help me to be grateful to him, and pray that I may be a faithful minister of his word.

TO HIS BROTHER NEVILLE.

Nottingham.

MY DEAR NEVILLE,

I SIT down with unfeigned pleasure to write, in compliance with your request, that I would explain to you the real doctrines of the church of England, or what is the same thing, of the Bible. The subject is most important, inasmuch as it affects that part of man which is incorruptible, and which must exist for ever-his soul. When God made the brute creation, he merely embodied the dust of the earth, and gave it the power of locomotion, or of moving about, and of existing in a certain sphere. In order to afford mute animals a rule of action, by which they might be kept alive, he implanted in them certain instincts, from which they can never depart. Such is that of self-preservation, and the selection of proper food. But he not only endured man with these powers, but he gave him mind, or spirit-a faculty which enables him to ruminate on the objects which he does not see to compare impressions-to invent-and to feel pleasure and

pain, when their causes are either gone or past, or lie in the future. This is what constitutes the human soul. It is an immaterial essence-no one knows what it consists of, or where it resides; the brain and the heart are the organs which it most seems to affect; but it would be absurd to infer therefrom, that the material organs of the heart and the brain constitute the soul, seeing that the impressions of the mind sometimes affect one organ and sometimes the other. Thus, when any of the passions-love, hope, fear, pleasure, or pain, are excited, we feel them at our heart. When we discuss a topic of cool reasoning, the process is carried on in the brain; yet both parts are in a greater or less degree acted upon on all occasions, and we may therefore conclude, that the soul resides in neither individually, but is an immaterial spirit, which occasionally impresses the one, and occasionally the other. That the soul is immaterial, has been proved to a mathematical demonstration. When we strike, we lift up our arm-when we walk, we protrude our legs alternately-but when we think, we move no organ: the reason depends on no action of matter, but seems as it were to hover over us, to regulate the machine of our bodies, and to meditate and speculate on things abstract as well as simple, extraneous as well as connected with our individual welfare, without having any bond which can unite it with our gross corporeal bodies. The flesh is like the temporary tabernacle which the soul inhabits, governs, and regulates; but as it does not consist in any organization of matter, our bodies may die, and return to the dust from whence they were taken, while our souls,

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incorporeal essences are incapable of death and annihilation. The spirit is that portion of God's own immortal nature, which he breathed into our clay at our birth, and which therefore cannot be destroyed, but will continue to exist when its earthly habitation is mingled with its parent dust. We must admit, therefore, what all ages and nations, savage as well as civilized, have acknowledged, that we have souls, and that as they are incorporeal, they do not die with our bodies, but are necessarily immortal. The question then naturally arises, what becomes of them after death? Here man of his own wisdom must stop:-but God has thought fit, in his mercy, to reveal to us in a great measure the secret of our natures, and in the Holy Scriptures we find a plain and intelligible account of the purposes of our existence, and the things we have to expect in the world to come. And here I shall just remark, that the authenticity and divine inspiration of Moses are established beyond a doubt, and that no learned man can possibly deny their authority. Over all nations, even among the savages of America, cut out as it were from the eastern world, there are traditions extant of the flood, of Noah, Moses, and other patriarchs, by names which come so near the proper ones, as to remove all doubt of their identity. You know mankind is continually encreasing in number; and consequently, if you make a calculation backwards, the numbers must continue lessening, and lessening, until you come to a point where there was only one man. Well, according to the most probable calculation, this point will be found to be about 5,800 years back, viz. the time of the creation, making allow

ance for the flood. Moreover, there are appearances upon the surface of the globe, which denote the manner in which it was founded, and the process thus developed will be found to agree very exactly with the figurative account of Moses.-(Of this I shall treat in a subsequent letter.)-Admitting then, that the books of the Pentateuch were written by divine inspiration, we, see laid before us the whole history of our race, and, including the Prophets, and the New Testament, the whole scheme of our future existence: we learn, in the first place, that God created man in a state of perfect happiness, that he was placed in the midst of every thing that could delight the eye, or fascinate the mind, and that he had only one command imposed upon him, which he was to keep under the penalty of death. This command God has been pleased to cover to our eyes with impenetrable obscurity. Moses, in the figurative language of the East, calls it eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. But this we can understand, that man rebelled against the command of his Maker, and plunged himself by that crime, from a state of bliss to a state of sorrow, and in the end, of death. By death here is meant, the exclusion of the soul from future happiness. It followed, that if Adam fell from bliss, his posterity must fall, for the fruit must be like the parent stock; and a man made as it were dead, must likewise bring forth children under the same curse.-Evil cannot beget good.

But the benign Father of the universe had pity upon Adam and his posterity, and knowing the frailty of our

nature, he did not wish to assume the whole terrors of his just vengeance. Still God is a being who is infinitely just, as well as infinitely merciful, and therefore his decrees are not to be dispensed with, and his offended justice must have expiation. The case of mankind was deplorable;-myriads yet unborn were implicated by the crime of their common progenitor in general ruin. But the mercy of God prevailed, and Jesus Christ, the Messias, of whom all ages talked before he came down amongst men, offered himself up as an atonement for man's crimes.-The Son of God himself, infinite in mercy, offered to take up the human form, to undergo the severest pains of human life, and the severest pangs of death; he offered to lie under the power of the grave for a certain period, and, in a word, to sustain all the punishment of our primitive disobedience in the stead of man. The atonement was infinite, because God's justice is infinite; and nothing but such an atonement could have saved the fallen race.

The death of Christ then takes away the stain of origi nal sin, and gives man at least the POWER of attaining eternal bliss. Still our salvation is conditional, and we have certain requisitions to comply with ere we can be secure of heaven.-The next question then is, What are the conditions on which we are to be saved? The word of God here comes in again in elucidation of our duty; the chief point insisted upon is, that we should keep God's Law contained in the Ten Commandments; but as the omission or breach of one article of the twelve tables