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LECTURE ON CONSISTENCY.

As we gradually awake from the unconscious sleep of infancy, to a perception of the appearances and occurrences of this busy earth, we find ourselves existing in a world of multiform scenes and of varied interest. And as our senses throw off the lethargy that envelopes their infant growth, so does the horizon of our observation expand. Every day brings new objects to our curious view, and every hour adds another item to the sum of our experience. We approach our finger to the dazzling candle, and we learn that its bright flame burns. Gradually we discover the sources of pleasure, and the causes of pain. We are taught that exercise braces our nerves, and that temperance establishes our health; that idleness destroys the mind, and excess the body. We feel the placid influence of kindly emotions, and we see the blighting influence of ungoverned passions. Amid the conflicting phenomena of human life-in each passing event, and under every change that comes over us-we seek happiness; sometimes, when experience has been our teacher, to find it; sometimes, alas! at the bidding of imagination, to find it not.

There is in man, and in youth especially, a restless spirit of curiosity; an unsatisfied thirst after novelty; an irrepressible desire to see, to hear, to feel, to know-to discover whatever is hidden, and to approach whatever is distant. Its movements first start us in the path of knowledge; and its gratification is our reward, as we proceed.

Much has this spirit of inquiry done for man. Without it he would be but as a passive mass, scarcely roused to exertion but by the immediate pressure of his wants; and, these satisfied, ready to sink back again into uninterested listlessness. That stirring spirit whets his senses, quickens his perceptions, spurs his industry, nerves his enterprize, and strengthens his perseverance. It leads him through every clime, into every country: to the mountain summit, where snows are eternal, and across the arid desert, where life is extinct

It would fain lead him beyond the mountain and the desert; ay! even in despite of his limited senses, beyond our earth and her phenomena. But it is hard to pass the limits of knowledge which these senses prescribe.

We can, indeed, watch the balloon as it rises above the lofty summer cloud, and see it disappear in the blue ether. We can rise with that balloon, until we look down on the storm, and see the lightning springing beneath us. But to the earth from whence it had risen the floating ball returns, and brings back with it the travellers to their sublunary home.

We can look on the distant stars, or on the nearer moon; but, even with the best aids which modern science supplies to our vision, how little do we see! how little can we learn! We can indeed discover that these stars and that moon exist. But if they be worlds with phenomena analagous to those that surround us here, for us, at least, their imagined phenomena have no existence. If living and moving beings inhabit these sparkling globes, for us they neither live, nor move, nor have a being. If we speak of these inhabitants, we speak of nonentities, in the attempt to describe which language becomes utterly insignificant. Few and imperfect, then, are the impressions we receive, uncertain and scanty the knowledge we acquire, of existences out of this world. Our own material earth, as we see it, and hear it, and feel it around us, is that portion of matter which alone distinctly exists to our human perceptions and human experience. On it we walk; on it we live. The familiar phenomena that hourly strike our senses are of this world. The beings whose welfare claims our care, and whose fates arouse our sensibilities, are all of this material world alone.

Still, that restless, unsatisfied spirit of thirsty curiosity will not be confined, even to earth. It has passed to other regions; and brought us back information true or false concerning them.

Men have said that there exists somewhere in space, far beyond the limits of man's vision, and without the sphere of man's perceptions, a certain-place, must I call it? I know not. Our earthly language is but ill adapted to give names to spiritual residences. But, since we of the earth can speak the earth's language only, we will call it-a place, named heaven.

Even tradition ventures no conjecture as to the extent of this location, nor furnishes any distinct account of the particular phenomena it exhibits. I believe it is usually imagined to contain a stupendous throne, surrounded by bright clouds, and diffusing on all sides a light of exceeding brilliancy. In the space around this throne, myriads-I was about to say, of human beings; but here again our mundane language is at fault. The existences which

are imagined around that throne of brightness, are not human beings. Many of them are indeed said to be the same which once lived and acted upon earth under that name, and are imagined to possess forms of surpassing beauty: but these forms are not of material figure or corporeal dimensions; they have, therefore, no material existence, and cannot, by the most ventured stretch of analogy, be termed human beings. But, whatever the name under which we choose to imagine them, myriads of existences are said to surround that throne. Each of these existences, we are told, retains a sense of identity with some individual man or woman who formerly lived on this earth. They have one occupation only. It is that of pronouncing praises and thanksgivings, and of executing songs and hymns, accompanying their voices on golden harps. Thus, we are informed, they shall exist throughout eternity.

Men have said also, that on this throne, whence the light proceeds which illuminates the space called heaven, an immaterial being has his residence. They tell us that to this omnipotent existence the thanksgivings and hymns of the inhabitants of heaven arc addressed; as well in order to increase that being's glory, as because he is well pleased to receive such praise.

It is said that the occupation itself is to the immaterial spirits, who were formerly human beings, a source of unceasing enjoyment, infinite in degree and endless in duration. It is asserted, that " eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived," the unclouded and eternal felicity of that distant abode. All earthly enjoyments, we are told, are but as worthless vanity compared to the bliss of one moment thus spent in heaven.

But there is also another unearthly location of which, it is said, human beings have obtained some particulars. It is situated within view of heaven, wherever that may be; and is separated from the heavenly kingdom by a great gulf which is fixed between these two residences. It has been called hell, and is usually imagined to contain a lake of prodigious extent. This lake is on fire; it is filled with brimstone, which burns without ceasing, and emits a smoke as of a great furnace. It is said to contain, in its burning waters, millions on millions of wretched existences, a great proportion of whom were once human beings. These are tormented in the flame, and are not even allowed a drop of water to cool their tongues. They will continue throughout eternity to be so tormented; and, though changed in their nature no less than the inhabitants of heaven, they also retain a consciousness of their former state of existence upon earth.

Both heaven and hell, notwithstanding our indefinite conceptions of their form and extent, are, I believe, imagined to have

gates. We are told that the keys of the gates of hell are in the hands of the creator of the universe, and those of the gates of heaven in the hands of St. Peter, a man who was born about two thousand years ago. I presume that the inmates of both places are supposed to enter them through these gates.

Other particulars regarding heaven and hell I might add, on the authority of those who profess to be accurately informed; but the accounts appear to me somewhat contradictory, and very indistinct. In what manner or at what time the bodies or as some have it, the living principles-of those who die on earth, are supposed to be conveyed to their future abodes, I cannot clearly explain to you; for the documents relating to this subject are not very explicit. It is, so far as I can learn, generally imagined, either that these bodies or living principles are conveyed thither immediately after death, or else lie asleep for some thousand years, until a day when the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll, and the stars shall fall on the earth, like untimely figs cast from some fig-tree that is shaken of a mighty wind; that then, on that day, these bodies or living principles shall be awoke from their long slumbers by the sounding of seven trumpets, and shall stand before the throne that is raised in the midst of heaven, to be judged from books in which have been regularly recorded for the last six thousand years all the actions of mankind, whether they have been good or whether they have been evil.

Many glowing pictures have been drawn of the joys of heaven, and many frightful descriptions given of the torments of hell. I can still recollect the vividness of perception which characterised my infant conceptions of both places-the thousand questions I used to ask about them, and the mingled sensations of delight and horror which the replies to my questions produced within me.

Mrs. Hemans has beautifully expressed, in the following lines, the vague ideas which a child first conceives of heaven, and the indefinite, but the enthusiastic and exciting answers, that are usually made to it.

"I hear thee speak of the better land,

Thou call'st its children a happy band;
Mother! oh where is that radiant shore ?
Shall we not seek it, and weep no more?—
Is it where the flower of the orange blows,
And the fire-flies dance through myrtle boughs ?”
-"Not there, not there, my child!"

"Is it where the feathery palm-trees rise,

And the date grows ripe under sunny skies ?—

Or 'midst the green islands of glittering seas,
Where fragrant forests perfume the breeze?
And strange, bright birds, on their starry wings,
Bear the rich hues of all glorious things?"

-"Not there, not there, my child!"

"Is it far away, in some region oid,

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Where the rivers wander o'er sands of gold ?—
Where the burning rays of the ruby shine,
And the diamond lights up the secret mine,
And the pearl gleams forth from the coral strand?
Is it there, sweet mother, that better land ?"
"Not there, not there, my child!

Eye hath not seen it, my gentle boy!
Ear hath not heard its deep sounds of joy;
Dreams cannot picture a world so fair;
Sorrow and death cannot enter there;
Time doth not breathe on its fadeless bloom,
For beyond the clouds and beyond the tomb,
-"It is there, it is there, my child!”

It is a less pleasing task to lay before you the descriptions which are presented to us of the region of endless misery. I select for that purpose the following from the pen of a much respected orthodox religionist, the Rev. Mr. Edwards, as given in his "Discourses on the Eternity of Hell Torments."

"Be entreated," says he, "to consider attentively how great and awful a thing eternity is. Although you cannot comprehend it the more by considering it, yet you may be made more sensible that it is not a thing to be disregarded. Do but consider what it is to suffer extreme pain for ever and ever; to suffer it day and night, from one day to another, from one year to another, from one age to another, from one thousand ages to another, and so adding age to age, and thousands to thousands, in pain, in wailing and lamenting, groaning and shrieking, and gnashing your teeth; with your souls full of dreadful grief and amazement, with your bodies and every member of them full of racking torture; without any possibility of getting ease; without any possibility of moving God to pity your cries; without any possibility of hiding yourselves from him; without any possibility of diverting your thoughts from your pain; without any possibility of obtaining any manner of mitigation, or help, or change for the better. How dismal will it be, when you are under these racking torments, to know assuredly that you never, never shall be delivered from them; to have no hope-when you shall wish that you might be turned into nothing, but shall have no hope of it; when you shall wish that you might be turned into a toad, or a serpent, but shall

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