general belief assures us, either that it is the remnant of a common faith, derived at first from a single revelation; or, that the instincts of our nature prompt everywhere the same conceptions. In either event, the Almighty has imparted, implanted, or permitted this universal persuasion; and, when we have separated the original, common foundation from the accidental and special additions, it is hardly in our power to doubt what all men have believed.

XXXIX.

Natural Prospect of Death.

"This is the chord of mournful tenderness

In heathen song, at every parting close

Returning, while with flowers their heads they dress,
That like those fading flowers the spirit goes
But to some unimagined, dread repose:

Still in the soul sounds the deep under-chime
Of some immeasurable, boundless time."

WILLIAMS.

So much can the mind reach, without the Christian revelation. The picture will be completed, when we have seen how, without that knowledge, men actually have died. History has preserved the last sayings of many illustrious Pagans. Travellers and missionaries have told us the feelings and expressions of the more barbarous heathen. In various narratives, and in the frequent experience of the day, we can observe the dying thoughts of those who have rejected the faith and hope of the Gospel.

Every sentiment that proceeds from the objects of this life alone would of course be found apart from the expectation of that life which is revealed hereafter. The high preference of heroic death to ignominious life; the affecting farewell of friendship; the firm endurance of extreme pain; the care to fall with dignity; the mighty rally of all the resources that human nature could gather, to meet an unknown future; the suggestions of philosophy; the willing submission to a common lot; the acquiescence in the will of the

Creator, that is enforced by reason and necessity; the weariness of this world, that follows experience of its toils, changes, and sufferings; the occasional flashes of imagination, brightening the scene beyond; all these belong to man in every state, however much they may be developed under the instruction of the word from heaven. More certain prospects, and clearer confidence, and positive joy could hardly proceed from the midst of so much dimness.

It is the remark of Doctor Judson, the missionary, that the heathen of Burmah notice with astonishment the welcome which the Christian converts are enabled to give to death. The Indian savage, however, has often exulted at the very stake, in a kind of frantic defiance of his enemies. The Hindoo woman has sat down to her fate, tranquil and triumphant upon the pile. Regner Lodbrog, king of the pirate Danes in the eighth century, was taken captive by the Saxons, and thrown into a dungeon amongst serpents, to be bitten till he died. A song remains which in that terrible condition he composed; and every line breathes fiery scorn, delight in his bloody deeds, and proud anticipation of the heaven of the Northern barbarians:

"Me to their feast the gods must call:

The brave man wails not o'er his fall."

All which has power to kindle the imagination, can nerve men against the mere dread of dying; and the dreams and falsehoods which have been built on the foundation of the natural sense of immortality have power to kindle the imagination. There has never been amongst the heathen any such fear of death as would have forbidden them to brave its terrors in martial contests. The mind, stung by the desire of revenge, or sustained by pride, or exalted into heroism, has dared

or endured all which is most terrific, and has even rushed into the arms of destruction.

It was generally true, indeed, of the heathen, that they shrank as they approached the grave, and felt an undefined apprehension. Some mighty impulse was required, to lift them above this apprehension; and then the spirit was, as it were, intoxicated with its wild. dream, or overpowering passion. When men sat calmly down to contemplate the prospect before them, they could attain no more than a resigned uncertainty. Socrates spent his last hour in cheerful discourse with his friends on immortality, and then drank the hemlock, as one who was presently to know the truth or falsehood of all which he hoped; and his last words bade Crito sacrifice a cock to Esculapius; for he complied with the observances of his nation, knowing no purer ritual. Cyrus the Great is represented as saying to his sons when he died, "I never could believe that the soul dies, and has no life separate from the body; but if I should be mistaken, still fear ye the gods, who never die ;"and if these sentiments are to be viewed as those of the narrator rather than the king, that narrator was Xenophon, the disciple of Socrates. In the verses of the dying emperor, Adrian, he addresses his soul as a fluttering stranger, about to wing its way from its accustomed pleasures to an unknown region. Julian died with expressions of joy, that the purer and better part of his nature was soon to be released from the grosser body, and that he was reconciled to the gods and the

stars.

There is, in deaths like these, the vagueness of anticipation, which indeed, without revelation, could never be removed. It is still more striking in modern unbelievers, from the contrast with the prevailing hopes

and fears of their fellow-men in Christendom. They have not spoken of any beam of light, across the unfathomable future. But, both in Pagans and in infidels, the human spirit has been found able to look, not with joy, but without agitation, into such a region of shadows, clouds, and darkness. This was not the result of any knowledge of the world after death, which had been drawn from reasoning or from tradition. It is but the natural consciousness of immortality. Man does not expect perpetual extinction; and, gathering all his courage, he goes on; borne up, it is true, by the connection which he still feels between himself and the world which he is leaving. One of the most memorable of such scenes, was that of the last hour of those Girondist members of the National Convention who perished together by the guillotine. They were permitted to hold a kind of banquet in their prison; and till the break of day they prolonged their discourse. Most of them, though educated in the Roman communion, were Deists, and rejected the services of the confessor who was waiting at the door, and who heard their conversation; but a few had not become unbelievers, and one had been a bishop, and one a Protestant minister. They talked of their country, of Europe, of their party, of their enemies; when, towards morning, one of the youngest and lightest said, "Where shall we all be, at this time to-morrow?" Their countenances were overspread with solemnity; they spoke in lower tones; they spoke of the immortality of the spirit ; they reasoned, some like heathen philosophers, two or three like Christian believers. At length, one said, "Let us go to sleep; life is not worth the hour which we are wasting in thinking of its loss." "Let us watch," said others; "eternity is too serious and too