GOODKESS OF THE DEITY. 323 



some time ago have met it in health. There is no slinih- 

 tude between the sensations of a man led to execution and 

 the calm expiring of a patient at the close of his disease. 

 Death to him is only the last of a long train of changes ; in 

 his progress through which, it is possible that he may expe- 

 rience no shocks or sudden transitions. 



Deatlb itself, as a mode of removal and of succession, ia 

 so connected with the whole order of our animal world, that 

 almost every thing in that world must be changed, to be 

 able to do without it. It may seem likewise impossible to 

 separate the fear of death from the enjoyment of life, or the 

 perception of that fear from rational natures. Brutes are in 

 a great measure delivered from all anxiety on this account 

 by the inferiority of their faculties ; or rather, they seem to 

 be armed with the apprehension of death just sufficiently to 

 put them upon the means of preservation, and no further. 

 But would a human being wish to purchase this immunity 

 at the expense of those mental poM^ers which enable him to 

 look forward to the future ? 



Death implies separation; and the loss of those whom 

 we love must necessarily, so far as we can conceive, be ac- 

 com.panied with pain. To the brute creation, nature seems 

 to have stepped in with some secret provision for their relief, 

 under the rupture of their attachments. In their instincts 

 towards their ofispring, and of their offspring to them, I 

 have often been surprised to observe how ardently they love 

 and how soon they forget. The pertinacity of human sor- 

 row — upon which time also at length lays its softening 

 hand — is probably, therefore, in some manner connected 

 with the qualities of our rational or moral nature. One 

 thing however is clear, namely, that it is better that we 

 should possess aflections, the sources of so many virtues and 

 60 many joys, although they be exposed to the incidents of 

 life as well as the interruptions of mortality, than, by the 

 want of them, be reduced to a stale of selfishness apathy, and 

 quietism. 



