138 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



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 

 farther. But would a human being wish to pur- 

 chase this immunity at the expense of those men- 

 tal powers 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 accompanied 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 in- 

 stincts towards their offspring, and of their off- 

 spring to them, I have often been surprised to ob- 

 serv^e how ardently they love, and how soon they 

 forget. The pertinacity of human sorrow (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, viz. that it is better 

 that we should possess affections, the sources of 

 so many virtues, and so 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 state of selfishness, apathy, 

 and quietism.^ 



Of other external evils, (still confining ourselves 



*i The remarks made in the two former notes (2 and 31) arc 

 applicable to this part of the text also- 



