296 MEMOIR OF THOMAS BEWICK. 



systems of morality, which all lend their help to 

 lead him in the paths of rectitude in this state he 

 sees himself surrounded by the wonders of crea- 

 tion, and furnished with passions given him for 

 the wisest purposes, to spur him on to exertions 

 without which the affairs of this beautiful w r orld 

 would soon be at a stand-still, and he would then 

 soon revert to unintellectual apathy or savage bar- 

 barity, and would cease to adore God, and seek His 

 providential care and protection. But, when the 

 passions are not fully kept under by the reasoning 

 guide, man feels himself to be a strange compound 

 a heterogeneous mixture of pure metal and base 

 alloy, and placed in the infancy of an endless, and 

 therefore an infinitely important and mysterious, 

 but conscious existence. " Wonderfully and fear- 

 fully made," he views with amazement " this 

 pleasing, anxious being" this spirit confined in 

 mortality with Heaven's own pilot placed within as 

 its guide, and a soul, fed like the flame of a lamp, 

 to enlighten his path to eternity. Thus prepared 

 by the hand of Omnipotence, his reasoning powers 

 commence their operations ; his mind is then his 

 kingdom, and his will his law as to his deeds in 

 this life, but for which he must render an account 

 before the justice of his Maker, in another state of 

 existence in another world ; otherwise he has lived 

 in vain in this. If he avails himself of the reasoning 

 power, the choicest gift of his Maker, and by w r hich 

 He has revealed Himself to man, then will he feel 

 something of a foretaste of the future happiness he 

 is preparing for himself in eternity. But if he will 

 perversely cease to commune with his own soul, or 

 reject its admonitions, and turn away from them, 

 he thus puts himself under another guide, and must 



