140 APPENDIX. [sect. 



flashed upon her awakened consciousness in moments when 

 desires after God, holiness, purity and perfect happiness 

 electrify her inmost being, — that some better, purer and 

 more enduring dwelling-place than earth is the home for 

 which she would agonize as earnestly as she would desire it 

 by her nature, if she knew but how to realize its blessed- 

 ness 1 . 



We shall shortly see how that this general belief, though 

 true in form, is signally different from Christ's Gospel in one 

 fundamental particular : the effect of this difference being 



1 Dr Samuel Clarke, in his valuable and now but little known Boyle 

 Lecture, on "The truth and certainty of the Christian Revelation," brings 

 together a number of testimonies from celebrated heathen writers, who 

 speak with as clear an assurance of their belief in the immortality of the 

 soul as ever does St Paul, but without his revealed authority ; and with 

 the omission of the necessarily twin doctrine of the resurrection of the 

 body. 



Socrates and Plato write with singular force with reference to the 

 immortality of the soul, as also does Cicero. The great difference be- 

 tween these, together with all other heathen authors, and the Christian 

 writers, being that the former always refer to the soul in the future state 

 as a disembodied spirit, and the latter as being joined to a glorified body. 



Dr Clarke endeavours to shew the natural credibility of the soul's 

 being immortal : — 



i . From the necessity of a future state, in order to satisfy God's 

 justice in setting straight the apparent inequalities of his moral govern- 

 ment of mankind in this life. 



i. Even from the nature of the thing itself in believing the soul to 

 be immortal. 



3. That necessary desire of immortality which seems to be naturally 

 implanted in all men, with an unavoidable concern for what is to come 

 hereafter. 



4. That conscience or consciousness which all men have of their own 

 actions, or that inward judgment which they necessarily pass on them 

 in their own minds. " Their conscience bearing witness, and their thoughts 

 accusing or else excusing one another." 



5. That man is plainly in his nature an accountable being, and 

 capable of being judged. Prop. IV. 



