372 



ON THE NATURE AND 



discover new truths, it prepares, or should prepare, the mind for appre- 

 hending those that are already in existence with a greater facihty, and far 

 more accurately appreciating their value. 



In our last lecture we took a glance at several of the discordant opinions, 

 supported respectively by men of the deepest learning and research, that 

 have been offered in relation to the essence of the mind or soul ; and 

 showed by a scale of analysis conducted through all the most striking 

 modifications of that plastic and fugitive substance which composes the 

 whole of the visible world, that all such discussions must be necessarily un- 

 certain^ and considerably less likely to be productive of truth than of error. 

 But there is a question of far more consequence to us than the nature of 

 the soul's essence, and that is, the nature of its duration. Is the soul im- 

 mortal ? Is it capable of a separate existence ? Does it perish with the 

 body as a part of it ? Or if a distinct principle, does it vanish into 

 nothingness as soon as the separation takes place ? What does philosophy 

 offer upon this subject ? This too has been studied from age to age ; the ' 

 wisest of mankind have tried it in every possible direction : new opinions 

 have been started, and old opinions revived ; — and what, after all, is the 

 upshot ? The reply is as humihating as in the former case ; vanity of 

 vanities, and nothing more ; utter doubt and indecision, — hope perpetually 

 neutralized by fear. 



If we turn to the oldest hypotheses of the East, — to the Vedas of the 

 Bramins and the Zendavesta of the Parsees, — to those venerable but 

 fanciful stores of learning, from which many of the earliest Greek schools 

 drew their first draughts of metaphysical science, we shall find indeed a 

 full acknowledgment of the immortality of the soul, but only upon the 

 subhme and mystical doctrine of emanation and immanation, as a part of 

 the great soul of the universe ; issuing from it at birth, and resorbed into 

 it upon the death of the body ; and hence altogether incapable of indivi- 

 dual being, or a separate state of existence. If we turn from Persia, 

 Egypt, and Hindustan to Arabia, to the fragrant groves and learned shades 

 of Dedan and Teman, from which it is certain that Persia, and highly 

 probable that Hindustan derived its first polite literature, we shall find the 

 entire subject left in as blank and barren a silence, as the deserts by which 

 they are surrounded ; or, if touched upon, only touched upon to betray 

 doubt, and sometimes disbelief The tradition, indeed, of a future state 

 of retributive justice seems to have reached the schools of this part of the 

 world, and to have been generally, though perhaps not universally, ac- 

 credited ; but the future existence it alludes to is that of a resurrection of 

 the body, and not of a survival of the soul after the body's dissolution. 

 The oldest work that has descended to us from this quarter (and there is 

 little doubt that it is the oldest, or one of the oldest works in existence)^ 

 is that astonishing and transcendant composition, the book of Job ; — a 

 work that ought assuredly to raise the genius of Idumaea above that of 

 Greece, and that of itself is demonstrative of the indefatigable spirit with 

 which the deepest as well as the most polished sciences were pursued in 

 this region, during what may be comparatively called the youth and day- 

 spring of the world. Yet in this sublime and magnificent poem, replete 

 with all the learning and wisdom of the age, the doctrine upon the sub- 

 ject before us is merely, as I have just stated it, a patriarchal or tradition- 

 ary belief of a future state of retributive justice, not by the natural im- 

 mortality of the soul, but by a resurrection of the body. , And the same 



* Ser. IL Lect. X. 



