526 
REFLECTIONS. 
share the immortality of the resurrection, but of the heathen 
world; where little was commonly known from religion, but 
directions for its rites. Man, left entirely to his own conjectures 
respecting his nature, cannot fail to be anxious about what may 
be the condition of the only part of himself of which he has any 
certain knowledge, his body, after that dereliction of all its 
powers which we call death; since he can by no means be sure 
how long his consciousness of being may, some way, be con¬ 
nected with that body. Hence we find the misery recorded by 
poets of Greece and Rome, of a ghost fated to wander the 
shores of Styx, till his corse has derived the rites of sepulture. 
This impression being generally received, was enough to make 
all men in those ages, solicitous to prepare their own place of 
lasting repose ; and, when kings had the object so entirely in 
their own power, it is not to be doubted they would also make 
it a part of their magnificence. Besides, we have it in many a 
page of history that from the twilight view which even the wisest 
of them had of man’s future eternal state, they so mingled its 
spirituality with the grossest matter, that they supposed his 
heavenly happiness increased in proportion to the offerings 
consecrated at his tomb, and to the living creatures sacrificed to 
his manes. The heart is often inclined to two opposite actions, 
with regard to a departed person high in its esteem : to pray for 
his felicity one moment, and to beseech his intercession for com¬ 
fort to itself, in the next. Something of this enthusiasm of regret 
on one side, as well as of antecedent pride on the other, has, 
doubtless, been instrumental in elevating the heroes of antiquity 
to the honours of deification. And, again; the same human 
judgment which made men gods, estimated the dispositions of 
gods by the temper of men, and supposed that the new inmate 
