that are formed here, may have a suitable employment and reward.

2. There is in the human faculties a capacity for endless improvement, in a con ́ftant advance from fenfual to intellectual pleasures, and thefe growing more complex and refined ad infinitum, provided it was not checked by that change in our constitution, which is at prefent produced by our approach to old age. Our comprehenfion of mind, likewife, increases with the experience of every day; whereby we are capable of enjoying more of the past and of the future together with the prefent, without limits, and whereby our happiness is capable of growing continually more stable and more exalted. In comparison of what we are evidently capable of, our present being is but the infancy of man. Here we acquire no more than the rudiments of knowledge and happinefs. And can it be confiftent with the wisdom of God, to leave his workmanfhip fo unfinished, as it muft be, if a final

ftop

ftop be put to all our improvements at death?

It is true, that we have no faculties but. what have fome proper exercife in this life, and there is a kind of redundancy in all the powers of nature. It is the best provifion against a deficiency. Brute creatures too have faculties fimilar to ours, fince they differ from us in degree more than in kind. But then the difference is fo great, especially with refpect to fome men and fome brutes, and man is fo evidently the most distinguished of all the creatures of God upon the face of the earth, that there feems to be foundation enough for our expecting a preference in this respect. Or, if the brute creation.fhould be interested in a future life, we fhall certainly have more reason to rejoice in it, than to be offended at it; and many of them feem to have more pain than pleasure in this..

We fee, indeed, that many things never actually arrive at what we call their G 5. perfect

perfect state. For example, few feeds ever become plants, and few plants live to bear fruit; but ftill fome of each species come to maturity, and are whatever their nature is capable of being. Allowing, therefore, that, agreeably to this analogy, very few of mankind should arrive at the proper perfection of their natures, we might imagine that, at least, fome would; and therefore that the wife and the virtuous, if none else, might hope to furvive that wreck, that would overwhelm the common mass of their species.

It must be acknowledged that, confidering only what we know of the conftitution of the body and the mind of man, we fee no reason to expect that we shall furvive death. The faculties and operations of the mind evidently depend upon the state of the body, and particularly that of the brain. To all appearance, they grow, decay, and perish together. But if the goodness, the wisdom, and the rectitude of the divine being require it,

he

he can easily revive both, or continue the fame confcioufnefs (which is, in fact, ourfelves) in fome other way,

If we had known nothing of a child but its condition in the womb, we should have pronounced, that its fudden transition into a state fo different from it as that which it comes into after birth, would be certain death to it, though, now that we are acquainted with both the ftates, and can compare them together, we fee that the one is preparatory to the other. Equally unfit are we, in this life, to pronounce concerning the real nature of what we call death; and when we actually come to live again, we may fee an evident, and even a natural connection betwixt this life and the future, and may then understand the use of death, as a paffage from the one to the other; juft as we now see the neceffity of the birth of a child, in order to its transition to our prefent mode of existence.

Admitting

Admitting that death is an intire ceffation of thought, fimilar to a ftate of perfectly found fleep, or a ftupor, yet, if the purposes of God's providence and moral government require it, he can make us to awake from this fleep at any distance of time; and then the interval, let it have been ever so long, will appear as nothing

to us.

I cannot fay that I lay much stress upon the arguments which fome have drawn either from the defire, or the belief of a future life among mankind; because the former is nothing, in fact, but a defire of happinefs, and fimilar to other defires, which, in a thousand respects, we do not fee to be gratified; and other general opinions may perhaps be mentioned, which, nevertheless, are not true..

The general belief and expectation of a future life is a confideration of importance, but only as a proof of an early tradition, which was probably denied from fome