rage life of man at forty years, and that age is above the true one; analyze it, and about thirteen years and four months are consumed in sleep. Take childhood and boyhood, with their helplessness and playfulness, and eight years more come off; to which add the waste from idleness or repose, eating and drinking, say, four years, and there is left for mental receiving and giving, only fifteen years in a man's life.

While pondering on the brief period the practical part of man was in action, and how limited his time to take advantage of those opportunities; the problem arose why has the great Creator ordained that so much of a man's life should be passed in oblivion, in a kind of death-life called SLEEP. One day the solution seemed to flash on my mind, and the whole appeared as plain as many-as all developments of God's wisdom, knowledge, and power appear, when the key fits the wards and opens to our view the "Palace of angels and God." Since then, the brightness of the key has been dimmed by the rust of the every-day duties of life; but doubtless a little of the oil of thought applied by the reader to the rough idea thrown out, will enable him to try for himself the power of the instrument I wish to place in his hands.

We are now about to tread on new ground; to examine the -evidences which can be produced, to prove that man will never die; that the chrysalis can be left to corruption, but that the vital, intelligent power which heretofore vitalized that chrysalis, has merely changed its mode of action; and that its life still continues. It behoves us to mark well our past knowledge of the physical and mental nature of man, what it can do in its compound or normal state, and what it cannot do; and, if possible, lay hold of the link which joins the one to the other, so that each may stand out clear. This is the more necessary, as the casual observer may, on the one hand, attribute all to the supernatural, while another, as careless an observer, may attribute all to the natural. The activity of man during the day, and the known activity of man during the night, leads to the conclusion that he is, during so called sleep, using his

powers, or the powers at his disposal, in preparation for another state of existence. The boy at school, the apprentice at business, each undergoes a training to fit him for higher states of knowledge and usefulness; and I think that during so-called sleep, the spirit in man is at the school, is at the workshop of immortality; being in communion with, and in training by, an unseen race of intelligences for the future of his history; and, dependent on the correctness and skill he manifests in the acquisition of knowledge, so will be his position in that unseen world when the chrysalis is thrown off; as our youth when they leave our schools and colleges, according to their earnestness and assiduity during school life, find their level in society. In this declaration of my thinkings, I am not guided by theological schools, be they believers in election, or free salvation; be they Mahomedan or Brahmin; be they sun or crocodile worshippers, or of any of the multitudinous lath-splittings from the tree of theology. I take my stand on the broad basis of God's love to man, as shown in the profuse distribution of beauty and usefulness with which He has surrounded man in every quarter of the globe; and in his giving him the mental powers he is possessed of, and which are evidently constructed for using those productions for his personal comfort and happiness. It follows as a natural result, that if any portion of the Christian world is to live after the death of the body, all men have to live; and if they have so to live, they must have employment, so as to create enjoyment, or they will be reduced to a state of laziness,-the most misery-making condition man can be placed in. I enter not now into what those duties are, because I know of myself nothing. Many persons have told me that the sole employment of the happy man will Singing Hallelujah, and that for ever." Others have told me it will be, "To roam from star to star." Others, that it will be "To nestle in the personal bosom of the Saviour;" though how the "Multitude which no man can number" can do so, I cannot comprehend. Frankly, I think that fre quently these metaphors have in some minds hid the principle;

be,

rage life of man at forty years, and that age is above the true one; analyze it, and about thirteen years and four months are consumed in sleep. Take childhood and boyhood, with their helplessness and playfulness, and eight years more come off; to which add the waste from idleness or repose, eating and drinking, say, four years, and there is left for mental receiving and giving, only fifteen years in a man's life.

While pondering on the brief period the practical part of man was in action, and how limited his time to take advantage of those opportunities; the problem arose why has the great Creator ordained that so much of a man's life should be passed in oblivion, in a kind of death-life called SLEEP. One day the solution seemed to flash on my mind, and the whole appeared as plain as many-as all developments of God's wisdom, knowledge, and power appear, when the key fits the wards and opens to our view the "Palace of angels and God." Since then, the brightness of the key has been dimmed by the rust of the every-day duties of life; but doubtless a little of the oil of thought applied by the reader to the rough idea thrown out, will enable him to try for himself the power of the instrument I wish to place in his hands.

We are now about to tread on new ground; to examine the evidences which can be produced, to prove that man will never die; that the chrysalis can be left to corruption, but that the vital, intelligent power which heretofore vitalized that chrysalis, has merely changed its mode of action; and that its life still continues. It behoves us to mark well our past knowledge of the physical and mental nature of man, what it can do in its compound or normal state, and what it cannot do; and, if possible, lay hold of the link which joins the one to the other, so that each may stand out clear. This is the more necessary, as the casual observer may, on the one hand, attribute all to the supernatural, while another, as careless an observer, may attribute all to the natural. The activity of man during the day, and the known activity of man during the night, leads to the conclusion that he is, during so called sleep, using his

powers, or the powers at his disposal, in preparation for another state of existence. The boy at school, the apprentice at business, each undergoes a training to fit him for higher states of knowledge and usefulness; and I think that during so-called sleep, the spirit in man is at the school, is at the workshop of immortality; being in communion with, and in training by, an unseen race of intelligences for the future of his history; and, dependent on the correctness and skill he manifests in the acquisition of knowledge, so will be his position in that unseen world when the chrysalis is thrown off; as our youth when they leave our schools and colleges, according to their earnestness and assiduity during school life, find their level in society. In this declaration of my thinkings, I am not guided by theological schools, be they believers in election, or free salvation; be they Mahomedan or Brahmin; be they sun or crocodile worshippers, or of any of the multitudinous lath-splittings from the tree of theology. I take my stand on the broad basis of God's love to man, as shown in the profuse distribution of beauty and usefulness with which He has surrounded man in every quarter of the globe; and in his giving him the mental powers he is possessed of, and which are evidently constructed for using those productions for his personal comfort and happiIt follows as a natural result, that if any portion of the Christian world is to live after the death of the body, all men have to live; and if they have so to live, they must have employment, so as to create enjoyment, or they will be reduced to a state of laziness,-the most misery-making condition man can be placed in. I enter not now into what those duties are, because I know of myself nothing. Many persons have told me that the sole employment of the happy man will be, "Singing Hallelujah, and that for ever." Others have told me it will be, "To roam from star to star." Others, that it will be "To nestle in the personal bosom of the Saviour;" though how the "Multitude which no man can number" can do so, I cannot comprehend. Frankly, I think that frequently these metaphors have in some minds hid the principle;

ness.

as an orange placed too near the eye to illustrate the form and appearance of the sun, may hide the great luminary. I would therefore follow the tracks of Deity in His expansiveness, and conclude, that if man is to be immortal; he has so ordered it, that the faculties he has given to man are for, and will have to be used in, his future and (to us) invisible state.

I shall have shortly to enter upon a consideration of the evidences we have had, and may have, to settle the vital questions, Is physical death mental extinction? or, Is man immortal? I have shown to the reader the extraordinary faculties man is possessed of, and the near approach there is in their nature and energy to what man is understood to be, as an ethereal being or spirit; and granting that our future investigations will settle our minds in the firm conviction that man is immortal, then the idea I have thrown out in this Section is worthy of thoughtful examination. If sleep be the school for learning the duties of another mode of existence; then I can see the reason why the Creator has arranged that so large a portion of our life should be absorbed in so-called sleep. Man, whether as a civilised or a savage being, appears to have within him an echo of eternity; there is an undefinable something of the supernatural about him. This is not the effect of religious training; because wherever you find him, you perceive an instinctive feeling, that a higher range of mental power is guiding, or endeavouring to guide, his destiny; that feeling shapes itself according to the character of his surroundings. The savage hunter thinks his fathers have gone to their spiritual hunting-grounds; the Hindoo widows burn themselves, so that they may be with their husbands. The Mahomedan, governed by the physical beauties of animate and inanimate nature by which he is environed, conceives his future to be a heaven of the same character, but in a more ecstatic condition. Go where you will, wherever you find man, his conceptions are governed by the physical of the longitude and latitude of the world he stands in; and rightly and naturally so. Principles must be personified, otherwise they