following pages, to lift up his fellow-man to the consciousness of his dignity as a creature of God, occupying a position superior to every other. He has endeavoured to set before him the nobility of the soul within him, in order that he may the better realize the truthfulness of these words, "What can a man give in exchange for his soul?" So far as this great truth is recognized will the reader be enabled to apprehend the voice of truth, and aspire after a higher and better existence in a new body-a new constitution under totally different laws and governments than at present exists in a life of vanity, sorrow, and death. He will long for a new inheritance, incorruptible, undefiled, and unfading; which he will seek to possess through abiding in Him who saith, "I am the way, the truth, and the life,"-even in Jesus, The Life Eternal. See Truth, Love, and Mercy in triumph descending, And nature all glowing in Eden's first bloom; On the cold cheek of Death smiles and roses are blending, TO BE, OR NOT TO BE? CHAPTER I. WISDOM HATH WRITTEN IT. A good name is better than precious ointment; and the day of death than the day of one's birth.-ECCLES. vii. 1. ። "TO BE, or not to be? that is the question." This may be the question of the natural man, void of the light of revelation; but the man of faith who accepts this light ought to entertain no doubt about the matter, for he hears the voice of truth answering this important question:-" Fear not them who can kill the body (no, not the devil himself nor wicked men), for after that they have no more power over the soul that trusts in God, who receives it when committed to Him as a faithful B Creator, and keeps it in the security of His peace, until He will be pleased to reunite it to the body, in the day of the appearing of Him who is the Resurrection and the Life." The poet, remember, puts these words into the mouth of a man contemplating suicide, who, in the darkness of despair, reasons upon the existence or non-existence of the soul after death. When we consider the number of thinking and intelligent beings that have appeared on the earth from generation to generation, from Adam downwards; each one having a moral faculty within him called conscience, by which he is admonished of that which is good, and warned against that which is evil, we are led to ask, whither are all these thinking and intelligent beings gone? Have they perished for ever? Have they passed away like a vision of the night? Is no more seen or known of them? Or do they exist in a separate state, to appear again on this great globe where once they lived, and from which so many have been prematurely cut off and expelled? The voice of Revelation cries aloud, they do exist, and will yet appear, either for weal or woe, for happiness or misery, for good or for evil. The voice of Revelation proclaims that death, which dissolves all things, or turns them to decay, destroys not personal identity in the soul. The spirit lives, though the body turn to dust. Now, concerning personal identity or sameness, we know a person does not change in the midst of the changes and chances of this mortal life, for he remembers all things which have occurred in his eventful history, from his childhood upwards; he recalls former circumstances and past events; he passes through them in the way of remembrance and narration; and still continues the same: as regards his person, he is the same-ego, I myself. This truth the Apostle recognizes when he says "the outward man changes and perishes from day to day; yet the inward man continues from day to day to be renewed," and exists even when separated from the outward clothing of mortal flesh; he is sustained and kept in that state of existence, in order that he may again appear in flesh as his and eternal habitation. In the process of proper reasoning from analogy, we are naturally led to look to a future state; thus, as we have existed in various conditions, and passed from one stage to another, and each stage totally different, so we may well infer that we may yet exist in an entirely different state, and our personal identity not be destroyedi.e., we have grown up from infancy to childhood, from childhood to youth, from youth to manhood, and yet the personality of each individual has not been impaired or changed. Man is a being possessing certain feelings either of pain or happiness, both mental and bodily; death cannot destroy the sense of things in the soul which exists, i.e., death cannot destroy personal identity. As God, the source of life, exists-who is a Spirit, uncreated and infinite-so man exists as a spirit, created and finite: we know this from the revelation of the state of the departed in the Lord's narrative of the existence of the rich man and Lazarus after their separation from the body; and from the state of the departed martyrs beheld in vision by St. John, recorded in the Book of Revelation. Hence we infer that the person of a man must continue, though his bodily substance turn to other forms; the soul must exist in a form proper to it; to assert the contrary would be to deny the faith of all nations. The clothing of man's soul is in the earth, viz., his body; that which will give to it vitality and form will be the Word of God, recalling the reasonable soul or spirit to inhabit it again, that man, as man, may come forth and show himself perfect and entire, wanting nothing of his original constitution. Death is not the destruction of personal identity-the person continues to exist in a separate state, though imperfect as regards his constitution as created of God. Death seizes the |