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which I poffefs; and can pafs through this turbid, this fickle, fleeting period, without bewailings, or envyings, or murmurings, or complaints.

HARRIS.

CHAPTER III.

THE SAME SUBJECT.

ALL men purfue good, and would be happy, if they knew. how; not happy for minutes, and miferable for hours; but happy, if poffible, through every part of their exift

ence.

Either therefore there is a good of this steady durable kind, or there is none. If none, then all good must be tranfient and uncertain; and if fo, an object of lowest value, which can little deferve either our attention or inquiry. But if there be a better good, fuch a good as we are seeking; like every other thing, it must be derived from fome caufe, and that cause must be either external, internal, or mixed, in as much as except these three, there is no other poffible. Now a steady, durable good, cannot be derived from an external caufe, by reafon all derived from externals muft fluctuate, as they fluctuate. By the fame rule, not from a mixture of the two; because the part which is external will proportionally deftroy its effence. What then remains but the cause internal; the very cause which we have fuppofed, when we place the fove.eign good in mind-in rectitude of conduct?

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HARRIS.

CHAPTER IV.

ON THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL.

AMONG other excellent arguments for the immortality of the foul, there is one drawn from the perpetual progress of the foul to its perfection, without a poffibility of ever

arriving at it; which is a hint that I do not remember to have feen opened and improved by others who have written on this fubject, though it seems to me to carry a great weight with it. How can it enter into the thoughts of man, that the foul, which is capable of fuch immense perfections, and of receiving new improvements to all eternity, fhall fall away into nothing almost as soon as it is created! Are fuch abilities made for no purpose? A brute arrives at a point of perfection that he can never pass; in a few years he has all the endowments he is capable of; and were he to live ten thousand more, would be the fame thing he is at present. Were a human foul thus at a ftand in her accomplishments, were her faculties to be fulf blown, and incapable of farther enlargements, I could imagine it might fall away infenfibly, and drop at once into a state of annihilation. But can we believe a thinking being, that is in a perpetual progrefs of improvements, and travelling on from perfection to perfection, after having just looked abroad into the works of its Creator, and made a few difcoveries of his infinite goodnefs, wisdom, and power, must perish at her firft fetting out, and in the very beginning of her inquiries>

Man, confidered in his prefent ftate, feems only fent into the world to propagate his kind. He provides himself with a fucceffor, and immediately quits his poft to make room for him.

He does not feem born to enjoy life, but to deliver it down to others. This is not furprising to confider in animals, which are formed for our use, and can finish their bufiness in a short life. The filk-worm, after having spun her talk, lays her eggs and dies. But in this life, man can never take in his full measure of knowledge; nor has he time to fubdue his paffions, establish his foul in virtue, and come up to the perfection of his nature, before he is hurried off the ftage. Would an infinitely wife Being

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make such glorious creatures for fo mean a purpose? Can he delight in the production of fuch abortive intelligences, fuch short-lived reasonable beings? Would he give us talents that are not to be exerted? Capacities that are never to be gratified? How can we find that wifdom which fhines through all his works, in the formation of man, without looking on this world as only a nursery for the next, and believing that the feveral generations of rational creatures, which rife up and disappear in fuch quick fucceffions, are only to receive their first rudiments of existence here, and afterwards to be transplanted into a more friendly climate, where they may spread and flourish to all eternity?

There is not, in my opinion, a more pleafing and triumphant confideration in religion, than this of the perpe-tual progrefs which the foul-makes towards the perfection of its nature, without ever arriving at a period in it. To look upon the foul as going on from strength to strength, to confider that he is to shine for ever with new accef-fions of glory, and brighten to all eternity; that the will ftill be adding virtue to virtue, and knowledge to knowledge; carries in it fomething wonderfully agreeable to that ambition which is natural to the mind of man. Nay, it must be a profpect pleafing to God himself, to fee his creation for ever beautifying in his eyes, and drawing. nearer to him, by greater degrees of refemblance.

Methinks this single confideration, of the progrefs of as finite fpirit to perfection, will be fufficient to extinguish all envy in inferior natures, and all contempt in superior. That cherub, which now appears as a god to a human foul, knows very well that the period will come about in eternity, when the human foul fhall be as perfect as he himself now is: nay, when the fhall look down upon that degree of perfection, as much as the now falls fhort of it.. It is true, the higher nature fill advances, and by that

means preferves his distance and fuperiority in the scale of being; but he knows that, how high foever the station is of which he ftands possessed at present, the inferior nature will at length mount up to it, and fhine forth in the fame degree of glory.

With what astonishment and veneration may we look into our fouls, where there are fuch hidden ftores of virtue and knowledge, such inexhausted sources of perfec tion! We know not yet what we shall be, nor will it ever enter into the heart of man to conceive the glory that will be always in reserve for him. The foul, confidered in relation to its Creator, is like one of thofe mathematical lines that may draw nearer to another for all eternity, without a poffibility of touching it: and can there be a thought fo tranfporting, as to confider ourselves in thefe perpetual approaches to Him, who is not only the ftandard of perfection, but of happiness.

SPECTATOR

CHAPTER V.

ON THE BEING OF A GOD.

RETIRE; the world' fhut out;thy thoughts call home;

Imagination's airy wing reprefs;-

Lock up thy fenfes;-let no paffion stir ;

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Wake all to reafon-let her reign alone;-
Then, in thy foul's deep filence, and the depth
Of nature's filence, midnight, thus inquire:

What am I? and from whence?-I nothing know,
But that I am; and, fince I am, conclude
Something eternal; had there e'er been nought,
Nought ftill had been: eternal there must be.→→→
But what eternal?-Why not human race?

And Adam's ancestors without an end?
That's hard to be conceiv'd; fince ev'ry link
Of that long chain'd fucceffion is fo frail;
Can every part depend, and not the whole?
Yet grant it true; new difficulties rife ;
I'm still quite out at fea; nor fee the shore.

Whence earth, and these bright orbs?-Eternal too?--
Grant matter was eternal: ftill these orbs

Would want fome other father: much defign
Is feen in all their motions, all their makes;

Design implies intelligence, and art:

That can't be from themselves-or man; that art
Man can scarce comprehend, could man bestow?
And nothing greater, yet allow'd, than man.
Who motion, foreign to the smallest grain,
Shot thro' vaft maffes of enormous weight?
Who bid rude matter's reftive lump affume
Such various forms, and gave it wings to fly?
Has matter innate motion? Then each atom,
Afferting its indifputable right

To dance, would form an universe of dust.

Has matter none? Then whence thefe glorious forms,
And boundless flights, from fhapelefs, and repos'd?
Has matter more than motion? Has it thought,
Judgment, and genius? Is it deeply learn'd
In mathematics? Has it fram'd fuch laws,
Which, but to guefs, a Newton made immortal?
If art to form; and counfel to conduct;
And that with greater far than human skill;
Refides not in each block;-a GODHEAD reigns.-
And, if a Gop there is, that God how great!

YOUNG.

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