The immortality of the soul was one of the distinguishing doctrines of Socrates, and the assertion of it formed the great charm of the Phædon to Cicero and the most enlightened Romans. It became Plato's most valued work, for this reason, as detailing the last conversation of Socrates with his friends just before he took the poison to which he had been sentenced. His mode of reasoning will be illustrated by a brief extract from the Phædon:

S. "Answer me; what is that which, when in the body, makes it alive?"

Kebes. "The soul."

S. "Will it always be so?"

K. "How can it be otherwise?"

S. "Will the soul, then, always bring life to whatever it occupies?"

K. "Certainly."

S. "Is there any thing contrary to life, or nothing?"
K. "There is."

S. "What?"

K. "Death."

S. "Will the soul receive the contrary to what it introduces?"

K. "By no means."

S. "But what do we call that which does not receive death?"

K. "Immortal."

S. "The soul will not receive death, you say?"

K. "No."

S. "Is the soul, then, immortal?"

K. "It is immortal."

S. "When, therefore, death comes upon a man, what is mortal in him perishes, as it is seen to do; but what is immortal withdraws itself from death, safe and uncorrupted?" K. "This is clear."

S. "We may, then, be sure that, more than all things, O Kebes! the soul is immortal and incorruptible, and that our souls will still be in existence in Hades.”*

Seneca, the celebrated philosopher, referring to this universal concurrent belief of the soul's immortality, says: “On the question of the immortality of the soul, it goes very far with me, a general consent to the opinions of a future state of rewards and punishments, the meditation of which raises me to a contempt of this life in hopes of a better." And, after surveying the arguments of the philosophers in favor of the soul's immortality, he exclaims, "I am strangely transported with the thoughts of eternity; nay, with the belief of it."

The eloquent Cicero-one of the greatest orators of antiquity, and one of the most learned and talented men that Rome ever produced-argues as follows: "If I am wrong in believing the souls of men immortal, I please myself in my mistake; nor while I live will I ever choose that this opinion, with which I am so much delighted, should ever be wrested from me." There is a spice of genuine wit, as well as of sublime philosophy, when he adds, "But if at death I am to be annihilated, as some philosophers suppose, I am not afraid lest those wise men, when extinct too, should laugh at my error."

The Roman Emperor, Adrian, in his celebrated address to his soul, clearly indicates, amid the darkness and doubt of heathenism, his apprehension of the fact that the soul in death did not become extinct, but took its flight to some unknown sphere.

"Poor, little, pretty, fluttering thing,

Must we no longer live together?
And dost thou prune thy trembling wing,
To take thy flight, thou know'st not whither?

*Turner's Sacred History, I, p. 102.

Thy pleasing vein, thy humorous folly,

Lies all neglected, all forgot!

And pensive, wavering, melancholy,

Thou hop'st, and fear'st, thou know'st not what."

The ancient Scandinavians taught that the brave were to revel forever in the halls of Valhalla, and drink mead offered them by maidens, from the skulls of their enemies. The future condition of the soul is differently described among different nations; but this one idea that death was not the destruction of the living soul-is apparent in all their traditions and in all their rites. This notion prevailed among the Celts and Druids, the Aztecs and Peruvians, and is found with the inhabitants of the islands of the oceanthe Society Islands, the Friendly Islands, Pelew Islands, and New Zealanders; in Asia, among the Burmans, Samoyedians, the Kalmuc Tartars; in Africa, among the Gallus, Mandingoes, Jaloffs, Feloops, Foulahs, and Moors; and in fine, every-where does it exist, so far as examination has gone. Among the Indians of North America, the doctrine of the soul's immortality was universally recognized. William Penn says of the Indians of that early time: "These poor people are under a dark night, in things pertaining to religion, yet they believe in a God and immortality, without the help of metaphysics." The common idea of the race was that in the future life he would be permitted to enter the great hunting grounds above, where innumerable herds of deer and buffaloes graze upon the verdant hills, and ruminate in the fertile valleys; where the "pale face shall trouble no more." Mr. Pope has given a beautiful versification of this sublime conception of the darkened nature of the savage:

"Lo! the poor Indian, whose untutor'd mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;
Whose soul proud science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk or milky way-

Yet simple nature to his hope has given,
Behind the cloud-topt hill, a humbler heaven;

Some safer world in depth of woods embraced,
Some happier island in the watery waste,
Where slaves once more their native land behold,
No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold-
And thinks, admitted to yon equal sky,

His faithful dog shall bear him company."

We might multiply these authorities indefinitely. It may be that a few among the ancient philosophers rejected the doctrine of the soul's immortality, or were in doubt concerning it, just as, in the present day, every Christian doctrine the most clearly established even-has its skeptics and doubters. But that, by no means, impugns the assertion that all nations and all peoples, on the face of the earth, have, as an aggregate, credited the soul's immortality. In a word, it has been the sentiment of humanity in all ages.

In vain do the modern annihilationists, like Storrs, and Hudson, and Dobney, and even Dr. Whately, attempt to deny or throw doubt over the fact of this universal belief.

It comes up in all the poetry, the mythology, and the history of antiquity. It is inwrapped as an element of nearly every philosophy. The religious rites and ceremonies of nations and tribes proclaim it. And the deep yearnings of the human heart, in every place and in all ages, give utterance to it.

But what is the lesson to be derived from it? Let the immortal Cicero, representing the highest and noblest thought of any age and any people, unblessed with the light of Revelation, answer-"In every thing the consent of all nations is to be accounted the law of nature; and to resist it, is to resist the voice of God." If it was a local tradition, we might refer it to some local cause. If it had been limited to some one age, we might attribute it to some peculiar development or bias of the mind of that age resulting from a temporary cause.

But what shall we say when we find it bounded by no clime and limited to no age, but one of the deepest and

most universal sentiments of humanity? There can be but one answer. The sentiment is inspired with the very consciousness of life, and, therefore, appeals to the great Author of life as its source. It must then be true. A belief thus originated, so universal, can not be without a substantial basis in truth. In a word, it is proof sublime of immortality. It is demonstration that death works only the change, and not the destruction of the soul.

III. A FUTURE LIFE ONLY CAN SATISFY THE CONDITIONS AND CAPACITIES OF OUR MENTAL BEING.

Look to the human race as they appear to the mere superficial observer, and what do we see? Merely a succession of evanescent and fading objects! Thousands are coming upon the stage, full of life and hope; and thousands, care-worn and weary, are retiring from it-retiring from it with a deep and anxious consciousness of faculties undeveloped and objects unaccomplished; like bubbles upon the mighty deep, they rise and then disappear. This scene is not only enacting now, but it ever has been since man's first transgression

"Brought death into the world and all our woe."

The multitudes of the dead are more than those of the living. The whole of this vast globe is but an amphitheater, in which are displayed the works, and beneath which repose the bodies of the dead.

But is this all? Are all our interests, is all our being crowded within the narrow compass of the brief span of this life? Are there no fountains within us but what are exhausted in a brief life of sorrow, passed in ignorance and fruitless desire? Take even the most favorable examples of human nature-the mind of Newton, or of Bacon-and