tality, these inquiries, which we all know they are perpetually
making concerning the _whence_, do necessarily include correspondent
habits of interrogation concerning the _whither_. Origin and tendency
are notions inseparably co-relative. Never did a child stand by the side
of a running stream, pondering within himself what power was the feeder
of the perpetual current, from what never-wearied sources the body of
water was supplied, but he must have been inevitably propelled to follow
this question by another: 'Towards what abyss is it in progress? what
receptacle can contain the mighty influx?' And the spirit of the answer
must have been, though the word might be sea or ocean, accompanied
perhaps with an image gathered from a map, or from the real object in
nature--these might have been the _letter_, but the _spirit_ of the
answer must have been _as_ inevitably,--a receptacle without bounds or
dimensions;--nothing less than infinity. We may, then, be justified in
asserting, that the sense of immortality, if not a co-existent and twin
birth with Reason, is among the earliest of her offspring: and we may
further assert, that from these conjoined, and under their countenance,
the human affections are gradually formed and opened out. This is not
the place to enter into the recesses of these investigations; but the
subject requires me here to make a plain avowal, that, for my own part,
it is to me inconceivable, that the sympathies of love towards each
other, which grow with our growth, could ever attain any new strength,
or even preserve the old, after we had received from the outward senses
the impression of death, and were in the habit of having that impression
daily renewed and its accompanying feeling brought home to ourselves,
and to those we love; if the same were not counteracted by those
communications with our internal Being, which are anterior to all these
experiences, and with which revelation coincides, and has through that
coincidence alone (for otherwise it could not possess it) a power to
affect us. I confess, with me the conviction is absolute, that, if the
impression and sense of death were not thus counterbalanced, such a
hollowness would pervade the whole system of things, such a want of
correspondence and consistency, a disproportion so astounding betwixt
means and ends, that there could be no repose, no joy. Were we to grow
up unfostered by this genial warmth, a frost would chill the spirit, so
penetrat