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 penetrating and powerful, that there could be no motions of the
life of love; and infinitely less could we have any wish to be
remembered after we had passed away from a world in which each man had
moved about like a shadow.--If, then, in a Creature endowed with t