y wise and devout man,
without bigotry, without hatred for any, with strict fidelity to
his own convictions, with entire tolerance and kindness for all
who differ from him, sacredly to seek after verity himself and
earnestly to endeavor to impart it to others. To such men forms of
opinion, instead of being prisons, fetters, and barriers, will be
but as tents of a night while they march through life, the burning
and cloudy column of inquiry their guide, the eternal temple of
truth their goal.

The actual relation, the becoming attitude, the appropriate
feeling, of man towards the future state, the concealed segment of
his destiny, are impressively shown in the dying scene of one of
the wisest and most gifted of men, one of the fittest representatives
of the modern mind. In a good old age, on a pleasant spring day,
with a vast expanse of experience behind him, with an immensity of
hope before him, he lay calmly expiring.

"More light!" he cried, with departing breath; and Death, solemn
warder of eternity, led him, blinded, before the immemorial veil
of awe and secrets. It uprolled as the flesh bandage fell from his
spirit, and he walked at large, triumphant or appalled, amidst the
unimagined revelations of God.

And now, recalling the varied studies we have passed through, and
seeking for the conclusion or root of the matter, what shall we
say? This much we will say. First, the fearless Christian, fully
acquainted with the results of a criticism unsparing as the
requisitions of truth and candor, can scarcely, with intelligent
honesty, do more than place his hand on the beating of his heart,
and fix his eye on the riven tomb of Jesus, and exclaim, "Feeling
here the inspired promise of immortality, and seeing there the
sign of God's authentic seal, I gratefully believe that Christ has
risen, and that my soul is deathless!" Secondly, the trusting
philosopher, fairly weighing the history of the world's belief in
a future life, and the evidences on which it rests, can scarcely,
with justifying warrant, do less than lay his hand on his body,
and turn his gaze aloft, and exclaim, "Though death shatters this
shell, the soul may survive, and I confidently hope to live
forever." Meanwhile, the believer and the speculator, combining to
form a Christian philosophy wherein doubt and faith, thought and
freedom, reason and sentiment, nature and revelation, all embrace,
even as the truth of things and the experience of life demand,