p are so much athletic training, all the
ideal treasures we accumulate are so many preliminary attainments,
for a future life. They have this appearance and superscription.
Man alone foreknows his own death and expects a succeeding
existence; and that foresight is given to prepare him. There are
wondrous impulses in us, constitutional convictions prescient of
futurity, like those prevising instincts in birds leading them to
take preparatory flights before their actual migration.

18 Addison, Spectator, Nos. 3 and 210.

19 Jacob, Beweis fur die Unsterblichkeit der Seele aus dem
Begriffe der Pflicht.

Eternity is the stuff of which our love, flying forward, builds
its nest in the eaves of the universe. If we saw wings growing
out upon a young creature, we should be forced to conclude that
he was intended some time to fly. It is so with man. By exploring
thoughts, disciplinary sacrifices, supernal prayers, holy toils
of disinterestedness, he fledges his soul's pinions, lays up
treasures in heaven, and at last migrates to the attracting clime.

"Here sits he, shaping wings to fly: His heart forebodes a
mystery; He names the name eternity."

Seventhly, in the degree these preparations are made in obedience
to obscure instincts and the developing laws of experience, they
are accompanied by significant premonitions, lucid signals of the
future state looked to, assuring witnesses of its reality. The
more one lives for immortality, the more immortal things he
assimilates into his spiritual substance, the more confirming
tokens of a deathless inheritance his faith finds. He becomes
conscious of his own eternity.20 When hallowed imagination weighs
anchor and spreads sail to coast the dim shores of the other
world, it hears cheerful voices of welcome from the headlands and
discerns beacons burning in the port. When in earnest communion
with our inmost selves, solemn meditations of God, mysterious
influences shed from unseen spheres, fall on our souls, and many a
"strange thought, transcending our wonted themes, into glory
peeps." A vague, constraining sense of invisible beings, by whom
we are engirt, fills us. We blindly feel that our rank and
destination are with them. Lift but one thin veil, we think, and
the occult Universe of Spirit would break to vision with cloudy
crowds of angels. Thousand "hints chance dropped from nature's
sphere," pregnant with friendly tidings, reassure us. "Strange,"
said a gifted metaphysicia