solution of the problem, as the fact of Neptune explained
the perturbations of the adjacent planets. Nothing ever gravitates
towards nothing; and it must be an unseen orb that so draws our
yearning souls. If it be not so, then what terrible contradictions
stagger us, and what a chilling doom awaits us! Oh, what mocking
irony then runs through the loftiest promises and hopes of the
world! Just as the wise and good have learned to live, they
disappear amidst the unfeeling waves of oblivion, like snow flakes
in the ocean. "The super earthly desires of man are then created
in him only, like swallowed diamonds, to cut slowly through his
material shell" and destroy him.

The denial of a future life introduces discord, grief, and despair
in every direction, and, by making each step of advanced culture
the ascent to a wider survey of tantalizing glory and experienced
sorrow, as well as the preparation for a greater fall and a sadder
loss, turns faithful affection and heroic thought into "blind
furies slinging flame." Unless immortality be true, man appears a
dark riddle, not made for that of which he is made capable and
desirous: every thing is begun, nothing ended; the facts of the
present scene are unintelligible; the plainest analogies are
violated; the delicately rising scale of existence is broken off
abrupt; our best reasonings concerning the character and designs
of God, also concerning the implications of our own being and
experience, are futile; and the soul's proud faculties tell
glorious lies as thick as stars. Such, at least, is the usual way
of thinking.

However formidable a front may be presented by the spectral array
of doubts and difficulties, seeming impediments to faith in
immortality, the faithful servant of God, equipped with
philosophical culture and a saintly life, will fearlessly advance
upon them, scatter them right and left, and win victorious access
to the prize. So the mariner sometimes, off Sicilian shores, sees
a wondrous island ahead, apparently stopping his way with its
cypress and cedar groves, glittering towers, vine wreathed
balconies, and marble stairs sloping to the water's edge. He sails
straight forward, and, severing the pillared porticos and green
gardens of Fata Morgana, glides far on over a glassy sea smiling
in the undeceptive sun.

CHAPTER IV.

THEORIES OF THE SOUL'S DESTINATION.

BEFORE examining, in their multifarious detail, the special
thoughts and fancies respecting a f