THE LIGHT OF NATURE IN RESPECT TO IMMORTALITY.

“The light of nature,” says Professor Stuart, “can never scatter the darkness in question. This light has never yet sufficed to make even the question clear to any portion of our benighted race, Whether the soul of man is immortal? Cicero, incomparably the most able defender of the soul’s immortality of which the heathen world can yet boast, very ingeniously confesses, that after all the arguments which he had adduced in order to confirm the doctrine in question, it so fell out, that his mind was satisfied of it only when directly employed in contemplating the arguments adduced in its favor. At all other times, he fell unconsciously into a state of doubt and darkness.

“It is notorious also that Socrates, the next most able advocate among the heathens for the same doctrine, has adduced arguments to establish the never ceasing existence of the soul, which will not bear the test of examination. Such is the argument by which he endeavours to prove that we shall always continue to exist because we always have existed; and this last proposition he labors to establish, on the ground that all our present acquisitions of knowledge are only so many reminiscences of what we formerly knew in a state of existence antecedent to our present one. Unhappy lot of philosophy to be doomed to prop itself up with supports so weak and fragile as this! How can the soul be filled with consolation in prospect of death, without some better and more cheering light than can spring from such a course? How can it quench its thirst for immortality by drinking in such impure and turbid streams as these? Poor wandering heathen! How true it is—and what a glorious blessed truth it is—that “life and incorruptibility are brought to light in the gospel!” It is equally true that they are brought to light only there.

“If there be any satisfactory light, then, on the momentous question of the future state, it must be sought from the word of God. After all the toil and pains of casuists and philosophers, it remains true, that the gospel, and the gospel only, has “brought life and incorruptibility to light” in a satisfactory manner.” But in what better case is Professor Stuart than Cicero, and Socrates? They were ignorant of the gospel, and so is he; if therefore the light of life shine in the gospel, it shines as little into his mind as into theirs, being veiled with the darkness of the traditions of Geneva, which like the leaven of ancient times, makes the word of the kingdom of no effect.

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