itutional principle common to our
race, and which no reasoning or artifices of priests or designing men
could possibly produce. No conceit or imagination can ever originate,
though it may certainly foster, "this hope, this fond desire, this
longing after immortality;" and no reasoning, no efforts of the mind,
nay, what is still more striking, no dislike, however strong, as
proceeding from an apprehension of some evil consequences involved in
the truth of the belief, can eradicate the inclination to entertain it.
In short, it is no way paradoxical to assert, that, were man by any
means to know that there shall be no hereafter, his whole life,
supposing his constitution to remain the same, would be a direct and
continued contradiction to his knowledge. This, to be sure, would be a
strange anomaly in the government of God, and utterly irreconcileable
with every view we can form of his veracity, if we may use the
expression, though still consistent with his wisdom and goodness. But
what then shall we say of the conduct of the would-be philosophers, who,
with limited faculties and intelligences and benevolence, (this is no
disparagement, for even Voltaire himself, with all his powers, was but a
finite creature!) force reason and science to prove what their own
feelings belie, and to oppose what their consciences declare to be
irresistible? It is not profane, on such an occasion, to accommodate the
language of an apostle into a suitable rebuke to such perverse
contenders. "What if some labour not to believe, shall their attempts
frustrate the work of God? Far be it--God will maintain his truth,
though all men should conspire against it." Allowing then free scope to
a notion so natural to us, and having our opinions guided by an unerring
light, we shall see that there is something vastly more dignified than
fashion in the funeral rites of the Otaheitans--and feel that there is
something vastly more important than eloquence, in the words of an
author already quoted at the commencement of this note:--"Man is a noble
animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnizing
nativities and deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting ceremonies of
bravery, in the infancy of his nature;"--the reason for which is
explained by another author, in words still more sublime and
exhilarating:--"For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle
were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands,
eternal in the h