o offers you his divine aid to
form anew your character, to exalt your affections, to enlighten your
dreary and desolate understanding?

* * * * *

=_Nathaniel W. Taylor[9] 1781-1871._=

From the "Lectures on the Moral Government of God."

=_29._= PROOF OF IMMORTALITY FROM THE MORAL NATURE OF MAN.

The argument from _the moral nature_ of man is made still more
impressive by the superiority of its design and object. If there is no
existence for man beyond the present state, what can we suppose to be
the design of his Creator in forming him a moral being? What powers,
what capacities are involved in his nature! What capacity to enjoy, and
what power to impart happiness to others! Who can reflect on the nature
of such a creature, his intelligence, his susceptibility, his will, his
conscience, the dignity, the excellence of which he is capable, the
moral victories and triumphs he may win, his fitness to hold on his way
with archangels, strong in advancing all that good which infinite wisdom
could devise, and infinite benevolence could love, the graces with which
he may be adorned, and the beatitudes with which he may be blessed,
and not believe that he is made to be one with the God who has created
him--a partaker of his blessedness, a companion of his eternity.

If we consider what an almost total failure there is, even on the
part of every good man, to attain in any respect the great end of his
creation; how weak in resolution and feeble in heart--how little success
in subduing his passions and governing his temper--how much of life is
spent before he even begins to live in obedience to the demands of
duty and of conscience--how remote he is from the uniform and settled
tranquility of perfect virtue--what dissatisfaction he feels with, the
present, unappeased by all the world can offer--what an Impatience and
disgust with the littleness of all he finds--what an ever-restless
aspiration after nobler and higher things--what anticipations and hopes
from futurity never realized, here on earth--how does our spirit labor
under a sense of the incongruity between his attainments and his powers!
and, unless there is a future state, what an insignificance is imparted
to all that can be called virtue here on earth, and also to man himself!

[Footnote 9: An eminent Congregational divine, long professor of
theology in Tale College, and distinguished by the vigor and originality
of his thinking.]