ds to withdraw us from the impression of
sensible objects, and lends us to feel the superiority of things which
are not seen. Under such influence, the mind displays an astonishing
power of recalling the past and grasping the future,--and of viewing
objects in their true relations, to itself and to each other. The first
of these, indeed, we see exemplified in many affections, in which the
mind is cut off, in a greater or less degree, from its intercourse with
the external world, by causes acting upon the bodily organization. In
another work I have described many remarkable examples of the mind, in
this condition, recalling its old impressions respecting things long
past and entirely forgotten; and the facts there stated call our
attention in a very striking manner to its inherent powers and its
independent existence.

This subject is one of intense interest, and suggests reflections of the
most important kind, respecting the powers and properties of the
thinking principle. In particular, it leads us to a period, which we are
taught to anticipate even by the inductions of intellectual science,
when, the bodily frame being dissolved, the thinking and reasoning
essence shall exercise its peculiar faculties in a higher state of
being. There are facts in the mental phenomena which give a high degree
of probability to the conjecture, that the whole transactions of life,
with the motives and moral history of each individual, may then be
recalled by a process of the mind itself, and placed, as at a single
glance, distinctly before him. Were we to realize such a mental
condition, we should not fail to contemplate the impressions so
recalled, with feelings very different from those by which we are apt to
be misled amid the influence of present and external things.--The tumult
of life is over;--pursuits, principles, and motives, which once bore an
aspect of importance, are viewed with feelings more adapted to their
true value.--The moral principle recovers that authority, which, amid
the contests of passion, had been obscured or lost;--each act and each
emotion is seen in its relations to the great dictates of truth, and
each pursuit of life in its real bearing on the great concerns of a
moral being;--and the whole assumes a character of new and wondrous
import, when viewed in relation to that Incomprehensible One, who is
then disclosed in all his attributes as a moral governor.--Time past is
contracted into a point, and that the