n once, "that the barrel organ, man,
should terminate every tune with the strain of immortality!" Not
strange, but divinely natural. It is the tentative prelude to the
thrilling music of our eternal bliss written in the score of
destiny. When at night we gaze far out into immensity, along the
shining vistas of God's abode, and are almost crushed by the
overwhelming prospects that sweep upon our vision, do not some
pre monitions of our own unfathomed greatness also stir within us?
Yes: "the sense of Existence, the ideas of Right and Duty, awful
intuitions of God and immortality, these, the grand facts and
substance of the spirit, are independent and indestructible. The
bases of the Moral Law, they shall stand in every tittle, although
the stars should pass away. For their relations and root are in
that which upholds the stars, even with worlds unseen from the
finite, whose majestic and everlasting arrangements shall burst
upon us as the heavens do through the night when the light of this
garish life gives place to the solemn splendors of eternity."

Eighthly, the belief in a life beyond death has virtually
prevailed everywhere and always. And the argument from universal
consent, as it is termed, has ever been esteemed one of the
foremost testimonies, if not indeed the most convincing testimony,
to the truth of the doctrine. Unless the belief can be shown to be
artificial or sinful, it must seem conclusive. Its innocence is
self evident, and its naturalness is evidenced by its
universality.

20 Theodore Parker, Sermon of Immortal Life.

The rudest and the most polished, the simplest and the most
learned, unite in the expectation, and cling to it through
every thing. It is like the ruling presentiment implanted in
those insects that are to undergo metamorphosis. This believing
instinct, so deeply seated in our consciousness, natural,
innocent, universal, whence came it, and why was it given?
There is but one fair answer. God and nature deceive not.

Ninthly, the conscious, practical faith of civilized nations, to
day, in a future life, unquestionably, in a majority of
individuals, rests directly on the basis of authority, trust in a
foreign announcement. There are two forms of this authority. The
authority of revelation is most prominent and extensive. God has
revealed the truth from heaven. It has been exemplified by a
miraculous resurrection. It is written in an infallible book, and
sealed with authenticating cr