NATURAL CHANGES. 293 ernment so far as it can be discovered, and in the very sanctuary of the moral nature of man. If, after these arguments, there should still remain some vague impression that in the shock of so great a change as that of death the principle of thought should not survive, there are analogies of nature which may bring us some relief. If all the philosophers on earth had been shown an egg for the first time, and been asked what it would become, they could as little have thought it possible that it should be such a creature as a swan or a peacock, as the greatest skeptic now thinks it possible for man to survive. Or, to take a case sometimes thought to be more in point, what can be a greater change than the chrysalis undergoes in its manner of life, when it passes from its dormant condition to that of a beautiful butterfly, seeming, as Bryant says, "a living blossom of the air"? So striking, indeed, is this analogy that the Greeks gave the soul the same name as the butterfly, from the expectation that it would undergo a similar change. The strongest case, however, is that put by Butler. It respects the change in man from the mode of his existence before birth to that which he at present enjoys. He is still the same being, but his mode of existence was so different that had he been endowed with the powers of reason he would have been much less able to form any conception of his present mode of being than he now can of a future state. He might have perceived some indications in his structure, as in the eyes and the lungs, of a preparation for a state then future, as we now do for one still future, but the necessary change would have been quite as mysterious as that which must pass upon us at death. It is to be remarked, also, in thinking of this change, in what part of our nature it occurs. We have two modes of being, that of sensation and that of reflection, which seem in a great degree independent of each other. Reflection, having once commenced, is independent of sensation, and is most active and intense when sensation is weakest. If we wish to reflect we shut out sensation. But it is upon the sensitive life that this shock of death seems to spend itself. The power of reflection often continues in full vigor up to the last moment. Since, then, the power of reflection is so independent of the sensitive life, and of the organs of sensation, it seems rational to conclude that it may hereafter maintain a separate existence. Such are some of the arguments drawn from nature which I would urge in favor of the probability of a future life. To me they seem to have no little weight. But if they were less forcible than they are, so that their opponents could bring against them those of equal or greater force, I could never understand, unless something different from mere argument is concerned, the triumph which some. men appear to feel when they suppose themselves to have quenched the hope of man, and to have levelled themselves with the clod. Surely, if a man were to think himself obliged, as the result of a candid investigation, to believe that to be true which "nature never told," we should expect, instead of exulting, that he would "Read, nor loudly nor elate, The doom that bars him from a better fate, Weep to record, and blush to give it in." These few arguments from nature for a future life I offer, not as affording absolute proof, but a presumption so strong that a prudent man might act upon it even if he had no other light; a presumption stronger than that upon which we often act, and upon which it would be madness not to act in the ordinary concerns of life. I wish, also, to have you see that skeptics may be met on their own ground, and that no impression may be left upon your minds which shall prevent you from receiving in its full force the evidence for that revelation by which alone, in all its clearness, "life and immortality are brought to light." SUMMARY. HAVING completed the several lectures, it remains to give a summary of the course of thought passed over. That course has been one, and in itself entirely simple. The three questions proposed concerning duty — 1st. What ought to be done? 2d. Why ought it to be done? 3d. How ought it to be done? we attempted to answer by a consideration of ends. We saw that all rational arrangement, construction, and action, must have reference to an end, and can be comprehended only in the light of that end; and that all rules and laws have their significance and value in the same way. We assumed that from a study of the structure of man, physical and mental, some knowledge may be gained, not only of his separate organs and faculties, and of their use, but also of the end of man himself. If man cannot know his own end there can be no philosophy of man no comprehensive or satisfactory knowledge of him. Whether he could know this as he now is, without revelation, may be doubted. There is no philosophy in a ruin; and where the Bible has not been it does not appear that men have retained a knowledge of their end. But however this may be, a knowledge of the end must greatly aid us in tracing the arrangements and correlations for the attainment of that end, and so of comprehending the whole system as one of means and ends. Ends were distinguished as subordinate, ultimate, and supreme. As the conception of an end involves that of some good, we considered the nature and sources of good. This we found to result from activity, and that the highest good would be from the activity of the highest powers in a right relation to their highest object. We discriminated the different kinds of good as it comes from the susceptibilities and the powers, finding from one what is distinctively pleasure, from the other happiness and blessedness. We then sought to classify the powers, and consequently the good derived from their action, as higher and lower. In doing this we found a common law of gradation, and so of activity for forces and faculties for those forces by which the universe is governed, and for those faculties by which man ought to be governed. Commencing with the lowest and most general force known to us, we passed up till we came to vegetable or organic life, where a great transition is made, and which subordinates to itself all lower forces. We then came to that sensitiveness and intelligence in the service of which life works; and then to those rational and moral powers in which is personality, and by which we are made in the image of God. At every step from the lowest sensitiveness, while we found, as in that, an end in itself, we also found a beautiful subordination to that which is higher, and in that subordination we found the law of limitation for the activity of every lower power and faculty. We saw how perfectly God regards this law in that part of the chain where our wills do not intervene, and how perfect is the model he sets before us for the regulation of our own |