young man, in addressing himself to the young and giddy pursuer of pleasure, in order to alarm him in the midst of his gay and licentious career, he as distinctly alludes and as carefully confines himself to the first of these doctrines. His language then is, ch. xi. 9. “ Rejoice, O thy youth," and tread as thou wilt the flowery paths of indulgence and pleasure; "but know thou that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment." There is an equal point, a keen and forcible moral in both addresses, and which could not fail to strike the heart of those to whom they were respectively delivered. It has been said by some writers that the judgment here referred to relates to the present world, and must be so interpreted to avoid the self-contradiction I have just adverted to. But the wisdom of Solomon stands in no need of the feeble and rushlight illumination of such commentators; nor could it ever be so said by any critic who has diligently attended to the mixed language of Solomon's diction, or rather to the Arabisms he so frequently indulges in; and who, from this and various other sources, has traced out that his early studies must have been passed in Arabia, or under the superintendence of Arabian tutors; and who at the same time calls to mind that the Idumæan cities of Dedan and Teman had the same classical character at Jerusalem that the cities of Athens and Corinth had at Rome. But are we still abandoned to the same unfixed and shadowy evidence, with just light enough to kindle the hope of immortality, and darkness enough to strangle it the moment it is born? Beset as the world is at all times with physical and moral evils, and doubly beset as it is at present; while virtue, patriotism, and piety are bleeding at every pore; while the sweet influences of the heavens seem turned to bitterness, the natural constellations of the zodiac to have been pulled down from their high abodes, and vice, tyranny, and atheism to have usurped their places, and from their respective ascendants, to be breathing mildew and pestilence over the pale face of the astonished earth*, is it to the worn-out traces of tradition, or the dubious fancies of philosophy, that this important doctrine is alone entrusted? a doctrine not more vital to the hopes of man than to the justice of the Deity? - No; the fulness of the times has at length arrived: the veil of separation is drawn aside; the mighty and mysterious truth is published by a voice from heaven; it is engraved on pages of adamant, and attested by the affirmation of the godhead. It tells us, in words that cannot lie, that the soul is immortal from its birth; that the strong and inextinguishable desire we feel of future being is the true and natural impulse of a high-born *This lecture was delivered during the period of the French Revolution. and inextinguishable principle: and that the blow which prostrates the body and imprisons it in the grave, gives pinions to the soaring spirit and crowns it with freedom and triumph. But this is not all: it tells us too that gross matter itself is not necessarily corruptible: that the freedom and triumph of the soul shall hereafter be extended to the body; that this corruptible shall put on incorruption, this mortal immortality, and a glorious and beatified re-union succeed. By what means such re-union is to be accomplished, or why such separation should be necessary, we know not, for we know not how the union was produced at first. They are mysteries that yet remain locked up in the bosom of the great Creator: and are as inscrutable to the sage as to the savage, to the philosopher as to the schoolboy; they are left, and perhaps purposely, to make a mock at all human science; and, while they form the groundwork of man's future happiness, forcibly to point out to him that his proper path to it is through the gate of humility. LECTURE III. ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. HAVING taken a brief survey of the essence and duration of the soul, mind, or intelligent principle, as far as we have been able to collect any information upon this abstruse subject, from reason, tradition, and revelation, let us now proceed, with equal modesty and caution, to an examination into its faculties, and the mode by which they develope themselves and acquire knowledge. "All our knowledge," observes Lord Bacon, " is derived from experience." It is a remark peculiarly characteristic of that comprehensive judgment with which this great philosopher at all times contemplated the field of nature, and which has been assumed as the common basis of every system that has since been fabricated upon the subject. "Whence,” enquires Mr. Locke, "comes the mind by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? I answer, in a word, from experience. In this all our knowledge is founded, from this the whole emanates and issues." M. Degerando, and, in short, all the French philosophers of the present day, in adopting Locke's system, have necessarily adopted this important maxim as the groundwork of their reasoning; and though, as a general principle, it has been lately called in question by a few of the ablest advocates for what they have ventured to denominate the Theory of Common Sense, and especially by Professor Stewart *, as I as I may perhaps find it necessary to notice more particularly hereafter, it is sufficient for the present to observe that the shrewd and learned projector of this theory, Dr. Reid, admits it in its utmost latitude: "Wise men," says he, "now agree or ought to agree in this, that there is but one way to the knowledge of nature's works, the way of observation and experiment. By our constitution we have a strong propensity to trace particular facts and observations to general rules, and to apply such general rules to account for other effects, or to direct us in the production of them. This procedure of the understanding is familiar to every human creature in the common affairs of life, and IT IS THE ONLY ONE BY WHICH ANY REAL DISCOVERY IN PHILOSOPHY CAN BE MADE." + Now the only mode by which we can obtain experience is by the use and exercise of the senses, which have been given to us for this Philos. Essays, vol. i. p. 122. + Inquiry into the Human Mind, p. 2. |