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LETTER V.

OUR SACRED HISTORY A PART OF THAT OF THE UNIVERSE,
YET PECULIAR TO OURSELVES-OTHER WORLDS BESIDES
OUR OWN ANCIENT ERRORS ON THIS SUBJECT-MAN, A
PECULIAR ORDER OF BEING, ONLY KNOWN TO BE ON THIS
EARTH-HIS DOUBLE NATURE, AND DOUBLE STATE OF
EXISTENCE.

MY DEAR SON,

THAT the sacred history of our world must be a part of the greater sacred history of the universe, is as obvious as it also must be, that it cannot be supposed to be identical with it; for our earth is visibly not the whole of all things, nor can every other sphere be supposed to be a mere copy, or fac-simile of it. We are only a portion of a multifarious creation, each orb in which has its own peculiar structure, with substances and living forms appropriated to that, and therefore as unlike those of every other, as their several natures and constructions may vary. But still, however numerous the existing orders of being may really be, we are all the subjects of one wondrous Monarchy. We must, indeed, have that distinction from each other, which arises from every one possessing a state and system of things appointed to it, and not assigned to others. Each, therefore, subsists with a particular composition, and with a course of laws and agencies appropriated to it. From this circumstance, each must have a sacred history of its own, adapted to these, and proceeding from them, with which only itself is concerned; yet

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ment, we may assume that there is no difference between any.

Diversities will, however, begin, and will prevail in the modifications, rules and nature of the events and operations, by which these general principles will be severally applied. These will correspond in all with the peculiarities, which distinguish them from each other; but as these variations in other orbs are unknown to us, we have no materials on which we can reason about them. They and we as yet have no acquaintance with each other; no mutual intercourse has in any age taken place between us, and therefore we can only perceive, that it is possible that some momentous relations may hereafter occur with them, when death shall remove us from our present home. We cannot prevent the mind from desiring this, nor, as we gaze upon their nightly radiance, from aspiring to it.'

There is an attraction in their sparkling lucidity which draws the soul upwards to them, and nothing but the impossibility of our traversing the space

'In his interesting Somnium Scipionis,' Cicero represents the second of the great Scipios beholding in a dream his celebrated grandfather Africanus, appearing to him among the stars, and conversing with him; such a vision excited his wish to join him: 'O pater sanctissime et optime! Why should I tarry on earth? Why may I not hasten to ascend up to you?

'It cannot be so,' answered he, until that God, whose temple is whatever you are beholding, shall liberate you from the confinement of your body; there is no avenue to this region open to you. Mankind are born under the law which keeps them in that central globe which is called the earth; but a soul has been given to them: cultivate, then, integrity and piety. That life is the way to heaven (via est in cœlum); and to the society of those who, having so lived in their body, when they become freed from it, will dwell in this place which you are contemplating.' Som. Scip. Cic. Op. v. ii. p. 151.

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between us keeps us from them. Could we navigate LETTER the atmosphere and super-ascending ether to them, as we cross the ocean to Australia or Polynesia, how numerous would be our voyages to these celestial islands! If our future bodies should be less affected by that gravitating force which now binds us to our surface, or should possess energies of motion which should be capable of overcoming it, the transit would be certain, if what we wished were then permitted to us. That we may have connection and knowlege of their contents or inhabitants hereafter, has been the speculation and the hope of some of the worthiest minds, which have shone in human life :3 and altho it will be always most natural to us all to think chiefly of the earth we are living on, and to cultivate attachments to it, as the scene and storehouse of our present pains and pleasures, yet it is not possible to many, and is as unwise in all as it is unnecessary, to confine our thoughts and wishes, exclusively, to its gratifications and pursuits.

2 We cannot, however, but smile at some of the strange fancies which have been indulged on this subject. In the voyage of Domingo Gonsales, the author, a learned Bishop, seems rather seriously to intimate, that aërial voyages are possible, because locusts come to us from the moon, and because swallows, cuckoos, nightingales, and other birds that migrate from us, really fly up thither when they leave us, and particularly that a wild swan in the East Indies does so. If, then, a flock of these birds could be harnessed, they might carry up with them the weight of a man!!' If we may invent our facts, we may support any theory. Yet our scientific Bishop Wilkins mentions this flight of his brother prelate, as if he did not quite disapprove of it. Disc. New World, p. 160.

'Our really valuable Bishop Wilkins, whom I wish to mention with every respect for his love and cultivation of natural science, has made it his fourteenth proposition, and elaborately argued in its behalf, 'That it is possible for some of our posterity to find out a conveyance to this other world; and, if there be inhabitants there, to have commerce with them.' Disc. New World, p. 135-160.

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We feel capable of something nobler; we seem born for what is superior. Dreams, and whispers, and wishes, and imaginations of greater and better objects and occupations, frequently come uncalled into our consciousness and it is then delightful to have any ground to recollect, that in our Almighty Father's house there are many mansions, and that we have been invited to reside in some of those which, tho not cognizable now, are preparing for our hereafter. It is even pleasurable to think that we are in one of them only here, and that therefore there are many more to know. It then becomes a satisfaction to us to perceive, that we are here but as tenants, for a term of no long duration. We have, indeed, only a tenancy at will, and the option is not with ourselves to stay or quit when we think proper. But it is a consolation to remember, that the Lord of one is the Lord of all, and that every other home to us will be as much His world, as the present one which we are enjoying. There is enough around us here, to make us happy in the thought of being any where in His creation; and the sacred history of all that He has made and done for mankind, in the globe which He has here given us, will, as we become more acquainted with it, dispose us to rejoice that He takes upon himself to remove us from it, to some other place of His own appointment, and at such period of our individual existence, as He thinks most proper. Who that is wise would not rather leave the choice of both points to Him, than exercise it for ourselves in such an ignorance of all beyond what we see, as every one of us must remain in, until our departure from it? Here the advice of the greatest Roman satyrist comes appositely to us, which he expressed

to his fellow citizens, as their most prudent conduct LETTER towards their Divinities:

Leave them to manage for thee, and to grant

What their unerring wisdom sees thee want.*

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From our God we shall always have what is best for us, tho it may not be what at the time would be most gratifying to us. But we may entrust and desire His wisdom to be the judge and disposer in this respect for us; and upon the same principle of that exhilarating truth, which even Juvenal could discern, that the human race is even dearer to its Maker, than we are to ourselves."

We cannot gaze upon the stars without the thought that the scite of our future abode may be among them, however impossible it is here to ascertain its locality. The conviction of this uncertainty never destroys the hope. We admit that the home of the living dead, is inscrutable to all who have not passed that bourn, from which no traveller has returned. We know that we shall change into invisibility when we die, from the natural invisibility of our living principle here. But the same mind which carries us now to the orbit of Uranus, and reasons upon the immeasurable space, and innumerable orbs that appear beyond it, pursues likewise the unseen spirit after it has withdrawn from the human eye, and believes that it is stationed and survives elsewhere."

Nil ergo optabunt homines? Si consilium vis;
Permittes ipsis expendere Numinibus quid
Conveniat nobis, rebusque sit utile nostris.

• Nam pro jucundis, aptissima quoque dabunt Dii.

• Carior est illis homo, quam sibi. Juv. Sat. x. ver. 346-50. 7 The great Cyrus is made by Xenophon thus to express this sentiment to his sons on his death-bed: My children! respect each other, if you desire to please me. You should not think that I shall be as nothing when I have quitted my human life. You cannot indeed see my soul

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