power, and if He offer to relieve the poor creatures, they would, with one voice, out of the pit of Hell, "mock and deride" his offers of mercy! Oh! abominable doctrine! vile slander on the attributes of God! If it be true, where is the OMNIPOTENT—— the ALL-MIGHTY? Christ was manifested to DESTROY the works of the Devil, but He has not accomplished that which was given him to do!"

Thus did Peter Jones struggle with himself, recurring to the topic again and again. "SIN," said he, "by the doctrine which Pollok has attempted to throw into Poetry, becomes a kind of mighty FATE, which God himself cannot overcome. One is tempted to use the mocking language of Elijah, and to say to the believers of such a doctrine-Cry aloud, for it is a God! either it is talking, or it is pursuing, or it is on a journey, or peradventure it sleepeth, and must be awakened!'" But the passage which sealed the fate of the "Course of Time" was the following:

"All its mouths, that wide and darkly gaped,

And breathed most poisonous breath, had each a sting,
Forked, and long, and venomous, and sharp;

And in its writhings infinite it grasped

Malignantly what seemed a heart, swollen, black,

And quivering with torture most intense;

And still the heart, with anguish throbbing high,
Made effort to escape, but could not; for
Howe'er it turned, and oft it vainly turned,
These complicated foldings held it fast.

And still the monstrous beast with sting of head
Or tail transpierced it, bleeding evermore.

What this could image much I searched to know;
And while I stood, and gazed, and wondered long,
A voice, from whence I knew not, for no one
I saw, distinctly whispered in my ear

These words: This is the worm that never dies.'"

There is another passage, ending "This is Eternal Death;"-but Peter had read enough, and flung the "Course of Time" from him for ever!

Tempest-tossed, Peter Jones now looked out on a world that seemed to him covered with blackness and darkness. The heavens above him appeared brass; the earth beneath him iron. Hitherto, he had rejoiced in a God whose "tender mercies" are over all his works;" now, he trembled under the apprehension of a Being, ready to unsheath his glittering sword, and to descend in awful vengeance on the creatures of his formation. Astronomy and Geology had enlarged his conceptions as to the extent of the universe, and the vastness of eternity; but they had also deepened the pain of believing that finite creatures, so insignificant as man, could be doomed to endless existence in misery. Pride now came to the assistance of Peter Jones; and he resolutely avowed that he would rather consider the Bible to be false, than receive such a doctrine as true. It was whispered in his ear that he might reject the doctrine, and yet retain the Bible. “ How?" eagerly asked Peter Jones-" does it not proclaim a system of rewards and punishments? and is not the punishment to be as eternal as the reward ?" But a word was spoken which startled Peter as if a thunderbolt had fallen at his feet-that word belongs to the next stage in Peter's mental career.

CHAP. V.

BUILDING THE ARK.

"All our experience shows us no one instance of annihilation. Matter is perpetually changing-never destroyed; the form and manner of its existence is endlessly and ceaselessly varyingits existence never terminates. The body decays, and is said to perish; that is, it is resolved into its elements, and becomes the material of new combinations, animate and inanimate, but not a single particle of it is annihilated; nothing of us, or around us, ever ceases to exist. If the mind perishes, or ceases to exist at death, it is the only example of annihilation which we know." LORD BROUGHAM.

"One doubt

Pursues me still, lest all I cannot die;
Lest that pure breath of life, the spirit of man,
Which God inspired, cannot together perish
With this corporeal clod."

ADAM, in Paradise Lost.

PETER JONES had been struck by a fact, which he remarked, as he turned over the leaves of his Bible. With the exception of the occurrence of the name in the genealogy given by Luke, there appeared no mention of Adam and the Fall, from the earlier portion of Genesis, till the Epistle to the Romans. In the books of Job, the Psalms, and Ecclesiastes, there are numerous confessions of man's weakness and wickedness; but the historical fact is not alluded to. Moses does not incorporate it in his system, although it might seem essential that the Moral Law, and the whole Mosaic institutions, should be based on it. David, in singing, as the inspired Minstrel, the story of Israel, the wonders of Egypt, and the passage of

The

the Red Sea, makes no mention of Adam and the Fall. Solomon, the wise monarch, who spake of all things, from the "hyssop that springeth out of the wall," to the "cedar that grows in Lebanon," and who mused so much on man and his condition, does not say anything of Adam and the Fall. Prophets do not touch on the fact that Adam brought "death into the world, and all our woe;" and even our Saviour, though he alludes to the creation of man, as male and female, has no reference to the awful deed, which had rendered it necessary that He should clothe himself with flesh, and dwell among us. All this puzzled Peter Jones.

Moreover, it seemed clear to Peter Jones, that the death which Adam incurred, was something more, or something different from, the death of the body. Could it be the death of the soul? Untaught by Descartes, he had come to the conclusion, "I think; therefore, I am." The associations of Peter Jones, his early training, the sermons which he heard, the Bible which he read, all had built up in him the indestructible conviction that he possessed a living, active principle, which should survive the death of the body, and be rendered accountable for its actions, in a future state of existence. But Peter Jones asked himself if his soul were necessarily immortal? It might, he thought, be all very well for Milton to describe Satan as inspired with "unconquerable will," and "courage never to submit or yield ;” but was it really the case that once a creature was endowed with the gift of immortal life, he was "secured in existence," and could from thenceforth, throughout all futurity, defy the Omnipotent? Above all, was a poor creature like man, whose longest life was a span, and its duration but as the glance of an eye, in rela