I do not hold the soul, or mind of man, to be a rasa tabula, but look on it as a most beautiful and convenient structure; with all its necessary furniture and utensils arranged in their proper places. At first, its doors and windows are shut up, all is dark within, and Reason, its owner and inhabitant, lies asleep. As soon, however, as it is thrown open to the outward light, Reason begins to rouse, by degrees, and look about her; yet knows not the uses of the apartments, or the furniture, till she is taught their convenience and fitness. In ignorance, indeed, she comes into the world; and what is worse, prone to rude and wild passions; but she soon learns to know herself, and to make the use, pre-ordained by the Creator of the universe, of such inestimable gifts. Experience and culture, at length, bring her to a full knowledge of her endowments; and of the boundless gratitude she owes to Him, from whom they have been derived. Sulivan.

The soul has a certain vegetative power, which cannot be wholly idle. If it is not laid out and cultivated into a beautiful garden, it will of itself shoot up in weeds, or flowers of a wild growth.

It is a kind of rough diamond, which requires both labour and time to polish it. Spectator.

I consider the soul of man as the ruins of a glorious pile of buildding, where, amidst great heaps of rubbish, you meet with noble fragments of sculpture, broken pillars and obelisks, and magnificence in confusion. Virtue and wisdom are continually employed in clearing away the ruins, removing these disorderly heaps, recovering the noble pieces that lie buried under them, and adjusting them as well as possible, according to ancient symmetry and beauty. Tatler. It is wonderful to observe, how the soul is elevated one moment to a star, and the next, falls to a grain of sand; how it expands over the immensity of the heavens, and how it shrinks back upon itself; how it analyzes the light, and anatomizes an insect; how incessant are its wishes, yet how limited its faculties! Lord Bacon.

The soul, it cannot be denied, is a limited being; its activity and faculties being obstructed at times, and most of all in sleep, or a deliquium; as these obstructions are removed, it acts more clearly

and freely. Whilst it remains in the brain, it can, as it were, look out at a few apertures; we can now perceive visible objects, but with two eyes; but were it free from its present incumbrance, as after death, we might see more largely. Wollaston.

No noise, however violent, rouses those who are accustomed to hear it; but if it be unusual, or if it be such as would call them to action when awake, although moderate, it makes them start; thus it seems as if the soul was capable of exercising judgment during sleep. Townshend.

Oh, wretched man! whose too, too busy thoughts
Ride swifter than the galloping heavens round,
With an eternal hurry of the soul;

Nay, there's a time when ev'n the rolling year
Seems to stand still; dead calms are in the ocean,
When not a breath disturbs the drowsy waves:
But man, the very monster of the world,

Is ne'er at rest, the soul for ever wakes.

LEE.

The soul may exist with a capacity of thinking, though it does not exercise that capacity; for in vain does it will motion, if the body be incapable of moving. The blind cannot see, nor the deaf bear, till those impediments are removed. The soul's faculties, in such cases, are only suspended; and the soul of an ideot and that of the first-rate understanding may be, and is, most probably the same, or equal in perfection, only clouded and eclipsed by the disease of the body. Of course, the soul of a new-born infant is the same as that of an old man, and that of a fool as that of a philosopher; all the changes arising from the different affections of the bodily organs. Rowley, M.D.

So far as I can judge, the soul of man, in its own nature, is nothing else but a conscious and active principle, subsisting by itself, made after the image of God, who is all conscious activity; and it is still the same being, whether it be united to an animal body, or separated from it. If the body die, the soul still exists an active and conscious power, or principle, or being; and if it ceases to be conscious and active, I think it ceases to be; for I have no conception of what remains.

Dr. Watts.

When death has opened the cage of the flesh, wherein the soul is penned up, whither it flies, or how it subsists, I think is not easy to determine, or indeed to conceive. Bishop Beveridge,

Is there any principle in all nature more mysterious than the union of soul and body, by which a supposed spiritual substance acquires such an influence over a material one, that the most refined thought is able to actuate the grossest matter? Were we empowered, by a secret wish, to remove mountains, or controul the planets in their orbits, this extensive authority would not be more extraordinary, nor more beyond our comprehension. Hume.

From the nature of the soul itself; it is of the same nature with angels, who are immaterial and incorporeal spirits, and so not subject to corruption and death; they die not: yea, the soul of man has a likeness to God; it bears a resemblance with the divine nature. The image of God in man chiefly consists in the soul; it is of God's immediate creation; it comes from him, and is the very breath of him. If we consider its several powers and faculties, especially the understanding and will, we may well conclude it to be an immortal and never-dying substance.

The soul is a pure, unmixed, simple substance; it is not composed of matter and form, nor is it a material form educed out of the power of matter, as the souls of brutes, but is altogether spiritual and immaterial; it is not a body made up of the four elements, fire, air, water, and earth, which is capable of being resolved into them again, as our bodies are; it has nothing contrary to itself, which can be destructive of it; it is neither hot nor cold, moist or dry, hard or tender; it is not as an accident in a subject, which when the subject is destroyed, is destroyed with it: if it has any subject on which it depends, it must be the body; but it is so far from being dependant on the body, and perishing with it, that, on the contrary, when the soul departs, the body perishes. The soul has no other cause of its being but God: on Him it depends, and by Him it is preserved. He indeed could, if He would, annihilate or reduce it to nothing; but, since it is evident He will not, we may conclude it is immortal, and will never die. Gill's Sermons.

The soul of man hath a power of comparing ideas of all things in the visible world, and of reasoning and judging concerning past, present, and future things. The soul can bring up to its review and remembrance ten thousand facts and transactions in all past ages; to judge of the present state of all nations, and to foresee, with amazing sagacity, the future fates of empires, cities, and the individuals of mankind, for thousands of years to come.

The soul has a most surprising capacity to invent, contrive, improve, perfect, and beautify many noble and liberal sciences, by considering the nature of causes and effects, and the dependance of one thing upon another.

It can represent to itself, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, things at an infinite distance through all worlds, as if they were present to the very essence of the soul; and this it can do without the least trouble of local motion, even to an inch of space. No creature, except an angel, is capable of this astonishing rapidity of thought, and this striking resemblance to God.

These astonishing and noble perfections, with many others, are the properties of a human soul, which show it to be an intelligent and spiritual being, of a nature quite different from that of matter, however modified or put into motion.

The soul of man, considered as a spiritual being, is a most simple and immutable essence, having no kind of composition in its nature, and incapable of being changed in its substance.

Its essence is void of all matter, having no solid extension or divisibility of parts; it is essential to the soul to be active. Life, power, and thought, are the very nature and essence of the soul. The life of the soul is its state of active, rational existence.

Ryland.

The first question that naturally presents itself on this subject is, whether that percipient and thinking agent within us, which we call the soul, is only a part of the body, or whether it is something totally distinct from it? If the former, it must necessarily share the extinction of the body by death; and there is an end at once of all our natural hopes of immortality. If, on the other hand, the

latter supposition of its distinct subsistence be the true one; it is plain, that that there will be then no reason to presume, that the intellectual and the corporeal part of our frame must perish together. That fatal stroke, which deprives the latter of life and motion, may have no other effect on the former, than that of dislodging it from its present earthly tabernacle, and introducing it into a different state of existence in another world.

Now, whatever difference of opinion there may have been among speculative men, either ancient or modern, concerning the specific nature of the human soul, yet in this they have all, with very few exceptions, universally agreed, that it is a substance in itself actually distinct and separate from the body, though in its present state closely united with it. This has been the invariable opinion of almost all mankind, learned or unlearned, civilized or savage, Christian or Pagan, in every age and nation of the world. There is scarce any one truth that can be named, that has met with so general reception as this. We discover it in the earliest authors extant, both poets and historians; and it was maintained by every philosopher among the ancients, (except by Anaximander, Democritus, and their followers,) as well as by all the primitive Christian writers, without, I believe, a single exception. Even they who supposed the soul to be material, which was undoubtedly supposed by several Pagan philosophers, as well as by two or three of the Christian fathers, yet uniformly held it to be a substance distinct from the body. They supposed it to be air, or fire, or harmony, or a fifth essence, or something of a finer, purer, more ethereal texture than gross matter; and many of them conceived it also to be immortal, or capable of being so. Nor was it only the polished and enlightened nations of Greece and Rome, of Egypt and Asia, that believed man to be a compound being, consisting of two sepa rate substances, but even the rudest and most barbarous tribes of whom history has preserved any traces; and it is well known, that wherever curiosity, commerce, or the spirit of adventure, has extended modern discoveries, this notion has been found existing. It has been found as prevalent throughout the vast continents of India, and America, and the various islands of the Atlantic Ocean, and

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