CHAP. I - Religious Aspect of the Question

Summary

Before Christianity shed its light upon the world, the philosopher who had no other guide but reason, looked beyond the grave for a resting-place from his labours, as well as for a solution of the mysteries which perplexed him. Minds, too, of an inferior order, destined for immortality, and conscious of their destination, instinctively pried into the future, cherishing visions of another world with all the interests of domestic affection, and with all the curiosity which the study of nature inspires. Interesting as has been the past history of our race,—engrossing as must ever he the present,—the future, more exciting still, mingles itself with every thought and sentiment, and casts its beams of hope, or its shadows of fear, over the stage both of active and contemplative life. In youth we scarcely descry it in the distance. To the stripling and the man it appears and disappears like a variable star, shewing in painful succession its spots of light and of shade. In age it looms gigantic to the eye, full of chastened hope and glorious anticipation; and at the great transition when the outward eye is dim, the image of the future is the last picture which is effaced from the retina of the mind.

But however universal has been the anticipation of the future, and however powerful its influence over the mind, Reason did not venture to give a form and locality to its conceptions; and the imagination, even with its loosest reins, failed in the attempt.