“I know enough,” added he, “to give it the palm of excellence over the several claims of Confucius, Menu, Zoroaster, and Mohammed. The nobleness of its _principle_, in making the love of God stand forward grandly as the only test of true religion, is sufficient to raise it beyond the finest compositions of human skill, which rest their foundations in convenience or necessity. I am likewise aware that much of what is to be admired in the best specimens of ancient wisdom, is directly imitated from the laws of Moses. I know that this lawgiver has been the means of preserving the people committed to his charge, and that too amidst the most tremendous reverses and astonishing vicissitudes of fortune for almost four thousand years by the same laws; while the boasted Grecian philosophy of the Lycurgus’, the Solons, the Platos, though indebted to him, has passed away in empty air. I know also, that the infidel hue and cry that Moses borrowed his plans of jurisprudence and morality from the Egyptians, has been transmitted through the crowd as mere sound divested of sense, and is easily arrested by the least degree of acquaintance with that mythology from which unbelievers pretend to derive the _Hebraical Institutes_. Could I be _assured_ that I am to live hereafter, the Bible should unquestionably be the light and staff of my journey towards that unseen world which _you_ are so certain of beholding, and in the existence of which there is nothing revolting to my understanding, except the difficulty of _knowing myself_ in a disembodied state. What is to convince me of my identity?” To this question I ventured to reply, “The argument of identity has been much misunderstood by a large portion of mankind, including almost all the sceptics whose writings I am acquainted with, and who confound this idea with that of _consciousness_. Now, Butler, whose book you see before you, has admirably and clearly drawn the true distinction, and shewn that _consciousness takes cognizance_ of identity, but is not the thing itself. You may sleep for a million of years as for a single night, without destroying your identity. Were it not so, each interruption from forgetfulness, however short, or from whatever cause, whether a natural slumber, lapse of memory, epileptic fit, swoon, or contusion of the brain, would be as fatal to the continuity of _self_, as the longest term of oblivion.