That nature has implanted in our bosoms an instinctive dread of death, I readily admit. But fear, as a factitious and unnatural addition to the true instincts of human nature, has been so accumulated by rolling down through a hundred generations, that we are in no condition to know the degree, in which nature intended we should possess it. We have innumerable base propensities, which we charge upon nature, that are, in fact, no more, than the guilty heritage, bequeathed us by our ancestors. Nature could have implanted no higher degree of instinctive dread of death, than just what was requisite, to preserve the race from prodigal waste, or rash exposure of a gift, which, once lost, is irretrievable. If nature has inwrought in any constitution one particle of fear, beyond what was required for this result, she has, as in all other excessive endowments, granted reason and judgment, to regulate, and reduce it to its due subordination. Will not religion achieve the great triumph of casting out the base principle of fear? I would be the last to deny, or undervalue the trophies of true religion. I have no doubt that religion has, in innumerable instances, extracted the pain and poison from the sting of death. More than this, it would unquestionably produce this triumph in every case, if every individual were completely under the influence of the true principle. It would attain this end by processes and discipline exactly concurrent, if not similar, with those I am about to propose. But it is a lamentable fact, that very few are under the influence of true religion. Of those, whom charity deems most sincerely pious, under all professions and forms, the far greater number exhibit, on the bed of dangerous sickness, the same fear of death with the rest. We consider this a generally conceded fact; for, among all but the most extravagant sects, death-bed terror, or triumph has ceased to be considered a test of the personal religion of the deceased. Even in the cases of enthusiastic triumph in the last moments, which we have all witnessed, and which are justly so soothing to the survivors, it would often be difficult to determine the respective influence of laudanum, and partial insanity doing its last work upon the nervous system.