We are, after all, unconsciously influenced, and that in no slight degree, by authority, however humble may be its claims, as a test of truth. How did such a person believe on such a point? Many a young aspirant suspends his opinion, until he hears; and settles into fixed persuasion afterwards. How many are there, in christian lands especially, who have never had a wandering or unbelieving doubt of the soul’s immortality float over their minds? How many, who have had no terrene and gross ideas, influenced by seeing the tenement of flesh, by which all that was called the mind and the soul stood visible to the eye, and tangible to the thought, yielded up to consumption and decay? This is a question which no one can answer for another. For myself, I believe unhesitatingly, and with no stain of doubt, that I shall, in some way, exactly provided for by Him who made me, exist after death, as simply conscious, that I am the same person, as I am now in the morning, that I slept at night. Do I derive this conviction from books and reasonings? I am by no means sure that I do; though the gospel assuredly speaks directly to my heart. I do ready homage to the talents and learning of Clarke, Locke, Paley, Channing and a cloud of reasoning witnesses, of whom every Christian may well be proud; and, most of all, to the profound and admirable Butler. I hear the author of our faith directly declaring a resurrection and immortality. A single assertation from such a source were enough. But I find him reasoning, and insisting less upon the fact, than I should have expected, had he intended to implant it in the mind, as it were a truth, chiefly to be apprehended by the understanding. It seems to me that he so discusses it, as one who was aware that it was already inwoven in the sentiments and hearts of his hearers, vague, dark, without moral consequence, it may be; but an existing sentiment, taken for granted, upon which he might predicate his doctrines, as upon a thousand other facts, which we can clearly perceive, he considers already admitted by his hearers.