My most treasured hopes of immortality are from the same source. Will this conscious being, capable of such remote excursions into the two eternities between which its existence is suspended, live beyond the present life? Not a particle of matter, for ought that appears, can be annihilated. Will the nobler thoughts, the warmer affections perish, as though they had not been? We ask our senses, and they can give us no hope. The body lives, and we speak of it as including the conscious being. We see it die, pass under the empire of corruption, molder, and incorporate with its kindred elements. The sensible evidence, that the person exists, is entirely destroyed. The most insatiate appetite of our natures, however, craves continued existence, and ceases not to seek for it. The inquirer after immortality cannot but be in earnest in this pursuit. The arguments of the venerable sages of old are spread before him. From the soul’s nature, from the unity of consciousness, the incorruptibility of thought, the everlasting progress, of which our faculties are capable, the strong and unquenchable desire of posthumous fame, the sacredness of earthly friendships, and similar arguments, they strove to establish, on the basis of reasoning, the conviction of immortality. From these reasonings he repairs to the Scriptures. A strange book, utterly unlike any writings that had appeared before, declares that we shall exist forever. The religion which has arisen from this book, in its whole structure and dispensation, is predicated on the assumed fact, that we shall exist forever in another life, happy or miserable, according to our deeds on earth. Jesus, _the author and finisher of this faith_, announces himself _the resurrection and the life_; with a voice of power calls his dead friend from the tomb; declares, that death has no power over himself; that, after suffering a violent death, on the third day from that event, he shall arise from the dead. He arises, according to his promise; and, in the midst of his awe-struck friends he visibly ascends to his own celestial sphere. Millions, as by one impulse, catch the spirit of this wonderful book--love each other with anew and single-hearted affection, as unlike the spirit of all former ties of kindness and love, as the doctrines of this religion are different from those of paganism. The new sect look with a careless eye upon whatever is transitory; and will submit to privation, derision and torture, of whatever form, rather than waver, or equivocate, in declaring themselves subjects of this hope of immortality. This Christian hope, in every period from the time of its author, has made its way to the heart of millions, who have laid themselves down on their last bed, and felt the approach of their last sleep, expecting, as confidently to open their eyes on an eternal morning, as the weary laborer, at his evening rest, trusts that he shall see the brightness of the morrow’s dawn.