Let us take care that here our judgments are not led captive by the fascinations of poetry, or the rhetorical beauties of which this argument is so eminently susceptible. Among the many instances of nature, we find only a few that furnish the analogies here presented. The chrysalis, so often referred to, after it has spent its brief day as a living butterfly, perishes and is heard of no more forever. So with all the higher order of brutes: they fall in death and make no more their appearance upon our path. The most, then, that can be drawn from this argument, is a faint foreshadowing, perhaps, of a future life. But here, let it be understood, there is no issue. We all agree that the race shall be called again to life. “As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive.” 1 Cor. 15:22. But the point at issue is, Are our souls immortal, and must this life be, to all our race, necessarily eternal? To prove that man will live again is one thing; to prove that that life will be eternal, is quite another. _The anomalies of the present state._ How often do we here see the wicked spreading himself like a green bay tree, having more than heart could wish, while the righteous grope their way along, in trouble and want. The wicked are exalted, and the good are oppressed. This does not look like the arrangement of a God who is the patron of virtue and the enemy of vice. It is therefore argued that there will be another state in which all these wrongs shall be righted, virtue rewarded, and wickedness punished. Yes, we reply, there will. But, certainly, a space of time infinitely short of eternity would suffice to correct all the anomalies of this brief life, which so puzzle men here. This argument, like the former, may be a fair inference for a future state; it may portend to the ungodly a scene of retribution, but can prove nothing as to its duration. _Immortality assumed._ We are told that the Bible assumes the immortality of the soul as a truth so evident that it is not necessary to expressly affirm it. This is why the doctrine has come to be so generally received against so explicit evidence against it. _It has been taken for granted!_ Says Bishop Tillotson:-- “The immortality of the soul is rather supposed, or taken for granted, than expressly revealed in the Bible.” “It is taken for granted” that immortality is an essential attribute of the soul, and that therefore for the Bible to affirm it would be mere tautology. But we reply, Is not immortality an essential attribute also of Jehovah? Yet the Bible has been tautological enough to plainly state this fact. And it would seem that it might have carried its “tautology” a little further, and told us as much, at least _once_, about the soul, if that too is immortal; for surely its immortality cannot be _more_ essential than that of Jehovah.