The light of reason, or the knowledge, which we may attain by the exercise of our reasoning faculties, gives all men some feeble and distant glimmerings of another life, after this, where the good will be rewarded, and the wicked punished. Man seems to wish to exist longer, and still longer. He cherishes the fond desire of immortality. He shrinks back from the bare thought of annihilation. NOT TO BE is an idea indescribably painful. But, without a divine revelation, reason only, as it were, casts a wishful glance over into another world.--It is matter of fact, that the wisest and best among the learned Greeks and Romans rather hoped, than believed, that there will be a future state--Cicero, the prince of Roman Eloquence, who was at once an orator, a moralist, a philosopher, and theologian, in one of his learned works, sums up all that the most celebrated philosophers of his own time, and earlier days, had said or written on the grand subject of the immortality of the soul. He, in a lengthy dialogue, ingeniously exhibits all that the philosophers had said for, or against it. And, he closes all, with this remarkable saying, "that he rather hoped than believed, that there was another state of being after this."--Reason, then, only conjectures about an Eternity. But the immortality of the soul is necessary to all religion. To talk of religion, if we be not to exist hereafter--if we be to fall into nothing at death, and shall sleep eternally in the grave, is the greatest absurdity.--Reason, then, leaves us much in the dark, on a point so important, as that of a future state. What folly and madness, then, to prefer the boasted oracles of reason to the clear light of divine revelation!--We stand in perishing need of a safer guide, in our voyage through this tempestuous Sea of life. And to refuse a perfect directory, the Chart of life, is like the mad seaman, who should venture to traverse the wide extended ocean without a Compass by which to steer his course. While making our voyage through life, we do not sail on a pacific Ocean. We need all the help therefore we can procure. And happy, if we may but reach the haven of eternal rest! In our enquiries on this subject, whether there be any principle in man, by whatever name it may be called, which is adequate to all the purposes of his salvation, or a sufficient guide in matters of faith and practice, we will give all the credit to the reason and conscience of mankind, which can be given, consistently with fact, and the page of history. The light of reason can no further go, than I have conceded, it is apprehended. And, that it _did_ no further go, in matters of religion, among the most learned and civilized heathen nations, I appeal to all, who have ever read their history. What the light of reason is able to do, on MORAL SUBJECTS, will be stated, in the progress of our argument, in its proper place.-- We proceed--as was proposed--