Perennial plants their pulpy treasures spread, Not only the Poets, but philosophers also, declared their belief in a state and place of future happiness. "I am in good hopes," says Socrates, "that there is something remaining for those that are dead; and that, as hath been said of old, it is much better for good than for bad men." He says farther, "they who live holy and excellent lives, being freed from these earthly places as from prisons, ascend to a pure region above the earth, where they dwell; and those of them who are sufficiently purged by philosophy, live all their time without bodies, and ascend to still more beautiful habitations." Plato, a disciple of Socrates, entertained his master's sentiments on this subject. He wrote extensively on the immortality of the soul, and the condition of the dead after this life. He says, "as to bad men, if they be not freed from their depravity in this life, that place which is pure from evil will not receive them when they die." In his Tenth Republic, he makes Socrates say: "It must be supposed concerning the just man, that if he be in poverty or sickness, or under any of those things which are accounted evils, these things shall in the issue be for good, either when he is living or after he is dead. For that man shall never be neglected by the gods, who earnestly desires to become just." Plato, in his dialogue entitled Phædon, represents Socrates, amid a circle of philosophers, shortly before his death, as saying, among other things: "Those who have passed through life with peculiar sanctity of manners, are received on high into a pure region, where they live without their bodies through all eternity, in a series of joys and delights which cannot be described." Leland says, "Aristotle, cited by Plutarch, speaking of the happiness of men after their departure out of this life, represents it as a most ancient opinion, so old that no man knows when it began, or who was the author of it, that it hath been handed down to us by tradition from infinite ages.' The same author adds: "Plutarch, in his consolation to Apollonius, not only approves the sentiments concerning the great antiquity of this tradition, but represents it as an opinion delivered by the most ancient Poets and Philosophers, that some kind of honor and dignity shall be conferred upon excellent persons, after their departure out of this life; and that there is a certain region appointed, in which the souls of such persons reside. The same eminent Philosopher, in his consolatory letter to his wife on the death of their little child, supposes that the souls of infants pass, after death, into a better and more divine state. And that this is what may be gathered from their ancient laws and customs, derived by traditions from their ancestors." Even among the sentiments of the cold and cheerless Stoics, there are some warm and hopeful inlets into a better world. Zeno, the father of the Stoic sect, placed the abode where the spirits of good men go in subterranean regions, but speaks of them as "pleasant and delightful regions." It is, however, doubted by some whether Zeno did not rather express the popular opinion on this point, than his own mind. "Whatever were his sentiments upon it," says Dr. Leland, "certain it is that the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, and a future state of rewards and punishments, was not the professed doctrine of this school, nor was it ever reckoned among the avowed principles of the Stoic sect." This dark confusion of ideas is a characteristic of all the pagan sages and systems. It is found even in Seneca, the most prominent and excellent of the Stoics. Like short, pleasant, and hope-inspiring interludes in a wretched dream, so do glimpses of a future happy life appear in the ideas of this ancient sage. "Sometimes he speaks in a clear and noble manner of the happiness of souls after death, when freed from the incumbrances of the body, and received into the place or regions of departed souls. Especially in his 102d epistle to Lucilius, he has some sublime thoughts on this subject; and among other things declares, that the last day of this present life is to be regarded as the birth-day of an eternal The Magi of Babylonia, Media, Assyria, and Persia taught, with eternal punishments, also eternal rewards. They believed that there were, under the Supreme Being, two angels, one of Light, the other of Darkness; one presiding over good souls, the other over the evil. At the end of the world there shall be a resurrection and a day of Judgment; after which the angel of Darkness shall take the wicked away to the place of punishment. Then "the angel of Light and * Dr. Leland on the Necessity of Divine Revelation, Vol. II, p. 292. his disciples shall also go into a world of their own, where they shall receive, in everlasting light, the reward due to their good deeds." If, now, we come down to modern times, we shall find that the belief in a future life of happiness still prevails among all tribes and nations of pagans. "The natives of the Society Isles believe, that after death there is not only a state of conscious existence, but degrees of eminence and felicity, according as men have been more or less pleasing to the Eatova, or Deity, while upon earth." In the Friendly Islands the belief prevails that the soul after death "is immediately conveyed, in a fast-sailing canoe, to a distant country, called Doobludha, which they describe as resembling the Mahometan paradise-that those who are conveyed thither are no more subject to death, but feast on all the favorite productions of their native soil, with which this blissful abode is plentifully furnished. The New Zealanders believe, that the third day after the interment of a man, the heart separates itself from the corpse, and that this separation is announced by a gentle breeze of wind, which gives warning of its approach by an inferior divinity that hovers over the grave, and who carries it to the clouds. The inhabitants of the Pelew Islands, according to the account of Captain Wilson, although they have few religious rites and ceremonies, believe in one Supreme Being, and in a future state of rewards and punishments. In the religion of the Kalmuc Tartars, the doctrine of a future state holds a conspicuous place.”The inhabitants of Northern Tartary believe "that there is one Supreme Being, that he is our all-merciful and common Parent, and that he will reward with a happy state hereafter, those who live virtuously in this world. The Birmans believe in the transmigration of souls, after which, they maintain that the radically bad will be sentenced to lasting punishment, while the good will enjoy eternal happiness on a mountain called Meru."* The various tribes of the African continent, according to Addison, believe that there is a future state of happiness, and that it is of such a nature that whatever the soul shall at any time desire will be immediately before it to be enjoyed. It is well known, that all those tribes in Asia and Africa, which are under the influence of Mahometanism, believe firmly in that heaven of sensual delight which their prophet has described with such animated eloquence. The belief in a future state and place of happiness is general among all the tribes of our own Indians. Their descriptions of that happy region have a variety of shades; but though it is ornamented with slight difference of imagery, it is in substance the same. It is in general this; "They expect to be translated to a delightful country, where they shall always have a clear unclouded sky, and enjoy a perpetual spring; where the forest will abound with game, and the lakes with fish, which may be taken without requiring a painful exertion of skill, or a laborious pursuit; in short, that they shall live forever in regions of plenty, and enjoy every gratification they delight in here, in a greater degree." This universal experience proves that the desire for * Dick's Future State. |