mighty, are also noticed. Origen supposed there were legions of demons that inhabited the air — some of anger, others of pride and avarice. From a supposition of this sort the ancients attributed all important events, to good or evil gods or angels. Thus, there were angels of war and angels of peace, angels of uproar and angels of quietness, angels of armies and angels of government, angels of love and angels of hatred, angels of mystery, of knowledge, of eloquence, of friendship, of solitude, of day, of night, of life, and death. Milton says,

"Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth

Unseen, both when we wake, and when we sleep:
All these with ceaseless praise his works behold
Both day and night. How often from the steep
Of echoing hill or thicket have we heard
Celestial voices to the midnight air,

Sole, or responsive to each other's note,

Singing their great Creator? Oft in bands

While they keep watch, or nightly rounding walk,
With heavenly touch of instrumental sounds
In full harmonic number join'd, their songs

Divides the night, and lift our thoughts to Heaven."

Good angels are, without doubt, employed by the Almighty to execute his will; and evil angels may be sometimes allowed to act; but in every case they are under the immediate controul of the Great Governor, so that none can do what he will.

If the spirits of departed persons have appeared, then man is immortal; he lives after his body is mouldered into dust: if he lives he must be happy or unhappy, as his fate will depend on the present life, and his rule is the law of the Almighty; we

may see the necessity and benefit of a revelation. The resurrection of Christ was the hinge on which the truth of Christianity turned; the appearance of spiritual beings in various ages is a foundation on which the truth of Christianity may be fixed. Our expectation of a passage into another world is greatly increased by the reflection, that spiritual beings have come into this world, and that they have been visible to man.

But the rule with regard to supernatural appearances, is this the Almighty does not act uselessly; a pure spirit, therefore, or the soul of a departed man, would never be suffered to come, except on some very important occasion; and he would never come to perform what might have been accomplished by ordinary means. Hence, ninety-nine out of a hundred of all the ghoststories will fall to the ground as mere fictions, suggested by the follies and the fears of mankind. We possess a powerful rule of guidance in the Scriptures; we need not those immediate communications, visions, spectral appearances, &c., which were required in the Patriarchal and in the Jewish systems, and in the early ages of Christianity, before the Scriptures were diffused, and before life and immortality were completely brought to light. But we are not informed that spiritual communications and spectral appearances have ceased; consequently they may still occur; they are possible, but not probable: a person might behold such an appearance, but no one has a right to expect it. The foolish notions which have prevailed of supernatural noises, of haunted houses, of ghosts in

churches and churchyards, of speechless ghosts, and ghosts who pursue the midnight traveller; of dogs, bears, and hideous monsters from another world; with a hundred other foolish fancies; are all unfounded in truth, and unsanctioned by Christianity.

CHAP. VII.

THE TRANSITORY NATURE OF HUMAN LIFE.

Man is born,
He is like the

HUMAN life is exceedingly short. he looks around him, and he dies. meteor, which attracts a temporary notice, and his greatest glory is only to illumine the earth for a moment and then vanish. He has been compared to a cloud, to a shadow; and Pindar calls him the dream of a shadow. He has been compared to a dream; and Shakspeare says, "Our little life is rounded by a sleep." Homer calls him a leaf, and St. James a vapour.

"This is the bud of being, the dim dawn,

The twilight of our day, the vestibule."

Diodorus Siculus observes of the Egyptians, "They deem the residence of man so short on the earth, that they give the habitation of the living the name of inns, but the tombs of the dead everlasting abodes." But this apparent brevity arises from a contrast of time with eternity. A thousand, or ten thousand years, would not nearer resemble endless duration. If the life of man were lengthened a hundred times, and all other existences were made of an equal duration, we should not consider life as very long, especially if we considered the present state in reference to the future. If,

however, we contrast moments with hours, and hours with months, and months with years, or a single year with threescore years and ten, we may perceive that the life of man occupies a considerable period. We seem to have begun with eternity, for we remember not our beginning.

How variable is human life! Jeremy Taylor beautifully illustrates its rising and setting, its joys and sorrows, by the revolution of the sun." When this heavenly body," he observes, "approaches towards the gates of the morning, he first opens a little eye of heaven, and sends away the spirits of darkness, and gives light to a cock, and calls up the larks to matins, and by and by gilds the fringes of a cloud, and peeps over the eastern hills, -thrusting out his golden horns, like those which decked the brow of Moses, when he was forced to wear a veil, because himself had seen the face of God; and still, while a man tells the story, the sun gets up higher, till he shows a fair face and a full light, and then he shines one whole day, —under a cloud often, and sometimes weeping great and little showers, and sets quickly: so is a man's reason and his life." Every thing in this world is transitory,

"Seasons have changed,

Ages and empires roll'd like smoke away."

Colchis, in the time of the Romans, was a rich and powerful province, full of towns and cities, to which all the nations of the earth carried their manufactures; but now it is a vast forest. Where are Carthage, Babylon, and Nineveh? Where is