2. *Part of what we were intrusted with before, is at an end, at least with regard to us. What have we to do, after this life, with food, and raiment, and houses, and earthly possessions? The food of the dead is the dust of the earth: they are cloathed only with worms and rottenness. They dwell in _the house prepared for all flesh_: their lands know them no more. All their worldly goods are delivered into other hands, and they have _no more portion under the sun_.
3. The case is the same with regard to the _body_. The moment the spirit returns to God, we are no longer stewards of this machine, which is then sown in corruption and dishonour. All the parts and members of which it was composed, lie mouldering in the clay. The hands have no longer power to move; the feet have forgot their office; the flesh, sinews, the bones, are all hasting to be dissolved into common dust.
4. Here end also the talents of a _mixt_ nature, our _strength_; our _health_; our _beauty_; our _eloquence_, and _address_; our faculty of pleasing, of persuading, or convincing others. Here end likewise all the _honours_ we once enjoyed, all the _power_ which was lodged in our hands, all the _influence_ which we once had over others, either by the love or the esteem which they bore us. _Our love, our hatred, our desire is perished_: none regard how we were once affected toward them. They look upon the dead as neither able to help nor hurt them; so that a _living dog is better than a dead lion_.
5. *Perhaps a doubt may remain concerning some of the other talents wherewith we are now intrusted, whether they will cease to exist when the body returns to dust, or only cease to be improvable. Indeed there is no doubt, but the kind of _speech_ which we now use, by means of these bodily organs, will then be intirely at an end, when those organs are destroyed. It is certain the tongue will no more occasion any vibrations in the air: neither will the ear convey these tremulous motions to the common sensory. Even the _sonus exilis_, the low, shrill voice, which the poet supposes to belong to a separate spirit, we cannot allow to have a real being; it is a mere flight of imagination. Indeed it cannot be questioned, but separate spirits have some way to communicate their sentiments to each other: but what inhabitant of flesh and blood can explain that way? What we term _speech_, they cannot have. So that we can no longer be steward of this talent, when we are numbered with the dead.
6. *It may likewise admit of a doubt, whether our _senses_ will exist, when the organs of sense are destroyed. Is it not probable, that those of the lower kind will cease; the feeling, the smell, the taste, as they have a more immediate reference to the body, and are chiefly, if not wholly intended for the preservation of it? But will not some kind of _sight_ remain, although the eye be closed in death? And will there not be something in the soul, equivalent to the present sense of _hearing_? Nay, is it not probable, that these will not only exist in the separate state, but exist in a far greater degree, in a more eminent manner than now! When the soul, disintangled from its clay, is no longer.
“A dying sparkle in a cloudy place; when it no longer Looks thro’ the windows of the eye and ear.”
But rather is all eye, all ear, all sense, in a manner we cannot yet conceive. And have we not a clear proof of the possibility of this, of seeing without the use of the eye, and hearing without the use of the ear? Yea, and an earnest of it continually? For does not the soul see, in the clearest manner, when the eye is of no use, namely, in dreams? Does she not then enjoy the faculty of hearing, without any help from the ear? But however this be, certain it is, that neither will our _senses_, any more than our _speech_, be intrusted to us in the manner they are now, when the body lies in the silent grave.
7. *How far the _knowledge_ or _learning_ which we have gained by _education_ will then remain, we cannot tell. _Solomon_ indeed says, _There is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave whither thou goest_. But it is evident, these words cannot be understood in an absolute sense. For it is so far from being true, that there is _no knowledge_ after we have quitted the body, that the doubt lies on the other side, whether there be any such thing as real knowledge till then? Whether it be not a plain sober truth, not a mere poetical fiction,
That “all these shadows which for things we take, Are but the empty dreams, which in death’s sleep we make”?
Only excepting those things which God himself has been pleased to reveal to man. I will speak for one: after having sought for truth with some diligence for half a century, I am at this day hardly sure of any thing, but what I learn from the bible. Nay, I positively affirm, I _know nothing_ else so certainly, that I would dare to stake my salvation upon it.