Serious Reflections on Time and Eternity

There are certain truths, which lie remote from all direct and immediate observation — and which require more than one step on the part of the human mind, ere they are arrived at — which can only, in fact, be reached by a reasoning process, that consists of many steps; and for the describing of which, the habit of sustained attention, and the talent of sound and legitimate inference, and the power of combining principles which are known, and thence eliciting a truth or a doctrine that was unknown, must all besummoned to the work, and be put into strenuous and continued exercise for days, or often for months together, ere the toils of the devoted inquirer be rewarded by the discovery that he is in quest of. There is much, for example, both of mathematical and political science, which is incontrovertibly true, but which, instead of being taken up at one act by the understanding, as if it lay on the very surface of contemplation, can only be grasped into the pos* session of the mind, by being travelled to through a long intermedium of many transitions and many arguments — and they are only a gifted fev? wo

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bear the fatigues of such a journey, and to whom the labours of the midnight oil afibrd a congenial and much-loved employment, and who have had their intellectual powers disciplined to the march of a logical or lengthened investigation. The Smith of the one science, and the Newton of the other, afford very striking illustrations of this kind of mental superiority over the rest of the species — and in virtue of which they were enabled to discover what before to the whole of mankind was utterly unknown; and in virtue of which their followers are enabled to see what the majority of mankind do not see. It is only seen in fact from a summit of demonstration — and this is only attained by a series of ascending movements — and the few who have made their way to the temple which stands upon such an eminence as this, find inscribed upon it * the temple of philosophy.’ Now, what we maintain is, that this is altogether distinct from * the temple of wisdom.’ Its successful worshippers are men of reach and men of acquirement, and men who, from the elevation they have won, and on which they have posted themselves can command a farther prospect over some walk, or some domain of the great intellectual territory, than their fellows around them. And yet they are not on this account men of wisdom, nor have we arrived at the true meaning and’ application of this epithet, if we either think that to be wise we must be philosophers, or that, if philosophers, we are therefore wise.

There are certain other truths, difficult of access, which are distinct, and distinguishable we think from those that we have just now adverted to — o* vu

not such M are gained by a continuous effort along a line of investigation — -not such as come in view upon the eye of the beholder, after he has scaled one of the altitudes of science — not such as lie remote, by being placed at a distance, but such rather as lie hidden from common minds, because deeply enveloped under the surface of common observation. To come at these, is not to plod and to persevere from one acquisition to another, as in the former instances. It is done by a process perhaps, too, in which all the elements of ratiocination are concerned, but a process so rapid, as to be felt even by the owner of the mind through which it passes, like an act of momentary intuition. Such is the quickness of his penetrating eye, that what to others is a thick and impalpable vail, hides not from him the truth or the principle which lurks beneath it — and with one glance of perception, can he discern many of the secret things which lie under the broad and ostensible face of human affairs — and this faculty of his, though certainly sharpened by cultivation, and cradled up to its present maturity among the varieties of experience and of life, is not of slow operation like the former, but is sudden in all its exercises, and quite immediate in all the information which it fetches to its owner. One of its main offices is to detect what is latent, and, to ordinary minds, inaccessible in the character of man. This it does not by any tardy movement of the understanding, but by something like the tact of an instantaneous discernment, by the look of an instinctive sagacity, directed towards any exhibition either in the countenance or in the conduct of another. Ix ‘% )tC^ faculty which gives the eye of a lynx to the satirist; and which endues, with all his readiness and ad« dress, the wily amhassador, who, himself unseen, can cast a piercing intelligence through all the windings and intrigues of a cabinet; and which dexter-^ ously guides its possessor’s way among the politics of a city corporation; and which even achieves, as wondrous triumphs as any of subtlety and skill among the severest collisions, or the low jockeyship of a market. It is far more diffused than science and scholarship are through the various ranks of society. You will meet with it in the homeliest walks of life — — nay, sometimes, in all its perfection, under the guise, and in the attitude, of a country simpleton. It is not confined to the chicanery of courts. For the play of as deep and as dexterous artifice may be set agoing in the negotiations of private interest) as has ever been recorded in the annals of diplomacy. And whether it be swindling without the law, or swindling within the law, may there b6 the same over-reach of one shrewder understanding over the blind and unsuspecting confidence of another, in the contests of ordinary trade, as in the contests of politics. The man who is thus gifted, sees deeper than his fellows. He pan read the vanity, or the weakness, or the delicacy which are in another’s heart, and he can practice accordingly. It is true, that he may be thus wise as a serpent, and yet harmless as a dove. But the mere wisdom of the serpent is not true wisdom, in the soundest acceptation of the term. The epithet wise, according to its largest and its soundest acceptation, is neither exemplified by him, who, by dint of meditation, sees

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farthest into the secrets of philosophy, or who, by dint of shrewd and oft-repeated observation, sees deepest into the mysteries of our nature-^nor have we yet reached the conception of a truly wise man, if we think, that to be wise we must be political, or, that if political, we are therefore wise.

The consideration of our latter end, which forms the principal topic of the following Volume, is that which the Scripture affirms to be true wisdom. “Oh that they were wise, that they understood this, that they considered their latter end.” But the truth of ^oor mortality, by the considering of which aright we are wise, belongs neither to the former, nor to the latter classification. We do not needl to travel far in quest of its discovery. Neither do we need to dive among the recesses. of a profound observation, that we may be able to fetch it up, and to appropriate it. It is a truth which, on the very highway of ordinary life, forces itself on the recognition of every man. That world, through which we are all journeying, abounds in the sign-posts of mortality; and many is the passing funeral which obtrudes this lesson upon our eyes; and many are the notes of that funeral bell which tolls it upon our hearing; — and well may the old, when they think of a former generation, levelled and taken off by the hand of death, learn how sure it is, that the living and busy society around them will at length be swept away; — and even to the young, and those the likeliest of us all, does death hang out its memorials, and gives them to know that it wields an indiscriminating arm; — and even from those whom it spares the longest, and comes to the last, may we learn how short a process

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