By their mode of treating the dead, they seem to study the perpetuity of friendship, and by their using their morais as places of worship, they acknowledge a fellowship with them in something that death cannot destroy.  The philosopher of modern times may say this is foolish, and may call for evidence that the notion of immortality is not groundless.  It is perhaps impossible to satisfy him, because, in fact, he demands of reason what it is not the province of reason to afford.  The notion is founded on other principles of the constitution which God has imparted to man, and these principles rebut all the sophistry of the presumptuous sciolist.  Is it true, that this notion prevails universally among the human race?  Let him answer to this.  He must admit it;—­let him then explain it, if he can.  Reason, he will say, is incompetent to the task.—­Admitted.  But so is it to many other tasks—­it cannot, for instance, solve the question, why we believe the sun will rise to-morrow and dispel the darkness now cloaking over the horizon?  The hope that it will do so, is nevertheless very natural.  Who shall say it is improper, or that it is founded on the mere fancy of man?  Reason indeed may strengthen the ground of this hope, and so may it too the notion of a future existence.  But they both rest on foundations quite distinct from that faculty, and might, for any thing can be seen to the contrary, have formed part of our moral constitution, although that faculty had never existed in our minds.  And here let it be distinctly understood, that in stating the notion or expectation of a future existence to be founded on some principle or principles separate from reason, and the same in all the human race, it is not meant to be denied that the mere opinions as to the nature and condition of that existence may have no other foundation whatever than what Mr Hume, for instance, has ascribed erroneously to the notion itself—­men’s own conceit and imagination.  This in fact is the secret of that writer’s vile sophistry on the subject, and at once confutes it, by proving the inapplicability of his argument.  All that is now contended for, is, the universality of the notion or belief, not by any means the similarity of the opinions connected with it.  These opinions are as numerous, indeed, as the characteristic features of different nations and governments; but were they a thousand times more diversified than they are ascertained to be, and a thousand times more contradictory and absurd, they still recognise some instinctive or constitutional principle common to our race, and which no reasoning or artifices of priests or designing men could possibly produce.  No conceit or imagination can ever originate, though it may certainly foster, “this hope, this fond desire, this longing after immortality;” and no reasoning, no efforts of the mind, nay, what is still more striking, no dislike, however strong, as proceeding from an apprehension of some evil consequences involved in the truth of the belief, can eradicate