doubt whether man had any occasion to trouble his head about another world. All the while his parents were living he had studiously avoided making any remarks which could have led them to have believed that he had departed from the faith. Respect to their feelings caused him to be dumb on religious subjects, and their impression was that he was only indifferent to religion. It was not long after their deaths, however, before Frank Goddard began openly to state his infidel views. Yes, Frank Goddard, who had been brought up in the path of piety, over whose spiritual welfare his parents had anxiously yearned, had become an infidel. He had become associated with a knot of "choice spirits," as they are often termed, who, in their revelry and mirth, had learned to despise all that was good and holy, and to contemn religion as priestcraft.

The day in which Frank Goddard first disclosed his infidel views will never be forgotten by me. We were sitting alone in his brother's parlour, and I embraced the opportunity of pressing him once more with a religious topic, in order, if possible, to obtain a knowledge of the present state of his mind. His brother had, in truth, left us alone together for this purpose, he not being able, as he had said to me privately, to discover what they now were; for, as before the death of his parents, he still preserved the most profound silence on the subject of religion in the heart of his family. The remarks I made to him were these:"While sitting in this room, my dear friend, my mind always recurs to past scenes to those happy days when your pious.

and revered parents were living, to make all around them cheerful and happy. It must have been a great loss to all of you, when death laid his hand upon them; for even I, who am only an occasional visitor, miss their presence. But your loss was doubtless their gain; they have reaped, and are still reaping, the fruits of their habitual and active piety. It will be well for our souls if we follow their example."

"I am not quite sure that we have souls," said Frank Goddard, with a half-hesitating voice.

"Not quite sure that we have souls!" I reiterated; "not quite sure that we have souls! Have my ears deceived me? Was it the voice of Frank Goddard that uttered these words?"

"It was not the voice of Frank Goddard," he replied, reddening with anger, and pushing his card across the table.

:

"Oh, I see!" I resumed; "but I am not much mistaken it was Frank Goddard once, but now Francis Goddard, Esquire. I beg your pardon; I was only addressing you as my once familiar and pious companion. But does Francis Goddard, Esquire, wish to prove himself to be, notwithstanding his self-importance, nothing better in the end than a beast that perishes? Does he wish to prove that though he is something now, he will be nothing hereafter? That would be strange indeed! Most men shudder at the bare idea of annihilation; they would not only live long in this world, but they would live for ever. But may I ask you on what grounds you doubt the soul's existence?"

"I am not singular in this respect," replied Frank Goddard. "Most of the ancient philosophers, though they taught the multitude there was an hereafter, nevertheless believed to the contrary."

"If you say this from your own reading of history," I rejoined, "then I must say you have either read it with a bias or superficially. The very reverse of this is the fact. The many taught the existence of the soul, and that honestly the few taught it with a mental reservation. The immortality of the soul was, in truth, the leading feature of the religion of the Pagan world. It is to be met with in every part of their literature. Thus, in the Homeric poems, the shade or soul of Patroclus is represented as wandering about, out of Hades, until funereal rites had been performed over the body it had left, and is made to appear to Achilles as he slumbered on the sea-shore after the funeral feast, and to address him thus :—

And sleeps Achilles-thus the phantom said—
Sleeps my Achilles, his Patroclus dead!
Living, I seemed his dearest tenderest care,
But now forgot I wander in the air.

Let my pale corpse the rites of burial know,
And give me entrance in the realms below;
Till then the spirit finds no resting place,
But here and there the' embodied spectres chase
The vagrant dead around the dark abode,
Forbid to cross the irremeable flood.

Now give thy hand for to the further shore
When once we pass, the soul returns no more;
When once the last funereal flames ascend

No more shall meet Achilles and his friend.'

I grant you Pythagoras rejected a future state of rewards and punishments; but Ovid finely refutes him on the very principle of his own metempsychosis. He says:

'Pleased as I am to walk along the sphere
Of shining stars, and travel with the year;
To leave the heavy earth, and scale the height
Of Atlas who supports the heavy weight;
To look from upper light, and thence survey
Mistaken mortals wandering from the way,
And wanting wisdom; fearful for the state
Of future things, and trembling at their fate.

Those I would teach, and by right reason bring
To think of death as but an idle thing.
Why thus affrighted at an empty name,
A dream of darkness and fictitious flame?
Vain themes of wit, which but in poems pass,
And fables of a world that never was!

What feels the body when the soul expires,
By time corrupted or consum'd by fires?
Nor dies the spirit, but new life repeats

In other forms and only changes seats.

'E'en I, who these mysterious truths declare
Was once Euphorbus in the Trojan war-
My name and lineage I remember well,
And how in fight by Sparta's king I fell.'

"If you had said that the philosophers of old were ignorant as to the real nature of the soul, and of its state in eternity, I would have granted it; but when you say that they generally doubted of its existence, then I answer, that it is a libel on their knowledge and principles. Cato's address to Plato, in his soliloquy, is applicable to the mass of Pagan sages:

'It must be so. Plato, thou reasonest well!
Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire,
This longing after immortality?

Or whence this secret dread and inward horror
Of falling into nought? Why shrinks the soul
Back on herself and startles at destruction ?
'Tis the divinity that stirs within us;

'Tis heaven itself that points out an hereafter,
And intimates eternity to man.' - ADDISON.

"But," I continued, "I do not take the ancient sages as my oracles in this matter: their testimony is valuable, but not indispensably requisite to the establishment of this truth. I rather place greater emphasis on the evidence of

my own senses: sleeping or waking, I feel that I have a never-dying soul. Above all, I confide in Revelation, by which I am taught that I have a soul, and that it will exist in bliss or woe throughout the ages of eternity. If I parted with this belief, I should part with all my hopes of happiness."

I paused for a reply, but Frank Goddard was silent. My reasoning, however, did not convince him that he was in error, or prevent him from avowing his sentiments. It was like the breaking of the ice with him, for from that time he became more bold in the promulgation of his views. In my presence, indeed, he never again ventured to bring them forward; but I have discovered from others, that whenever he could do so with any hope of success or impunity, he never threw away the opportunity. Such conduct as this was highly reprehensible, inasmuch as it might have unsettled the faith of weak Christians. A man should never bring forward in company any views which could either prove offensive to the feelings, or injurious to the principles, of those with whom he may associate. But Frank Goddard was in the end the loser by his infidelity. He lost caste: friend after friend gave up his company; and in a few years he confined himself to the "choice spirits" of London society who had led him astray. He is still living, and I trust that before he dies he may see the error of his ways: may learn to feel the truth of, and subscribe to, these sentiments of the poet Watts :