Does our
theology furnish us with no clear conception of the state of the soul
after death? The Catholic Church teaches that the spirit at death
descends into the interior of the earth to a place called Hades, where
it is detained until the day of judgment, when it is reunited with the
dust of the body, and ascends to a heaven in the sky. This doctrine
has the merit of being positive, clear, and comprehensible, and,
consequently, whenever expressed, it always means something exact and
well-defined. Has the Protestant Church equally definite notions on the
subject, or, in fact, any fixed opinions respecting it whatever? If not,
why, as a matter of good taste, for no weightier reason, in records
almost imperishable like these, leave the matter alone! Silence
is better than nonsense. Suppose a few thousand years hence our
civilization to have become extinct, and that some antiquary from the
antipodes should visit this desolate hill to excavate, like Layard at
Nineveh, for relics of the old Americans. Suppose, having collected a
ship-load of broken tombstones, he should forward them to the Polynesian
Museum, and set the _savans_ of the age at work deciphering their
inscriptions, what sense would be made out of these epitaphs? How would
they interpret our notions of a future state? Taking our own monuments,
cut with our own hands, inscribed with our own signs-manual, what would
they infer our system of religion to have been? If the Egyptians were as
vague and careless as we in this matter, our archaeologists must have
made some amusing blunders.
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