number than can exist at once upon the earth, will be ultimately
crowned with immortality. Had such a tenet been advanced as a
tenet of revelation I am very sure that all the enemies of
religion, and probably Mr Godwin and Mr Condorcet among the rest,
would have exhausted the whole force of their ridicule upon it,
as the most puerile, the most absurd, the poorest, the most
pitiful, the most iniquitously unjust, and, consequently, the
most unworthy of the Deity that the superstitious folly of man
could invent.

What a strange and curious proof do these conjectures exhibit
of the inconsistency of scepticism! For it should be observed,
that there is a very striking and essential difference between
believing an assertion which absolutely contradicts the most
uniform experience, and an assertion which contradicts nothing,
but is merely beyond the power of our present observation and
knowledge. So diversified are the natural objects around us, so
many instances of mighty power daily offer themselves to our
view, that we may fairly presume, that there are many forms and
operations of nature which we have not yet observed, or which,
perhaps, we are not capable of observing with our present
confined inlets of knowledge. The resurrection of a spiritual
body from a natural body does not appear in itself a more
wonderful instance of power than the germination of a blade of
wheat from the grain, or of an oak from an acorn. Could we
conceive an intelligent being, so placed as to be conversant only
with inanimate or full grown objects, and never to have witnessed
the process of vegetation and growth; and were another being to
shew him two little pieces of matter, a grain of wheat, and an
acorn, to desire him to examine them, to analyse them if he