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one who has observed any thing, but may observe, that as fast as his time wears away, his appetite to something Future remains. The use therefore I would make of it is this, that since nature (as some love to express it) does nothing in vain, or, to speak properly, since the Author of our Being has planted no wandering passion in it, no desire which has not its object, Futurity is the proper object, of the passion so constantly exercised about it; and this restlessness in the present, the assigning ourselves over to farther stages of duration, this successive grasping at somewhat still to come, appears to me (whatever it may be to others) as a kind of instinct or natural symptom which the mind of man has of its own Immortality. There is something so pitifully mean in the inverted ambition of that man who can hope for annihilation, and please himself to think that his whole fabric shall one day crumble into dust, and mix with that mass of inanimate Beings, that it equally deserves our admiration and pity. The misery of such men's unbelief is not hard to be penetrated; and indeed amounts to nothing more that a sordid hope that they shall not be immortal, because they dare not be so. This brings me back to my first observation, and gives me occasion to say further, that as worthy actions spring from worthy thoughts, so
