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of man, wandering in darkness and error, amid the nether fpheres, but himself an emanation of the skies, a portion of the suPREME SOUL, whence are diffufed, like fparks from fire, innumerable vital spirits. Then follows this very elevated paffage, which I fhall give unabridged. Equally perceiving the Supreme Soul in all beings, and all beings in the Supreme Soul, he facrifices his own fpirit by fixing it on the Spirit of God, and approaches the nature of that Sole Divinity who fhines by his own effulgence." What great pity is it that a nation, who could think and write with fuch purity and fublimity on facred subjects, fhould ever have debafed their theology by extravagant allegories; but fuch is the genius of the Hindoos, and indeed of all the eastern nations, though the most frozen critic would fcarcely object to them, were they always as temperate as in the following inftance. "As fire, with augmented force, burns up even humid trees, thus he, who well knows the Veda, burns out the taint of fin which has infected his foul." Having thus laboured to burn out the taint of fin from his polluted foul, (but why thefe

strong

ftrong and repeated expreffions concerning the deep and radical stain with which the foul is contaminated, if they did not believe in original fin and the fall of man?) having rigidly performed all the prescribed duties of his caft, the foul of the virtuous Indian, in the future scenes of its existence, migrates through and among objects as tranfcendently beautiful and delightful as the depraved spirit performs its painful peregrinations through creatures deformed and disgusting. Its deftined receptacles hereafter are the loveliest and most enchanting objects in the vaft limits of nature and in the still more extended fields of fancy. Elyfiums, fuch as poets never yet feigned, and paradifes, fuch as inflamed enthusiasm, in its loftiest flight, never dared to conceive, await the beatified fpirit. After bathing for ages in this abyfs of joys, that it may be the better prepared for those of infinity, the pure spirit afcends the empyreum, and, in the firft ftage, joins the order of demigods, wafted in airy cars through the expanfe of heaven, while the genii of the zodiacal figns. and lunar manfions hail and embrace their delighted comrade. In the

next stage, he mounts to the deities of the inferior heaven, and triumphantly joins the genii of the immortal Vedas, the regents of stars, not in the path of the fun and moon, i. e. the most remote from human ken, blazing on the extreme verge of creation, the divinities that prefide over the great cycles of time, and the fuperintendants of the vast universe. In the last stage, he exultingly passes the flaming bounds of time and space, and is received into the highest heaven of Brahma, awful with four faces, inshrined in light more refulgent than a thousand funs, eternally to participate of his glory and be abforbed in his effence.

THE EN D.

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