This being Dr Hawker's final literary labour, was submitted to the printers one month previous  to his death, and was being printed when  "the intelligence of the death of the venerable author reached the publisher". Robert Hawker begins by saying "It was not until that I had passed a very considerable portion of time in the life of man, that I felt the fall conviction of my being but a stranger and a pilgrim upon the earth. And it becomes even now, one of the most astonishing circumstances, in the new view of things which are continually opening before me, that there should have been so much ignorance in my mind by nature, on a subject, which in itself appears so exceedingly plain and evident".