MAN A RELIGIOUS ANIMAL. 399 



hastily to Torres, and the story went that you were dead. 

 I never before knew how much I valued and estmiu-d 

 you ; the thought too that one with whom I had so 

 often conversed, and with whose mind I was so tho- 

 roughly acquainted, had passed the dark bourne which 

 separates this world from the other, had something in- 

 expressibly solemn and melancholy in it. I felt for the 

 time that, disguise the fact as we may, the main business 

 of this life consists in preparing for another, and con- 

 science was not quite silent when I remembered that, 

 though you and I had beaten together over many an 

 interesting topic, the most interesting of all had been 

 omitted. You remember the fable of the wise men who 

 were permitted to make a three days' visit to the moon 

 that they might report to our lower world regarding its 

 plants and animals, and who on their return had to 

 confess that they had squandered their time in drinking 

 with gay young men, and dancing with beautiful women, 

 and had only remarked that the trees and sky of the 

 planet, when seen casually through a window, very much 

 resembled those of our own. Alas, for the application of 

 this ingenious story. 



' There are few men who do not at some time or other 

 think seriously of the future state, or who have not formed 

 some at least theoretic set of notions regarding the best 

 mode of preparing for it. Man was born to anticipate a 

 hereafter he is a religious animal by the very constitu- 

 tion of his nature, and the thousand forms of superstition 

 which still overspread the world and darken every page 

 of its history are just so many proofs of this. It has 

 often struck me that the infidel, when in his assaults on 

 revelation he draws largely from this store of delusion, 

 sadly mistakes his argument ; every false religion which 

 has sprung out of the nature of man shows us not 



