Essays on Life 



nothing about it, is nevertheless a thing tojjbe 

 desired and gratefully accepted if we can get 

 it either before death or after. I observe also 

 that a large number of men and women do 

 actually attain to such life, and in some cases 

 continue so to live, if not for ever, yet to what 

 is practically much the same thing. Our life 

 then in this world is, to natural religion as 

 much as to revealed, a period of probation. 

 The use we make of it is to settle how far we 

 are to enter into another, and whether that 

 other is to be a heaven of just affection or a 

 hell of righteous condemnation. 



Who, then, are the most likely so to run 

 that they may obtain this veritable prize of 

 our high calling? Setting aside such lucky 

 numbers drawn as it were in the lottery of 

 immortality, which I have referred to casually 

 above, and setting aside also the chances and 

 changes from which even immortality is not 

 exempt, who on the whole are most likely to 

 live anew in the affectionate thoughts of those 

 who never so much as saw them in the flesh, 

 and know not even their names ? There is a 

 nisus, a straining in the dull dumb economy 



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