MEMOIR OF THOMAS BEWICK. 297 



then become debased, degraded, and associated 

 with sin ; for he then suffers his bad passions and 

 gross appetites to overpower his reason, and thus 

 creates for himself an evil spirit, or a devil and a 

 hell in his own breast, that consumes or annihilates 

 his good spiritual guide, and disfigures the image 

 of God within him, before it returns to whence it 

 came. Thus to appear before his Maker must be a 

 hell of itself of fearful import not to be endured 

 and the greatest possible punishment the debased 

 and polluted soul can undergo ; and it may be well 

 for us all to keep in remembrance that a year of 

 pleasure can be outbalanced by a day of pain. To 

 judge simply of all this, it may be concluded that 

 those who, from pure motives, have shed abroad 

 the greatest quantum of happiness to mankind, and 

 to all God's creatures, while they sojourned here, 

 will, according to our notions of justice (beside the 

 pleasure derived from self-approbation in this life), 

 be rewarded, and entitled to such-like but more 

 exalted happiness to all eternity. 



Whatever weight these opinions of mine may 

 have upon others, I know not ; they are given with 

 the best intentions, and they concern all men. 

 They are on a subject which, in its own nature, 

 forms a more sublime and important object of 

 enquiry than any to which our intellectual powers 

 can be applied. It is on them that religion, the life 

 of the soul, is built. Religion is both natural and 

 necessary to man. Those who reject this primary 

 sentiment of veneration for the Supreme Being, 

 only show their inferiority to other men : like those 

 born blind, they cannot perfectly understand the 

 nature of vision, and thence conclude there is no 

 such thing as light in existence. 



2 N 



