528 DEFENCE OF DEISM. 



ideal and example. As the Greek "women placed 

 statues of Apollo and Narcissus in their chambers that 

 the beauty of the marble form might enter their wombs 

 through the windows of their eyes, so by ever con- 

 templating perfection, the mind is ennobled, and the 

 actions bore of it are divine. And surely it is a sweet 

 and consoling faith that there is above us a great and 

 benignant Being who, when the sorrows of this life are 

 past, will take us to himself. How can it injure men 

 to believe that the righteous will be rewarded and that 

 the wicked will be punished in a future state ? What 

 good can be done by destroying a belief so full of solace 

 for the sorrowful, so full of promise for the virtuous, so 

 full of terror for the workers of iniquity ? You do not 

 deny that ' much anguish and some evil will be caused ' 

 by the destruction of this belief; and what have you to 

 show on the other side ? what will you place in the 

 balance ? Consider what a dreadful thing it is to take 

 even from a single human being the hopes of a future 

 life. All men cannot be philosophers ; all cannot resign 

 themselves with fortitude and calm to the death- 

 warrant of the soul. Annihilation has perhaps more 

 terrors for the mind than eternal punishment itself. 

 O, make not the heart an orphan, cast it not naked 

 and weeping on the world. Take it not away from its 

 father, kill not its hopes of an eternal home. There 

 are mothers whose children have gone before them to 

 the grave, poor miserable women whose beauty is faded, 

 who have none to care for them on earth, whose only 

 happiness is in the hope that when their life is ended 

 they will be joined again to those whom they have lost. 

 And will you take that hope away ? There are 

 men who have passed their whole lives in discipline 

 and self-restraint, that they may be rewarded in a 



