a future
state to _redress the inequalities of this life_;) p. 232: "But do I
then deny a future life, or seek to undermine a belief of it? _Most
assuredly not_; but I would put the belief (whether it is to be weaker
or firmer) on a _spiritual_ basis, and on none other."

I am ashamed to quote further from that chapter in this place; the
ground on which I there tread is too sacred for controversy. But that
a Christian advocate should rise from reading it to tell people that
he has a right to _ridicule_ me for holding that "man is _most likely
born for a dog's life_, and there an end;" absorbs my other feelings
in melancholy. I am sure that any candid person, reading that chapter,
must see that I was hovering between doubt, hope, and faith, on this
subject, and that if any one could show me that a Moral Theism and a
Future Life were essentially combined, I should joyfully embrace
the second, as a fit complement to the first. This writer takes the
opposite for granted; that if he can convince me that the doctrine of
a Future Life is essential to Moral Theism, he will--not _add_ to--but
_refute_ my Theism! Strange as this at first appears, it is explained
by his method. He draws a hideous picture of what God's world has been
in the past, and indeed is in the present; with words so reeking
of disgust and cruelty, that I cannot bear to quote them; and ample
quotation would be needful. Then he infers, that since I must admit
all this, I virtually believe in an immoral Deity. I suppose his
instinct rightly tells him, that I shall not be likely to reason,
"Because God can be so very cruel or careless to-day, he is sure to
be very merciful and vigilant hereafter." Accepting his facts as
a _complete_ enumeration of the phenomena of the present world, I
suppose it is better inductive logic to say: "He who can be himself so
cruel, and endure such monsters of brutality for six or more thousand
years, must (by the laws of external induction) be the same, and
leave men the same, for all eternity; and is clearly reckless of moral
considerations." If I adopt this alternative, I become a Pagan or an
Atheist, one or other of which Mr. Rogers seems anxious to make me.
If he would urge, that to look at the dark and terrible side of human
life is onesided and delusive, and that the God who is known to us
in Nature has so tempered the world to man and man to the world as to
manifest his moral intentions;--(arguments, which I think, my critic