at we shall continue to live after death; and neither from
experience nor from the reason of the thing can any argument against the
possibility of this be drawn. Immortality, then, is not unreasonable; it is
probable. If, he continues, we are to live after death, it is of importance
for us to consider on what our future state may depend; for we may be
either happy or miserable. Now, whatever speculation may say as to God's
purpose being necessarily universal benevolence, experience plainly shows
us that our present happiness and misery depend upon our conduct, and are
not distributed indiscriminately. Therefore no argument can be brought from
experience against the possibility of our future happiness and misery
likewise depending upon conduct. The whole analogy of nature is in favour
of such a dispensation; it is therefore reasonable or probable. Further, we
are not only under a government in which actions considered simply as such
are rewarded and punished, but it is known from experience that virtue and
vice are followed by their natural consequents--happiness and misery. And
though the distribution of these rewards is not perfect, all hindrances are
plainly temporary or accidental. It may therefore be concluded that the
balance of probability is in favour of God's government in general being a
moral scheme, where virtue and vice are respectively rewarded and punished.
It need not be objected to the justice of [v.04 p.0884] this arrangement
that men are sorely tempted, and may very easily be brought to neglect that
on which their future welfare depends, for the very same holds good in
nature. Experience shows man to be in a state of trial so far as regards
the present; it cannot, therefore, be unreasonable to suppose that we are
in a similar state as regards the future. Finally, it can surely never be
advanced as an argument against the truth of religion that there are many
things in it which we do not comprehend, when experience exhibits to us
such a copious stock of incomprehensibilities in the ordinary course and
constitution of nature.

It cannot have escaped observation, that in the foregoing course of
argument the conclusion is invariably from experience of the present order
of things to the reasonableness or probability of some other system--of a
future state. The inference in all cases passes beyond the field of
experience; that it does so may be and has been advanced as a conclusive
objection against it. See fo