For my own part, I certainly have my
doubts whether virtue will be the less virtuous, or spirituality the
less spiritual, for such a doctrine; and I must believe it even on
the hypothesis of you spiritual folks; for you generally affirm that
the Belief of a Future Life does not really exercise any thing more
than an insignificant influence on human nature; the hopes and the
fears of that so distant a morrow are too vague to be operative. Now,
if it be so, immortality can be no more a bribe than a menace."

"Yet," said Fellowes, "in justice to Mr. Newman, it must not be
forgotten, that he thinks that 'a firm belief of immortality must
have very energetic force,' provided it 'rises out of insight'; it
is as 'an external dogma' that he thinks it of little efficacy. He
says, you know, that, supposing Paul to have had this insight, 'his
light can do us no good, while it is a light outside of us. If
he in any way confused the conclusions of his logic (which is often
extremely inconsequent and mistaken) with the perceptions of his
divinely illuminated soul, our belief might prove baseless.'
(Soul, pp. 226. 227.) These are his very words."

"Very well, then; say that Mr. Newman thinks the notions of a future
hell of little efficacy; and of a future heaven of as little, except
when it rises from 'insight';--he confessing that he has not that
'insight,' and; from the necessity of the case, not knowing whether
any body else has, it being a 'light outside him.' If so, I think
he is much like the rest of you, and cannot in fact suppose the
thought of a future life to operate strongly either as a bribe
or a menace."

"But, surely, whatever his views, or those of any individual, you
must admit that a piety which is sustained without any hopes of
immortality is less selfish than that which is."

"Why," replied I, laughing; "I cannot conceive how the hope of a
virtuous immortality can produce a vicious self-love. But if the
hope and the consciousness of happiness now exercise any influence
at all, your argument proves too much; and there is a simple
impossibility of being unselfishly religious at all."

"How so?"

"Do you think that, admitting not only the uncertainty of any future
life, but the certainty that there is none, and that nevertheless
(as you affirm) man, under that conviction, is just as capable of
manifesting a true devotion and piety towards God, any felicity flows
from his so doing?"

"The highest, of course,"