interesting, may be presented within the compass of an
essay. Any one who should read the literature of this subject
would be astonished at the almost universal prevalence of the
doctrine and at the immense diversity of appalling descriptions of
it, and would ask, Whence arises all this? How have these horrors
obtained such a seated hold in the world?

In the first place, it is to be replied, as soon as reason is in
fair possession of the idea of a continued individual existence
beyond the grave, the moral sense, discriminating the deeds,
tempers, and characters of men, would teach that there must be
different allotments and experiences for them after death. It is
not right, say reason and conscience, for the coward, the idler,
fool, knave, sot, murderer, to enter into the same realm and have
the same bliss with heroes, sages, and saints; neither are they
able to do it. The spontaneous thought and sentiment of humanity
would declare, if the soul survives the body, passing into the
invisible world, its fortunes there must depend somewhat upon its
fitness and deserts, its contained treasures and acquired habits.
Reason, judging the facts of observation according to the
principles of ethics and the working of experienced spiritual
laws, at once decides that there is a difference hereafter between
the fate of the good heart and the bad one, the great soul and the
mean one: in a word, there is, in some sense or other, a heaven
and a hell.

Again: the same belief would be necessitated by the conception, so
deeply entertained by the primitive people of the earth, of
overruling and inspecting gods. They supposed these gods to be in
a great degree like themselves, partial, fickle, jealous,
revengeful. Such beings, of course, would caress their favorites
and torture their offenders. The calamities and blessings of this
life were regarded as tokens, revengeful or loving, of the ruling
deities, now pleased, now enraged. And when their votaries or
victims had passed into the eternal state, how natural to suppose
them still favored or cursed by the passionate wills of these
irresponsible gods! Plainly enough, they who believe in gods that
launch thunderbolts and upheave the sea in their rage and take
vengeance for an insult by sending forth a pestilence, must also
believe in a hell where Ixion may be affixed to the wheel and
Tantalus be tortured with maddening mockeries. These two
conceptions of discriminating justice and of veng