any grounds. It is deduced from Scripture by
a technical and unsound interpretation. It is unjust and cruel,
irreconcilable with the righteousness or the goodness of God. It
is unreasonable, opposed to the analogies of nature and to the
experience of man. It is wholly impossible to carry it out
consistently in the practice of life. If it were thoroughly
credited and acted upon, all the business of the world would
cease, and the human race would soon die out.

There remains one other view of the relationship of a future life
with the present. And it seems to be the true view. The same
Creator presiding, the same laws prevailing, over infinitude and
eternity that now rule over time and earth, our immortality cannot
reasonably be imagined either a moment of free action and an
eternity of fixed consequences, or a series of separate fragments
patched into a parti colored experience with blanks of death
between the patterns of life. It must be conceived as one endless
existence in linear connection of cause and effect developing in
progressive phases under varying conditions of motive and scenery.
With what we are at death we live on into the next life. In every
epoch and world of our destiny our happiness depends on the
possession of a harmoniously working soul harmoniously related
with its environment. Each stage and state of our eternal
existence has its peculiarities of duty and privilege. In this one
our proper work is to improve the opportunities, discharge the
tasks, enjoy the blessings, belonging here. We are to do the same
in the next one when we arrive in that. All the wealth of wisdom,
virtue, strength, and harmony we acquire in our present life is
the vantage ground and capital wherewith we start in the
succeeding life. Therefore the true preparation for the future is
to fit ourselves to enter it under the most favorable auspices, by
accumulating in our souls all the spiritual treasures afforded by
the present. In other words, the truest aim we can set before
ourselves during our existence on earth is to make it yield the
greatest possible results of the noblest experience. The life
hereafter is the elevated and complementary continuation of the
life here; and certainly the directest way to ameliorate the
continuation is to improve the commencement.

But, it may be said, according to this representation, the fact of
a future life makes no difference in regard to our duty now; for
if the grave swallows all, sti