ll, it is our duty and our interest
to make the best and the most of our life in the world while it
lasts. True; and really that very consideration is a strong proof
of the correctness of the view in question. It corresponds with
the other arrangements of God. He makes every thing its own end,
complete in itself, at the same time that it subserves some
further end and enters into some higher unity. He is no mere
Teleologist, hobbling towards his conclusions on a pair of decayed
logic crutches,2 but an infinite Artist, whose means and ends are
consentaneous in the timeless and spaceless spontaneity and
perfection of his play. If the tomb is our total goal, our genuine
aim in this existence is to win during its course an experience
the largest in quantity and the best in quality. On the other
hand, if another life follows this, our wisdom is just the same;
because that experience alone, with the favor of God, can
constitute our fitness and stock to enter on the future. And yet
between the two cases there is this immense difference, not
indeed in duty, but in endowment, that in the latter instance we
work out our allotted destiny here, in a broader illumination,
with grander incentives, and with vaster consolations. A future
life, then, really imposes no new duty upon the present, alters no
fundamental ingredient in the present, takes away none of the
charms and claims of the present, but merely sheds an additional
radiance upon the shaded lights already shining here, infuses an
additional motive into the stimulants already animating our
purposes, distills an additional balm into the comforts which
already assuage our sorrows amidst an evanescent scene. The belief
that we are to live hereafter in a compensating world explains to
us many a sad mystery, strengthens us for many an oppressive
burden, consoles us in many a sharp grief. Else we should oftener
go mad in the baffling whirl of problems, oftener obey the baser
voice, oftener yield to despair. These three are the moral uses,
in the present life, of the

2 "Seht, an der morschen Syllogismenkrucke Hinkt Gott in Seine
Welt."Lenau's Satire auf einen Professor philosophia.

doctrine of a future life. Outside of these three considerations
the doctrine has no ethical meaning for human observance here.

It will be seen, according to the foregoing representation, that
the expectation of a future life, instead of being harmful to the
interests and attractions of the pr