weakened, its basis variously altered, but as a confessed
sovereign principle it cannot be expelled. The denial of the
freedom of the will theoretically explodes it; but social custom,
law, and opinion will enforce it still. Make man a mere dissoluble
mixture of carbon and magnetism, yet so long as he can distinguish
right and wrong, good and evil, love and hate, and, unsophisticated
by dialectics, can follow either of opposite courses of action,
the moral law exists and exerts its sway.

It has been asked, "If the incendiary be, like the fire he kindles,
a result of material combinations, shall he not be treated in the
same way?" 10 We should reply thus: No matter what man springs
from or consists of, if he has moral ideas, performs moral
actions, and is susceptible of moral motives, then he is morally
responsible: for all practical and disciplinary purposes he is
wholly removed from the categories of physical science.

Another pernicious misrepresentation of the fair consequences of
the denial of a life hereafter is shown in the frequent
declaration that then there would be no motive to any thing good
and great. The incentives which animate men to strenuous services,
perilous virtues, disinterested enterprises, spiritual culture,
would cease to operate. The essential life of all moral motives
would be killed. This view is to be met by a broad and indignant
denial based on an appeal to human consciousness and to the reason
of the thing. Every man knows by experience that there are a
multitude of powerful motives, entirely disconnected with future
reward or punishment, causing him to resist evil and to do good
even with self sacrificing toil and danger. When the fireman risks
his life to save a child from the flames of a tumbling house, is
the hope of heaven his motive? When the soldier spurns an offered
bribe and will not betray his comrades nor desert his post, is the
fear of hell all that animates him? A million such decisive
specifications might be made. The renowned sentence of Cicero,
"Nemo unquam sine magna spe immortalitatis se pro patria offerret
ad mortem," 11 is effective eloquence; but it is a baseless libel
against humanity and the truth. In every moment of supreme
nobleness and sacrifice personality vanishes. Thousands of
patriots, philosophers, saints, have been glad to die for the
freedom of native land, the cause of truth, the welfare of fellow
men, without a taint of selfish reward touching their wi