by the vermicular,
infested imagination of the great Teutonic phantasist while yet
writhing under the sanguinary fumes of some horrid attack of
nightmare. Stepping across the earth, which is but a broad
executioner's block for pale, stooping humanity, he enters the
larva world of blotted out men. The rotten chain of beings reaches
down into this slaughter field of souls. Here the dead are
pictured as eternally horripilating at death! "As annihilation,
the white shapelessness of revolting terror, passes by each
unsouled mask of a man, a tear gushes from the crumbled eye, as a
corpse bleeds when its murderer approaches." Pah! Out upon this
execrable retching of a nauseated fancy! What good is there in the
baseless conceit and gratuitous disgust of saying, "The next world
is in the grave, betwixt the teeth of the worm"? In the case
supposed, the truth is merely that there is no next world
anywhere; not that all the horrors of hell are scooped together
into the grave, and there multiplied by others direr yet and
unknown before. Man's blended duty and interest, in such a case,
are to try to see the interior beauty and essential kindness of
his fate, to adorn it and embrace it, fomenting his resignation
with the sweet lotions of faith and peace, not exasperating his
wounds with the angry pungents of suspicion, alarm, and complaint.
At the worst, amidst all our personal disappointments, losses, and
decay, "the view of the great universal whole of nature," as
Humboldt says, "is reassuring and consolatory." If the boon of a
future immortality be not ours, therefore to scorn the gift of the
present life, is to act not like a wise man, who with grateful
piety makes the best of what is given, but like a spoiled child,
who, if he cannot have both his orange and his gingerbread,
pettishly flings his gingerbread in the mud.

The future life, outside of the realm of faith, to an earnest and
independent inquirer, and considered as a scientific question,
lies in a painted mist of uncertainty. There is room for hope, and
there is room for doubt. The wavering evidences in some moods
preponderate on that side, in other moods on this side. Meanwhile
it is clear that, while he lives here, the best thing he can do is
to cherish a devout spirit, cultivate a noble character, lead a
pure and useful life in the service of wisdom, humanity, and God,
and finally, when the appointed time arrives, meet the issue with
reverential and affectionate c