For centuries all ennobling passions have been
industriously associated with the hope of personal immortality, and base
passions with its rejection. We cannot fully realize the state of men
brought up to look for a reward of heroic sacrifice in the consciousness
of good work achieved in this world instead of in the hope of posthumous
repayment. Nor again, have we, if we shall ever have, any system capable
of replacing the old forms of worship by which the imagination was
stimulated and disciplined. That such reflections should make many men
pause before they reveal the open secret is intelligible enough. But
what is the true moral to be derived from them? Surely that we should
take courage and speak the truth. We should take courage, for even now
the new faith offers to us a more cheering and elevating prospect than
the old. When it shall have become familiar to men's minds, have worked
itself into the substance of our convictions, and provided new channels
for the utterance of our emotions, we may anticipate incomparably higher
results. We are only laying the foundations of the temple, and know not
what will be the glories of the completed edifice.
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