it is sometimes said, is to encourage
mere grovelling materialism; in the same breath it is added that to ask
for an interest in the fate of our fellow-creatures here, instead of
ourselves hereafter, is to make excessive demands upon human
selfishness. The doctrine it seems is at once too elevated and too
grovelling.

The theory on which the latter charge rests seems to be that you can
take an interest in yourself at any distance, but not in others if they
are outside the circle of your own personality. This doctrine, when
boldly expressed, seems to rest upon the very apotheosis of selfishness.
Theologians have sometimes said, in perfect consistency, that it would
be better for the whole race of man to perish in torture than that a
single sin should be committed. One would rather have thought that a man
had better be damned a thousand times over than allow of such a
catastrophe; but, however this may be, the doctrine now suggested
appears to be equally revolting, unless diluted so far as to be
meaningless. It amounts to asserting that our love of our own
infinitesimal individuality is so powerful that any matter in which we
are personally concerned has a weight altogether incommensurable with
that of any matter in which we have no concern. People who hold such a
doctrine would be bound in consistency to say that they would not cut
off their little finger to save a million of men from torture after
their own death. Every man must judge of his own state of mind; though
there is nothing on which people are more liable to make mistakes; and I
am charitable enough to hope that the actions of such men would be in
practice as different as possible from what they anticipate in theory.
But it is enough to say that experience, if it proves any thing, proves
this to be an inaccurate view of human nature. All the threats of
theologians with infinite stores of time and torture to draw upon,
failed to wean men from sins which gave them a passing gratification,
even when faith was incomparably stronger than it is now, or is likely
to be again. One reason, doubtless, is that the conscience is as much
blunted by the doctrines of repentance and absolution as it is
stimulated by the threats of hell-fire. But is it not contrary to all
common-sense to expect that the motive will retain any vital strength
when the very people who rely upon it admit that it rests on the most
shadowy of grounds? The other motive, which is supposed to be so
i