y be doubted;
at any rate the thought of them when unlimited us so overwhelming to us
as to lose all distinctness. Philosophers have spoken of them as forms
of the human mind, but what is the mind without them? As then infinite
time, or an existence out of time, which are the only possible
explanations of eternal duration, are equally inconceivable to us, let
us substitute for them a hundred or a thousand years after death, and
ask not what will be our employment in eternity, but what will happen to
us in that definite portion of time; or what is now happening to those
who passed out of life a hundred or a thousand years ago. Do we imagine
that the wicked are suffering torments, or that the good are singing the
praises of God, during a period longer than that of a whole life, or
of ten lives of men? Is the suffering physical or mental? And does the
worship of God consist only of praise, or of many forms of service? Who
are the wicked, and who are the good, whom we venture to divide by a
hard and fast line; and in which of the two classes should we place
ourselves and our friends? May we not suspect that we are making
differences of kind, because we are unable to imagine differences
of degree?--putting the whole human race into heaven or hell for the
greater convenience of logical division? Are we not at the same time
describing them both in superlatives, only that we may satisfy the
demands of rhetoric? What is that pain which does not become deadened
after a thousand years? or what is the nature of that pleasure or
happiness which never wearies by monotony? Earthly pleasures and pains
are short in proportion as they are keen; of any others which are both
intense and lasting we have no experience, and can form no idea.
The words or figures of speech which we use are not consistent with
themselves. For are we not imagining Heaven under the similitude of
a church, and Hell as a prison, or perhaps a madhouse or chamber of
horrors? And yet to beings constituted as we are, the monotony of
singing psalms would be as great an infliction as the pains of hell,
and might be even pleasantly interrupted by them. Where are the actions
worthy of rewards greater than those which are conferred on the greatest
benefactors of mankind? And where are the crimes which according to
Plato's merciful reckoning,--more merciful, at any rate, than the
eternal damnation of so-called Christian teachers,--for every ten years
in this life deserve a hu