st....But for
this to be clear we must bear in mind what almost all forget, that
the rewards of life are contingent upon obedience to the _whole_
law--physical as well as moral--and that moral obedience will not
atone for physical sin, or _vice versa_." Thus he could declare "the
more I know intimately of the lives of other men (to say nothing of my
own), the more obvious it is that the wicked does _not_ flourish, nor
is the righteous punished." "The gravitation of sin to sorrow is as
certain as that of the earth to the sun, and more so--for experimental
proof of the fact is within reach of us all--nay, is before us all in
our own lives, if we had but the eyes to see it." Nevertheless--

It is to be recollected, in view of the apparent discrepancy
between men's acts and their rewards, that Nature is juster
than we are. She takes into account what a man brings with him
into this world, which human justice cannot do. If I, born a
bloodthirsty and savage brute, inheriting these qualities from
others, kill you, my fellow-men will very justly hang me; but
I shall not be visited with the horrible remorse which would
be my real punishment if, my nature being higher, I had done
the same thing.

Accordingly--

Not only do I disbelieve in the need for compensation, but I
believe that the seeking for rewards and punishments out of
this life leads men to a ruinous ignorance of the fact that
their inevitable rewards and punishments are here.

If the expectation of hell hereafter can keep me from
evil-doing, surely a fortiori the certainty of hell now will
do so? If a man could be firmly impressed with the belief that
stealing damaged him as much as swallowing arsenic would do
(and it does), would not the dissuasive force of that belief
be greater than that of any based on mere future expectations?

And this leads me to quote words written by an old friend and
colleague of his, Sir Spencer Walpole:--

Of all the men I have ever known, his ideas and his standard
were, on the whole, the highest. He recognized that the fact
of his religious views imposed on him the duty of living the
most upright of lives; and I am very much of the opinion of a
little child, now grown into an accomplished woman, who,
when she was told that Professor Huxley had no hope of future
rewards and no fear of future punishments, emphatically
decla