be altogether successful. It may seem to
some to be out of place, and may even excite a sense of the ludicrous.
"Just fancy for a moment," says the author already quoted, "some
missionary of this principle going into the Royal Exchange at London, or
the Stock Exchange at Leeds or Bradford, or the Cloth-halls of any of
our manufacturing towns, summoning around him the merchants and the
brokers, and then beginning with much earnestness and point to urge them
_not_ to live for eternity, but to be very careful about the present
life: insisting that it was very, very doubtful if earth were not
all,--the present existence the whole of human existence; and that
therefore until there was more certainty they had better make the most
of this; be industrious and prudent, and make themselves as comfortable
as possible; get as much money as they could honestly, and by no means
let any dread of retribution hereafter fetter them in any of their
actions here. Why, these merchants would turn away laughing and saying,
'Either the man is mocking us, or he is mad: that is just what we are
doing with all our might.' They would see at least that Mr. Holyoake's
teaching is very different from that of Him who said, 'Take no thought
for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for
your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the
body than raiment? But seek ye _first_ the kingdom of God and His
righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.' 'For what
is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his soul?
or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?' And marking that
vast difference, they will feel, at least, that no man is entitled to
address them as rational beings in the style of Secularism, unless he
can give them an _absolute assurance_ that there is and can be no future
state of existence,--that the _present_ is man's _only_ life, and that
death is an eternal sleep."

But does Mr. Holyoake give, or pretend to give, any such _assurance_?
"We do not say," he tells us, "that every man ought to give an
_exclusive_ attention to this world, because that would be to commit the
old sin of dogmatism, and exclude the possibility of another world, and
of walking by a different light from that by which alone we are able to
walk. But as our _knowledge_ is confined to this life, and testimony,
and conjecture, and probability are all that can be set forth with
respect to a