motive, is understandable; but--that life itself
should have no motive,--that we neither care to find out what it may lead
to, nor to guard against its being forever taken away from us,--here is a
mystery indeed. For just suppose I were able to call at this moment to
anyone in this audience by name, and to tell him positively that I knew a
large estate had been lately left to him on some curious conditions; but
that though I knew it was large, I did not know how large, nor even where
it was--whether in the East Indies or the West, or in England, or at the
Antipodes. I only knew it was a vast estate, and that there was a chance
of his losing it altogether if he did not soon find out on what terms it
had been left to him. Suppose I were able to say this positively to any
single man in this audience, and he knew that I did not speak without
warrant, do you think that he would rest content with that vague
knowledge, if it were anywise possible to obtain more? Would he not give
every energy to find some trace of the facts, and never rest till he had
ascertained where this place was, and what it was like? And suppose he
were a young man, and all he could discover by his best endeavor was that
the estate was never to be his at all, unless he persevered, during
certain years of probation, in an orderly and industrious life; but that,
according to the rightness of his conduct, the portion of the estate
assigned to him would be greater or less, so that it literally depended on
his behavior from day to day whether he got ten thousand a year, or thirty
thousand a year, or nothing whatever--would you not think it strange if
the youth never troubled himself to satisfy the conditions in any way, nor
even to know what was required of him, but lived exactly as he chose, and
never inquired whether his chances of the estate were increasing or
passing away?

Well, you know that this is actually and literally so with the greater
number of the educated persons now living in Christian countries. Nearly
every man and woman in any company such as this outwardly professes to
believe--and a large number unquestionably think they believe--much more
than this; not only that a quite unlimited estate is in prospect for them
if they please the Holder of it, but that the infinite contrary of such a
possession--an estate of perpetual misery--is in store for them if they
displease this great Land-Holder, this great Heaven-Holder. And yet there
is not one