Vesuvius live very careless lives, and they have their little vineyards
and their olives. Yes, and every morning when they come out, they can
look up and see the thin wreath of smoke going up in the dazzling blue,
and they know that some time or other there will be a roar and a rush,
and down will come the lava. But 'a short life and a merry one' is the
creed of a good many of us, though we do not like to confess it. Some of
you will remember the strange way in which ordinary habits survived in
prisons in the dreadful times of the French Revolution, and how ladies
and gentlemen, who were going to have their heads chopped off next
morning, danced and flirted, and sat at entertainments, just as if there
was no such thing in the world as the public prosecutor and the tumbril,
and the gaoler going about with a bit of chalk to mark each door where
were the condemned for next day.

That same strange power of ignoring a known future, which works so
widely and so disastrously round about us, is especially manifested in
regard to religion. The great bulk of English men and women who are not
Christians, and the little sample of such that I have in my audience
now, as a rule believe as fully as we do the truths which they agree to
neglect. Let me speak to them individually. You believe that death will
introduce you into a world of two halves--that if you have been a good,
religious man, you will dwell in blessedness; that if you have not, you
will not--yet you never did a single thing, nor refrained from a single
thing, because of that belief. And when I, and men of my profession,
come and plead with you and try to get through that strange web of
insensibility that you have spun round you, you listen, and then you
say, with a shrug, 'He prophesies of things that are far off.' and you
turn with relief to the trivialities of the day. Need I ask you whether
that is a wise thing or not?