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 hundred of punishment in the life to come? We
should be ready to die of pity if we could see the least of the sufferings
which the writers of Infernos and Purgatorios have attributed to the