Reason tells them that death comes sooner or later to all, and is not so
great an evil as an unworthy life, or rather, if rightly regarded, not an
evil at all, but to a good man the greatest good. For in all of us there
are slumbering ideals of truth and right, which may at any time awaken and
develop a new life in us.

Second Thesis:--

It is better to suffer for wrong doing than not to suffer.

There might have been a condition of human life in which the penalty
followed at once, and was proportioned to the offence. Moral evil would
then be scarcely distinguishable from physical; mankind would avoid vice as
they avoid pain or death. But nature, with a view of deepening and
enlarging our characters, has for the most part hidden from us the
consequences of our actions, and we can only foresee them by an effort of
reflection. To awaken in us this habit of reflection is the business of
early education, which is continued in maturer years by observation and
experience. The spoilt child is in later life said to be unfortunate--he
had better have suffered when he was young, and been saved from suffering
afterwards. But is not the sovereign equally unfortunate whose education
and manner of life are always concealing from him the consequences of his
own actions, until at length they are revealed to him in some terrible
downfall, which may, perhaps, have been caused not by his own fault?
Another illustration is afforded by the pauper and criminal classes, who
scarcely reflect at all, except on the means by which they can compass
their immediate ends. We pity them, and make allowances for them; but we
do not consider that the same principle applies to human actions generally.
Not to have been found out in some dishonesty or folly, regarded from a
moral or religious point of view, is the greatest of misfortunes. The