of the immortality of man, which are to my mind not only delusive but
mischievous. The one is the notion that the moral government of the
world is imperfect without a system of future rewards and punishments.
The other is: that such a system is indispensable to practical morality.
I believe that both these dogmas are very mischievous lies.

With respect to the first, I am no optimist, but I have the firmest
belief that the Divine Government (if we may use such a phrase to
express the sum of the "customs of matter") is wholly just. The more I
know intimately of the lives of other men (to say nothing of my own),
the more obvious it is to me that the wicked does NOT flourish nor is
the righteous punished. But for this to be clear we must bear in mind
what almost all forget, that the rewards of life are contingent upon
obedience to the WHOLE law--physical as well as moral--and that moral
obedience will not atone for physical sin, or vice versa.

The ledger of the Almighty is strictly kept, and every one of us has the
balance of his operations paid over to him at the end of every minute of
his existence.

Life cannot exist without a certain conformity to the surrounding
universe--that conformity involves a certain amount of happiness in
excess of pain. In short, as we live we are paid for living.

And it is to be recollected in view of the apparent discrepancy between
men's acts and their rewards that Nature is juster than we. She takes
into account what a man brings with him into the world, which human
justice cannot do. If I, born a bloodthirsty and savage brute,
inheriting these qualities from others, kill you, my fellow-men will
very justly hang me, but I shall not be visited with the horrible