by their endless variety, and lay always before me, even
in sleep; for they are the tools in our hands, the bread
in our basket, the transactions of the street, the farm
and the dwelling-house; greetings, relations, debts and
credits, the influence of character, the nature and
endowment of all men. It seemed to me also that in it
might be shown men a ray of divinity, the present action of
the soul of this world, clean from all vestige of tradition;
and so the heart of man might be bathed by an inundation of
eternal love, conversing with that which he knows was always
and always must be, because it really is now. It appeared
moreover that if this doctrine could be stated in terms with
any resemblance to those bright intuitions in which this
truth is sometimes revealed to us, it would be a star in many
dark hours and crooked passages in our journey, that would
not suffer us to lose our way.

I was lately confirmed in these desires by hearing a sermon
at church. The preacher, a man esteemed for his orthodoxy,
unfolded in the ordinary manner the doctrine of the Last
Judgment. He assumed that judgment is not executed in this
world; that the wicked are successful; that the good are
miserable; and then urged from reason and from Scripture a
compensation to be made to both parties in the next life.
No offence appeared to be taken by the congregation at this
doctrine. As far as I could observe when the meeting broke
up they separated without remark on the sermon.

Yet what was the import of this teaching? What did the
preacher mean by saying that the good are miserable in