the present life? Was it that houses and lands, offices,
wine, horses, dress, luxury, are had by unprincipled men,
whilst the saints are poor and despised; and that a
compensation is to be made to these last hereafter, by
giving them the like gratifications another day,--bank-
stock and doubloons, venison and champagne? This must be
the compensation intended; for what else? Is it that they
are to have leave to pray and praise? to love and serve
men? Why, that they can do now. The legitimate inference
the disciple would draw was,--'We are to have such a good
time as the sinners have now';--or, to push it to its
extreme import,--'You sin now; we shall sin by and by; we
would sin now, if we could; not being successful, we
expect our revenge to-morrow.'

The fallacy lay in the immense concession that the bad are
successful; that justice is not done now. The blindness of
the preacher consisted in deferring to the base estimate
of the market of what constitutes a manly success, instead
of confronting and convicting the world from the truth;
announcing the presence of the soul; the omnipotence of
the will; and so establishing the standard of good and
ill, of success and falsehood.

I find a similar base tone in the popular religious works
of the day and the same doctrines assumed by the literary
men when occasionally they treat the related topics. I
think that our popular theology has gained in decorum, and
not in principle, over the superstitions it has displaced.
But men are better than their theology. Their daily life