as for hereafter, they shall get off somehow,--they neither know nor
care much how.

Yet God's truth remains, and God's truth must be heard; and those
who love this world so well must be told, whether they like or not,
that every sin which they commit, every mean, every selfish, every
foul deed, loses them so much enjoyment in this very present world
of which they are so mighty fond. That is God's truth; and I will
prove it true from common sense, from Holy Scripture, and FROM THE
WITNESS of men's own hearts.

Take common sense. Does not common sense tell us that if God made
this world, and governs it by righteous and God-like laws, this must
be a world in which evil-doing cannot thrive? God made the world
better than that, surely! He would be a bad law-giver who made such
laws, that it was as well to break them as to keep them. You would
call them bad laws, surely! No, God made the world, and not the
devil; and the world works by God's laws, and not the devil's; and
it inclines towards good, and not towards evil; and he who sins,
even in the least, breaks God's laws, acts contrary to the rule and
constitution of the world, and will surely find that God's laws will
go on in spite of him, and grind him to powder, if he by sinning
gets in the way of them. God has no need to go out of His way to
punish our evil deeds. Let them alone, and they will punish
themselves. Is it not so in every thing? If a tradesman trades
badly, or a farmer farms badly, there is no need of lawyers to
punish him; he will punish himself. Every mistake he makes will
take money out of his pocket; every time he offends against the
established rules of trade or agriculture, which are God's laws, he
injures himself; and so, be sure, it is in the world at large,--in