_(b)_ "_'On Earth Discord! A gloomy Heaven above opening its jealous
gates to the nineteen-thousandth part of the tithe of mankind! And
below an inexorable Hell expanding its leviathan jaws for the vast
residue of mortals!'_ O doctrine comfortable and healing to the weary
wounded soul of man! Ye sons and daughters of affliction, to whom day
brings no pleasure and night yields no rest, be comforted! 'Tis one
to but nineteen hundred thousand that your situation will mend in
this world, and 'tis nineteen hundred thousand to one, by the dogmas
of theology, that you will be damned eternally in the world to come."

_(c)_ "A pillar that bears us up amid the wreck of misfortune and
misery is to be found in those feelings and sentiments which, however
the sceptic may deny or the enthusiast disfigure them, are yet, I am
convinced, original and component parts of the human soul; those
_senses of the mind_, if I may be allowed the expression, which link
us to the awful obscure realities of an all-powerful and equally
beneficent God and a world-to-come beyond death and the grave."

_(d)_ "Can it be possible that when I resign this frail, feverish
being I shall still find myself in conscious existence?... Shall I
yet be warm in life, seeing and seen, enjoying and enjoyed? Ye
venerable Sages and holy Flamens, is there probability in your
conjectures, truth in your stories, of another world beyond death, or
are they all alike baseless visions and fabricated fables? If there
is another life, it must only be for the just, the benevolent, the
amiable, and the humane; what a flattering idea then is a world to
come! Would to God I as firmly believed it as I ardently wish it!...
Jesus Christ, thou amiablest of characters! I trust thou art no
impostor.... I trust that in Thee shall all the families of the earth