The  sceptical  temper  may  frame  questions  as  it  will :
death  sternly  refuses  to  give  it  any  satisfaction.  The  pres
ent  is  now  louder  than  ever  in  its  imperious  demands  ;  but
injured  nature  takes  upon  her  to  reply,  that  the  present  is
the  life  of  animals,  and  the  future  is  the  life  of  man.  The
love  of  money  may  heap  around  us  mountains  of  gold ;  all

1  Lupus,  p.  706  ;  Jerom.  Epist.  Ixv.  c.  4.
2  Fliigge's  Geschichte,  Theil  iii.  Abs.  v.  (iv.  171).
186  OUR   CONDITION  IN  A  FUTURE  LIFE       [Px.  II.
this  is  but  to  lower  the  ratio  of  that  which  a  man  is  to  that
which  he  possesses.  The  fever  of  self-indulgence  may  mul
tiply  our  enjoyments  :  but  each  new  enjoyment  is,  for  the
common  run  of  men,  a  new  want,  and  each  new  want  is  a
link  in  the  chain  of  moral  debilitation,  a  new  deduction  from
our  high  prerogative  of  freedom.  Schemes  of  negation  may
each  for  a  while  fret  and  fume  upon  the  stage  of  human
affairs.  It  is  Death,  the  great  auditor  of  accounts,  that
reduces  them,  one  and  all,  to  their  natural  and  small  dimen
sions.  In  the  development  of  luxury,  we  are  immeasura
bly  ahead  of  the  ancient  Greek,  and  we  might  have  been
proportionally  more  successful  in  shutting  off  the  ques
tionings  of  the  soul  respecting  that  which  is  to  come,  had
not  a  new  voice  sounded  forth  in  the  world  to  proclaim
the  word  Eesurrection :  since  which  it  has  become  impos
sible,  by  any  process  within  our  resources,  to  stifle  the
longings  of  the  human  spirit  to  obtain  some  command
over  the  instruments  for  measuring  the  future  which  ex
pands  before  it.
