in order to save our police-rates in this. But that doctrine, though it has been preached with amazing emphasis, has not been found to be, on the whole, very edifying. It may serve to remind us that even a belief in immortality may be made as degrading as the grossest forms of materialism. It may convert religion into a specially clever form of selfishness, and take the grace out of the Christian character. The persons who call themselves spiritualists in the present day sometimes claim to be providing an excellent substitute for our old superstitions. The objection which one really feels to them is not so much that they are misled by a contemptible juggle, but that they encourage a kind of prurient religiosity which is inexpressibly revolting. What they really try to persuade us is, not that man has a soul which may be elevated far above our earthly wants and longings, but that there is a set of invisible beings who walk about this world playing tricks with tables and talking nonsense, to which the twaddle of the Yankee young ladies in "Martin Chuzzlewit" is refined and elevating. Their so-called spirits are of the earth, earthy; and it would be more satisfactory to believe that at death we became parts of the ocean and the air—that we formed part of the raw material from which, in the course of the ages, new sentient and thinking beings may be evolved, than that we sank into the likeness of a set of stupid hobgoblins, playing conjuring tricks for the amusement of fools. Gross as some such doctrines may be, they may also be cited for another purpose. Men are virtuous, it is sometimes said, because they believe in hell. Is not this an inversion of the proper order of thought? Should we not rather say that men have believed in hell because they were virtuous? There has been so general a belief that vice was degrading, and was to be discouraged by the strongest possible motives, that even the material part of mankind have exhausted their fancy in devising the most elaborate sentiments to express the horror with which they regarded it. It is painful to dwell upon the pictures of hideous anguish which the perturbed imaginations of past generations have conjured up and regarded as the penalties which the merciful Creator had in store for imperfect creatures placed in a state where their imperfections could not fail to lead them into error; but there is this much of comfort about it, that at least those ghastly images were the reflections of the horror with which all that was best in them revolted against moral evil. It is needless to say how easily those conceptions might be turned to the worst purposes, and religion itself be made an instrument not only for restraining the intellects, but for lowering the consciences of mankind. For our present purpose, it is enough to remark that a similar reflection may convince us that, whatever changes of opinion may be in store for us, we need not fear that any scientific conclusions can permanently lower our views of man's duty here. The belief in immortality, diffused throughout the world, was not, more than any other belief, valuable simply on its own account. It was valuable be-
