But the worst product of this epidemic error is, the fashion of either
denying or undervaluing the evidence of a future state and the survival
of individual consciousness, derived from the conscience, and the holy
instinct of the whole human race. Dreadful is this:--for the main force
of the reasoning by which this scepticism is vindicated consists in
reducing all legitimate conviction to objective proof: whereas in the
very essence of religion and even of morality the evidence, and the
preparation for its reception, must be subjective;--'Blessed are they
that have not seen and yet believe'. And dreadful it appears to me
especially, who in the impossibility of not looking forward to
consciousness after the dissolution of the body ('corpus phoenomenon',)
have through life found it (next to divine grace.) the strongest and
indeed only efficient support against the still recurring temptation of
adopting, nay, wishing the truth of Spinoza's notion, that the survival
of consciousness is the highest prize and consequence of the highest
virtue, and that of all below this mark the lot after death is
self-oblivion and the cessation of individual being. Indeed, how a
Separatist or one of any other sect of Calvinists, who confines
Redemption to the comparatively small number of the elect, can reject
this opinion, and yet not run mad at the horrid thought of an
innumerable multitude of imperishable self-conscious spirits
everlastingly excluded from God, is to me inconceivable.
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