"Yes, father, especially when it is recollected, that if the ignorant and vicious could, with all their pains, find out substitutes that would serve as passports to heaven, they could not rationally expect a hearty welcome there. For as the Deity delights in the wise and good, because they resemble him in those qualities which render him so amiable and happy, and would render all his creatures so too; so he must proportionably abhor the STUPID and VICIOUS, because deformed with qualities diametrically opposite to his own, and tending to make both themselves and others most vile and miserable." "This is awfully true, Ben; for the Bible tells us, that the _wicked are an abomination to the Lord; but that the righteous are his delight_." "Yes, father, and this is the language not only of the BIBLE, which is, perhaps, the grand class book of the Deity, but it is also the language of his first or _horn_ book, I mean REASON, which teaches, that if '_there be a God, and that there is all nature cries aloud through all her works, he must delight in virtue_,' because most clearly conducive to the perfection of mankind; which must be the chief aim and glory of the Deity in creating them. And for the same reason he must abhor vice, because tending to the disgrace and destruction of his creatures. Hence, father, I think it follows as clearly as a demonstration in mathematics, that if it were possible for bad men, through _faith_, _imputed righteousness_, or any other leaf-covering, to get to Paradise, so far from meeting with any thing like cordiality from the Deity, they would be struck speechless at sight of their horrible dissimilarity to him. For while he delights above all things in giving life, and the duellist glories in destroying it; while he delights in heaping his creatures with good things, and the gambler triumphs in stripping them; while he delights in seeing love and smiles among brethren, and the slanderer in promoting strifes and hatreds; while he delights in exalting the intellectual and moral faculties to the highest degree of heavenly wisdom and virtue, and the drunkard delights in polluting and degrading both below the brutes; what cordiality can ever subsist between such opposite natures? Can infinite purity and benevolence behold such monsters with complacency, or could they in his presence otherwise than be filled with intolerable pain and anguish, and fly away as weak-eyed owls from the blaze of the meridian sun?" "Well, Ben, as I said before, I am richly rewarded for having drawn you into this conversation about religion; your language indeed is not always the language of the scriptures; neither do you rest your hopes, as I could have wished, on the _Redeemer_; but still your idea in placing our qualification for heaven in resembling God in _moral goodness_, is truly evangelical, and I hope you _will one day become_ a great christian."