"This subject," said Mr. Roscoe, "at times almost overwhelms me; and like Job, when in his anguish, I am inclined to say, 'Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, there is a man-child conceived.' But this is useless. I am in being, and can't go out of existence. I may pass from one world to another, and sometimes wish to pass the line which separates the unseen from the visible world, that I may know the final issue; but this is not a permanent desire. No! the final issue of life is invested with such solemn and awful grandeur, so much personal and relative happiness or misery is dependent on it, that I feel either instinctively or morally afraid to anticipate it. Indeed, I should be a more happy man if I could disbelieve the immortality of the soul. Yes, I should. I could enjoy life; and though I might feel some occasional regret in prospect of ceasing to exist, yet then I should escape the awful sense of horror which sometimes fills my mind in the fearful apprehensions of future degradation and misery." "I have thought," said Mr. Stevens, "from our former conversations, that you had no doubt of a state of future happiness." "Very true, I once had no doubt, but then I never thought deeply on the subject. I felt confident that I should enter heaven, and participate in the joys of the blessed, immediately after my decease; but then I was under the power of that self-delusion which you so often entreated me to guard against. I sometimes felt a momentary elation in anticipation of seeing the beauty and grandeur of the heavenly world; but when I began to examine the foundation of my confidence, I found it giving way. I thought that the Supreme Being could not, consistently with his benevolence, inflict punishment in another world for the sins committed in this; and that the conscientious discharge of our relative duties towards each other, constituted the whole extent of our obligations to him. Hence I necessarily expected a state of future happiness; but, by a closer examination of the Scriptures, I am convinced that he has appointed a day in which the administration of justice will be conducted impartially; when the motives of human action, as well as the actions of human life, will undergo a strict investigation, and we shall be rewarded or punished according as we have done good or evil." "This is a very important discovery, and may be regarded as the beginning of a great change in your religious opinions--a change which may lead to the most happy results." "But can such a discovery, which has plunged me into an abyss of terrific horror, ever lead to any favourable issue?"