Welcome, life-giving hour, expected long! Dawn on these regions peopled with the dead. Our hearts leap forward to begin the song Of a glad universe whence sin has fled. [Illustration] APPENDIX. MORALITY OF THE DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE. The following is from “The Doctrine of a Future Life,” by W. R. Alger. He here discusses the “morality of the doctrine of a future life” on the strong hypothesis that there is to be no existence hereafter, and utterly disproves the conclusions which some would make the inevitable consequence of such a doctrine. The same objections are urged against the view we entertain that after the Judgment the sinner is to endure a punishment which reaches its climax in the loss of existence. With a hundred-fold more force the reasoning of Mr. Alger lies against these objections when urged in opposition to our view. We have in this life the great incentive to goodness and virtue, that is involved in the hope of immortality, seconded by the wonderful intervention of Christ in our behalf, which is calculated to arouse all the nobler sentiments of our being. If this will not win men from sin to a holy life, they would not be driven to it by threats of eternal torture. Mr. Alger says:-- “The morality of the doctrine of a future life having thus been defended from the attacks of those who have sought to destroy it in the fancied interests either of the enjoyments of the earth, or of the purity of virtue and religion, it now remains to free it from the still more fatal supports which false or superficial religionists have sought to give it by wrenching out of it meanings it never held, by various perverse abuses of it, by monstrous exaggerations of its moral importance to the present. We have seen that the supposition of another life, correctly interpreted, lays no new duty upon man, takes away from him no old duty or privilege, but simply gives to the previously-existing facts of the case the intensifying glory and strength of fresh light, motive, and consolation. But many public teachers, not content to treat the subject with this sobriety of reason, instead of presenting the careful conclusions of a conscientious analysis, have sought to strengthen their argument to the feelings by help of prodigious assumptions, assumptions hastily adopted, highly colored, and authoritatively urged. Upon the hypothesis that annihilation is the fate of man, they are not satisfied merely to take away from the present all the additional light, incentive, and comfort, imparted by the faith in a future existence, but they arbitrarily remove all the alleviations and glories intrinsically belonging to the scene, and paint it in the most horrible hues, and set it in a frame of midnight. Thus, instead of calmly seeking to elicit and recommend truth, they strive, by terrifying the fancy and shocking the