“Practically, the acknowledged authority of the moral law in human society cannot be destroyed. Its influence may be unlimitedly weakened, its basis variously altered, but as a confessed sovereign principle it cannot be expelled. The denial of the freedom of the will theoretically explodes it; but social custom, law, and opinion will enforce it still. Make man a mere dissoluble mixture of carbon and magnetism, yet so long as he can distinguish right and wrong, good and evil, love and hate, and, unsophisticated by dialectics, can follow either of opposite courses of action, the moral law exists and exerts its sway. It has been asked, ‘If the incendiary be, like the fire he kindles, a result of material combinations, shall he not be treated in the same way?’ We should reply thus: No matter what man springs from or consists of, if he has moral ideas, performs moral actions, and is susceptible of moral motives, then he is morally responsible; for all practical and disciplinary purposes he is wholly removed from the categories of physical science. “Another pernicious misrepresentation of the fair consequences of the denial of a life hereafter is shown in the frequent declaration that then there would be no motive to any thing good and great. The incentives which animate men to strenuous services, perilous virtues, disinterested enterprises, spiritual culture, would cease to operate. The essential life of all moral motives would be killed. This view is to be met by a broad and indignant denial based on an appeal to human consciousness and to the reason of the thing. Every man knows by experience that there are a multitude of powerful motives, entirely disconnected with future reward or punishment, causing him to resist evil and to do good even with self-sacrificing toil and danger. When the fireman risks his life to save a child from the flames of a tumbling house, is the hope of Heaven his motive? When the soldier spurns an offered bribe and will not betray his comrades nor desert his post, is the fear of hell all that animates him? A million such decisive specifications might be made. The renowned sentence of Cicero, “_Nemo unquam sine magna spe immortalitatis se pro patria offerret ad mortem_,” is effective eloquence; but it is a baseless libel against humanity and the truth. In every moment of supreme nobleness and sacrifice, personality vanishes. Thousands of patriots, philosophers, saints, have been glad to die for the freedom of native land, the cause of truth, the welfare of fellow-men, without a taint of selfish reward touching their wills. Are there not souls ‘To whom dishonor’s shadow is a substance More terrible than death here and hereafter.’