The second question, however, I can more easily deal with, _What good is it?_ The only wonder to me is that people who are not stone-blind to what is going on in this world can put such a question. What good is it to have one's faith in Immortality and another life confirmed in an age of freethought, scepticism and utter callousness? When I look around me and see the young men nowadays--ay, and the young women too--who believe in no hereafter, who lie down and die, like the dumb animals who cannot be made to understand the love of the dear God who created them although they feel it, I cannot think of anything calculated to do them more good than the return of a father or a mother or a friend, who could convince them by ocular demonstration that there is a future life and happiness and misery, according to the one we have led here below. "Oh, but," I seem to hear some readers exclaim, "we _do_ believe in all that you say. We have been taught so from our youth up, and the Bible points to it in every line." You may _think_ you believe it, my friends, and in a theoretical way you may; but you do not _realize_ it, and the whole of your lives proves it. Death, instead of being the blessed portal to the Life Elysian, the gate of which may swing open for you any day, and admit you to eternal and unfading happiness, is a far-off misty phantom, whose approach you dread, and the sight of which in others you run away from. The majority of people avoid the very mention of death. They would not look at a corpse for anything; the sight of a coffin or a funeral or a graveyard fills them with horror; the idea of it for themselves makes them turn pale with fright. Is _this_ belief in the existence of a tender Father and a blessed home waiting to receive them on the other side? Even professed Christians experience what they term a "natural" horror at the thought of death! I have known persons of fixed religious principles who had passed their lives (apparently) in prayer, and expressed their firm belief in Heaven waiting for them, fight against death with all their mortal energies, and try their utmost to baffle the disease that was sent to carry them to everlasting happiness. Is this logical? It is tantamount in my idea to the pauper in the workhouse who knows that directly the gate is open to let him through, he will pass from skilly, oakum, and solitary confinement to the King's Palace to enjoy youth, health, and prosperity evermore; and who, when he sees the gates beginning to unclose, puts his back and all his neighbors' backs against them to keep them shut as long as possible.