"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?"
"Yes, Sir, it can. It is the discovery of our guilt and our danger that predisposes and impels us to receive the Christian faith as exactly adapted to our moral condition. Until this discovery is made, the scheme of salvation which is revealed in the Bible may be contemplated as true, without being _felt as necessary_; and the mind, perplexed and bewildered by the speculative doctrines of its own belief, may admit them in theory, and yet reject their practical application. But when we feel our guilt, and perceive the moral danger to which it inevitably exposes us, we necessarily ask the question which the jailer of Philippi once put to the apostle, 'What must I do to be saved?' Will a person ever put such a question till he _feels_ that he is in danger of being lost?"