74 EMERSON’S ESSAYS

did the preacher mean by saying that the good are miserable in the present life? Was it that houses and lands, oflices, wine, horses, dress, luxury, are had by unprincipled men, whilst the saints are poor and despised; and that a compensation is to be made to these last hereafter, by giving them the like gratifica- tions another day,—bank-stock and doubloons, veni- son and champagne? This must be the compensation intended; for what else? Is it that they are to have leave to pray and praise? to love and serve men? Why, that they can do now. The legitimate inference the disciple would draw was, “We are to have such a good time as the sinners have now”; or, to push it to its extreme import, “You sin now; we shall sin by and by; we would sin now, if we could; not being successful, we expect our revenge to-morrow.”

The fallacy lay in the immense concession, that the bad are successful; that justice is not done now. The blindness of the preacher consisted in deferring to the base estimate of the market of what constitutes a manly success, instead of confronting and convicting the world from the truth; announcing the presence of the soul, the omnipotence of the will: and so estab- lishing the standard of good and ill, of success and falsehood.

I find a similar base tone in the popular religious works of the day, and the same doctrines assumed by the literary men when occasionally they treat the re- lated topics. I think that our popular theology has gained in decorum, and not in principle, over the superstitions it has displaced. But men are better than this theology. Their daily life gives it the lie. Every ingenuous and aspiring soul leaves the doctrine