But worse—­it is still more sad to have to say it, but it is true—­most people’s notions of the next world, and of salvation, as they call it, are just as childish, material, selfish as their notions of this world.

They all wish and pray to be “saved.”  What do they mean?  To be saved from bodily pain in the next life, and to have bodily pleasure instead.  Pain and pleasure are the only gods which they really worship.  They call the former—­hell.  They call the latter—­heaven.  But they know as little of one as of the other; and their notions of both are equally worthy of—­Shall I say it?  Must I say it?—­equally worthy of the savage in the forest.  They believe that they must either go to heaven or to hell.  They have, of course, no wish to go to the latter place; for whatever else there is likely to be there—­some of which might not be quite unpleasant or new to them, such as evil-speaking, lying, and slandering, envy, hatred, malice and all uncharitableness, bigotry included—­there will be certainly there—­they have reason to believe—­bodily pain; the thing which they, being mostly comfortable people, dread most, and avoid most:  contrary, you will remember, to the opinion of the blessed martyrs, who dreaded bodily pain least, and avoided it least, of all the ills which could befal them.  Wherefore they are, in the sight of God, and of all true men unto this day—­the blessed martyrs.

But these people—­and there are too many of them by hundreds of thousands—­do not want to be blessed.  They only want to be comfortable in this world, and in the next.  As for blessedness, they do not even know what it means; and our Lord’s seven beatitudes, which begin—­“Blessed are the poor in spirit”—­are not at all to their mind; even, alas! alas! to the mind of many who call themselves religious and orthodox; at least till they are so explained away, that they shall mean anything, or nothing, save—­I trust I am poor in spirit:  and nevertheless I am right, and everyone who differs from me is wrong.

The plain truth is—­when all fine words, whether said in prayers or sung in hymns, are stript off—­that they do not wish to go to hell and pain; and therefore prefer, very naturally, though not very spiritually, to go to heaven and pleasure; and so sing of “crossing over Jordan to Canaan’s shore,” or of “Jerusalem the golden, with milk and honey blest,” and so forth, without any clear notion of what they mean thereby, save selfish comfort without end; they really know not what; they really care not where.  And that they may arrive there or at a far better place; and have their wish, and more than their wish:  I for one heartily desire.  But whether they arrive there, or not; and indeed, whether they arrive at some place infinitely better or infinitely worse, depends on whether they will give up selfish calculations of loss and gain, selfish choosing between mere pain and pleasure:  and choose this; choose, whatever it may cost them, between being good and being bad, or even being only half good; as little good as they can afford to be without the pains of hell into the bargain.