In his better conditions--physical, I mean--whether he had
any better moral conditions, I can not tell--he would laugh and
say, "_Gather the roses while you may_"--heaven and earth!
what roses!--but, in his worse, he maledicted everything, and was
horribly afraid of hell. When in tolerable health, he laughed at
the notion of such an out-of-the-way place, repudiating its very
existence, and, calling in all the arguments urged by good men
against the idea of an eternity of aimless suffering, used them
against the idea of any punishment after death. Himself a bad
man, he reasoned that God was too good to punish sin; himself a
proud man, he reasoned that God was too high to take heed of him.
He forgot the best argument he could have adduced--namely, that
the punishment he had had in this life had done him no good; from
which he might have been glad to argue that none would, and
therefore none would be tried. But I suppose his mother believed
there was a hell, for at such times, when from weariness he was
less of an evil beast than usual, the old-fashioned horror would
inevitably raise its dinosaurian head afresh above the slime of
his consciousness; and then even his wife, could she have seen
how the soul of the man shuddered and recoiled, would have let
his brutality pass unheeded, though it was then at its worst, his
temper at such times being altogether furious.
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