Grand River times. [volume] (Grand Haven, Mich.) 1851-18??, 1852-06-09
IMMORTALITY.

If we wholly perish with the body, what an
imposture is this whole system OF laws, man.
ners and usages on which human society is
founded! If we wholly perish with the body,
these maxims Of charity, patience, justice, hon
or, gratitude and friendship, which sages have
taught and good men have practiced what are
they but empty words, possessing no real, bind
ing efficacy? Why should we heed them, if in
this life only we have hope? Speak not of du-
ty. What can we owe to the dead, to the liv-
ing, to ourselves, if all are, or will be, nothing
Who shall dictate our duty, if not our own
pleasures, if not our own passions! Speak not
of morality. 1t is a mere chiniera, bugbear of
human invention, if retribution terminate with
the grave.
If we must wholly perish, what to us are the
sweet ties of kindred? what the tender names
of parent, child, sister, brother, husband, wife, or
friend! The characters of drama are not
more Elusive. We have no ancestors, no de-
scendants-since succession cannot be predict
ed of nothingness. Would we honor the illus
trious dead? How absurd to honor that which
has no existence? Would we take thought for
posterty! How frivolous TO concern ourselves
for these whose end, like our own, must soon
be annihilaton! Have we made promise 3
How can it be nothing to nothing! Perjury is
but Jest The last njunctions of the dying
what sanctty have they,more than the last sound
of chord that is snapped of an instrument that
is broken!
To sum up all: IF we must wholly perish,
then is obedience to the laws but an insensate
servitude; rulers and magistrates are but the
phantoms which popular imbecility has raised
up; justice is but an unwarrantable infringe
ment upon the liberty of men-an imposition,
a usurpation; the law of marriage is a vain scru-
ple modesty prejudice honor and probity,
such stuff as dreams are made of; and incests,
murders, parricdes, the most heartless cruelties,
and the blackest crimes, are but the legitimate
sports of mans irresponsible nature; while the
harsh epithets attached to them are merely such
as the policy of Legislators has invented and i'm
posed on the credulity of the people.
Here is the issue to which the vaunted philos-
ophy of unbelievers must inevitably lead /. Here
is that social felicity, that sway of reason, that
emancipation of error, of which they eternally
prate, as the fruit of their doctrines! Accept
their maxims, and the whole world falls back
into the most frightful chaos and all the rela-
tions of life are confounded; and all ideas of
vice and virtue are reversed; and the most in
vioabe laws of society vanish and all moral dis
ciplne perishes; and the government of States
and nations has no longer any cement to uphold
it and all the harmony of the body polite be-
comes dscord; and the human race is no more
than an assemblage of reckless barbarians,
shameless, remorseless, brutal denaturalized,
with no other check than passion, no other bond
than irreligion, no other God than SELF Such
would be the world which impiety would make.
Such would be this world were belief in God
and Immortality to die out of the human heart
Massillon.