Excerpt from Is the Life of Man Eternal?To some the View of the writer of this essay that there is no other adequate support for belief that motive and conduct can be intrinsically right or wrong, than faith in the future life, will seem unsound. To others of us, Judge Blades' position seems correct. Ethics is practical or nothing. And practically, how foolishly, the word will largely be: Let us eat and drink for to-morrow we die. The sanction of eternal life is none too much for the support of the ethical appeal. Even in spite of that glorious call, sin holds high and persistent revel and works its awful dooms. How immeasurably worse would be our human case without the larger hope?The easy criticism that this reduces ethics to sheer commercialism is not valid. Spiritual rewards are not cheap payments of happiness (one of the weakest words in the language) or glory. In the realm of spirit, rewards are in kind. That is: the reward of virtue is more virtue, of character, higher character: good deeds, opportunity to do more of them.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.