All mankind are, therefore, in themselves, without hope and without God in the world. Under all the pressures of adversity, or dismal pains and calamities of life, separate from revealed Religion, there is no relief for them. All would be darkness,--mystery--and despair. They could not conjecture for what the world was made--for what it is preserved--why there were made rational creatures--What design is aimed at, in the government of the world--or what the real and true character of the Maker of it is--or what will be the end of the whole.
4. The reason and conscience of mankind do not _clearly_ discover a future state, nor place before them rewards and motives sufficiently strong and powerful to induce them, amid the attractions, temptations and vanities of this world, to act with a wise reference to another.
Conscience is God's monitor, reprover or counsellor within the soul. In many important cases, it dictates what ought to be done, and what ought not to be done in regards to our behaviour towards our fellow men, and towards ourselves as connected in society. It shows us plainly what moral ties, in a multitude of instances, which cannot now be enumerated, bind us. When we do wrong, it punishes us by severe remonstrances and upbraidings. When we do well, it testifies in our behalf, and administers rich consolation by self-approving reflections. It, consequently, serves as a natural law to all men. It is the Deity's law written or imprinted on all minds. From its present severe reproofs for vicious, and pleasing joys, for virtuous and upright conduct, we may gather, fairly, that there will be a future reckoning--a day of judgment--a world to come--a place to remunerate the just, and to inflict punishments on the incorrigible. At least, we may conclude all this to be highly probable. Conscience, then, points us to a future state as a probability. Accordingly the most, though not all of heathen nations and tribes have had some faint and confused idea of another life after death. Some wavering belief of it. They conjectured that there might be, or would be a future existence. The rational and sober livers among them hoped there would be another life. But no nation, not favoured with revealed light, ever entertained any tolerably consistent or rational notions of it, either of the rewards to be conferred upon the good, or the evils to be endured by the wicked.--With their Poets and Orators all was fable and fiction. They described, with much ornament of language, their ELYSIAN FIELDS--and represented, in a terrifying manner, their FURIES.--