Past and Present

Chapter 2

Gospel of Mammonism

Reader, even Christian Reader as thy title goes, hast thou any

notion of Heaven and Hell? I rather apprehend, not. Often as

the words are on our tongue, they have got a fabulous or

semifabulous character for most of us, and pass on like a kind of

transient similitude, like a sound signifying little.

Yet it is well worth while for us to know, once and always, that

they are not a similitude, nor a fable nor semi-fable; that they

are an everlasting highest fact! "No Lake of Sicilian or other

sulphur burns now anywhere in these ages," sayest thou? Well,

and if there did not! Believe that there does not; believe it

if thou wilt, nay hold by it as a real increase, a rise to higher

stages, to wider horizons and empires. All this has vanished, or

has not vanished;