The hopes and fears relating to a future state, or to death, which is our entrance into it, are of this kind, and may be considered as proceeding from rational self-interest, in the highest and most abstracted sense that the terms admit of practically, since we have no definite knowledge of the nature and kind of the happiness or misery of another world. These hopes and fears are also the strongest of our selfish affections, and yet at the same time the chief foundation of the pure disinterested love of God, and of our neighbour, and the principal means of transferring our associations, so as that we may love and hate, pursue and fly, in the manner the best suited to our attainment of our greatest possible happiness. For hope, being itself a pleasure, may, by association, render indifferent, and even disagreeable, objects and actions pleasant; and fear may make agreeable ones painful: hence we can either increase desires and aversions, that are suitable to our state, or obliterate and convert them into their contraries, if they be unsuitable, by means of their connexion with the hopes and fears of death, and a future state. I will therefore briefly state the rise and progress of these hopes and fears.
All our first associations with the idea of death are of the disgustful and alarming kind; and they are collected from all quarters, from the sensible pains of every sort, from the imperfection, weakness, loathsomeness, corruption, and disorder, where disease, old age, death, animal or vegetable, prevail, in opposition to the beauty, order, and lustre of life, youth, and health; from the shame and contempt attending the first in many instances; whereas the last are honourable, as being sources of power and happiness, the reward of virtue, &c.; and from the sympathetic passions in general. And it is necessary, that the heedlessness and inexperience of infancy and youth should be guarded by such terrors, and their head-strong appetites and passions curbed, that they may not be hurried into danger and destruction before they are aware. It is proper also that they should form some expectations with respect to, and set some value upon, their future life in this world, that so they may be better qualified to act their parts in it, and make the quicker progress to perfection during their passage through it.
When children begin to have a sense of religion and duty formed in them, these do still farther heighten and increase the fear of death for the most part. For though there are rewards on the one hand, as well as punishments on the other; yet fear has got the start from the natural causes of it before-mentioned: and as pain is in general greater than pleasure, as was shewn above, from its consisting in stronger vibrations; so fear is in general more vivid than hope, especially in children.
Moreover, the sensual and selfish appetites are the original of all the rest; yet these are sinful, and inconsistent with our own and others’ happiness; they must therefore be restrained, and at
