I never saw them make any human being
better. Unless you go beyond them--as far beyond them as heaven is
beyond hell, as far above them as a free son is above a miserable
crouching slave, they will do you more harm than good. For this is
all that I have seen come of them: That all this spirit of bondage,
this slavish terror, instead of bringing a man nearer to God, only
drove him further from God. It did not make him hate what was wrong;
it only made him dread the punishment of it. And then, when the
first burst of fear cooled down, he began to say to himself: "I can
never atone for my sins. I can never win back God to love me. What
is done, is done. If I cannot escape punishment, let me be at least
as happy as I can while it lasts. If it does not come to-day, it
will come to-morrow. Let me alone, thou tormenting conscience. Let
me eat and drink, for to-morrow I die!" And so back rushed the poor
creature into all his wrong-doing again, and fell most probably
deeper than ever into the mire, because a certain feeling of
desperation and defiance rose up in him, till he began to fancy that
his terror was all a dream--a foolish accidental rising up of old
superstitious words which he learnt from his mother or his nurse; and
he tried to forget it all, and did forget it--God help him!--and his
latter end was worse than his first.
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