Here, it may be, some of my unbelieving acquaintances, foreseeing a lurid something on the horizon of my story, will be indignant that the capacity for crime should be thus associated with the denial of a Live Good.

But it remains a mere fact that it is easier for a man to commit a crime when he does not fear a willed retribution.
Tell me there is no merit in being prevented by fear; I answer, the talk is not of merit.

As the world is, that is, as the race of men at present is, it is just as well that the man who has no merit, and never dreamed of any, should yet be a little hindered from cutting his neighbor's throat at his evil pleasure .-- No; I do not mean hindered by a lie--I mean hindered by the poorest apprehension of the grandest truth.
Of those who do not believe, some have never had a noble picture of God presented to them; but whether their phantasm is of a mean God because they refuse him, or they refuse him because their phantasm of him is mean, who can tell?
Anyhow, mean notions must come of meanness, and, uncharitable as it may appear, I can not but think there is a moral root to all chosen unbelief.

But let God himself judge his own.
With Sepia, what was _best_ meant what was best for her, and _best for her_ meant _most after her liking_.
She had in her time heard a good deal about _euthanasia_, and had taken her share in advocating it.

I do not assume this to be anything additional against her; one who does not believe in God, may in such an advocacy indulge a humanity pitiful over the irremediable ills of the race; and, being what she was, she was no worse necessarily for advocating that than for advocating cremation, which she did--occasionally, I must confess, a little coarsely.