Note 76 — Chapter III · [59] THE MORAL GOVERNMENT OF GOD.

[The common remark, “virtue brings its own reward,” is true only with qualifications. The apostles, as to this life, were the most miserable of men: (1 Cor. xv. 9.) Virtue does not always bring earthly rewards. The grand support of the good is drawn from considerations of that future state which the infidel denies. Observe, 1. We cannot suppose that God would so construct man, as that his principal comfort and reward for virtue, is a delusion. 2. Very good persons are often beset with painful doubts and fears, as to their future safety. Would God allow such doubts, if the expectation of future happiness were the only reward of virtue? 3. This reward, at best, is private; but for the encouragement of virtue, it must have obvious triumphs.On the other hand, bad men grow callous to the rebukes of conscience, so that great sinners suffer less from remorse than small ones, and what is worse, owe their tranquillity to their guilt. Again, he who kills a good man, wholly deprives him of his only reward, if this life alone gives it. And the villain who kills himself, escapes his only punishment.Virtuous persons, in the strong language of Robert Hall,[A] would be “the only persons who are wholly disappointed of their object; the only persons who (by a fatal and irreparable mistake), expecting an imaginary happiness in an imaginary world, lose their only opportunity of enjoying those present pleasures, of which others avail themselves; dooming themselves to grasp at shadows, while they neglect the substance, and harassed with a perpetual struggle against their natural propensities and passions, and all in vain!”

[A] Sermon on the Vanity of Man.]