“Use! Why to help make it better, for good, not by any delusions, deceptions, false hopes, jugglery of ordinances or soft sayings. ‘Believe, have faith in this or that and you will be saved.’ Let the priests and all religious teachers warn the people of sin, show them the fearful and inevitable consequences of the violation of the spiritual and moral laws; that as a man lives so he dies, and as he dies so will be his eternal condition. Give him no chance for an excuse, of dodging, of trying to escape through somebody’s influence. Educate him, threaten him, frighten him by the awful present and eternal consequences of sin, into a better life. Make no apologies for sinning. Give him to understand that he is making his own heaven or hell. As the Persian poet puts it:
‘I sent my soul through the invisible,
Some letter of that after life to spell,
And bye and bye my soul returned to me,
And answered, I, myself, am heaven or hell!’
“There is nothing truer than the saying of Kant. ‘Every action carries with it its own punishment, and its own reward.’
‘It matters not how straight the gate,
How charged with punishment the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the Captain of my soul.’