And yet even thus, selfishness would beset the most unselfish, and weariness the most determined.

How hard the battle was, is known to all; it has been the most prominent commonplace in human thought and language.

The constancy and the strength of temptation, and the insidiousness of the arguments it was supported by, has been proverbial.
To explain away the difference between good and evil, to subtly steal its meaning out of long-suffering and self-denial, and, above all, to argue that in sinning '_we shall not surely die_,' a work which was supposed to belong especially to the devil, has been supposed to have been accomplished by him with a success continually irresistible.

What, then, is likely to be the case now, with men who are still beset with the same temptations, when not only they have no hell to frighten, no heaven to allure, and no God to help them; but when all the arguments that they once felt belonged to the father of lies, are pressed on them from every side as the most solemn and universal truths?
Thus far the result has been a singular one.

With an astonishing vigour the moral impetus still survives the cessation of the forces that originated and sustained it; and in many cases there is no diminution of it traceable, so far as action goes.