But it is asked, "If Christianity be false, is it nothing that you are troubled with a thousand anxieties and cares about what shall become of you after death?
If Christianity be false, is it nothing that day after day you have the fear of death before your eyes?
If Christianity be false, it makes you slaves while you live, and cowards in death."[316] We might answer, If Christianity be _true_, what then?
but we prefer a different course: we say that the reality of a future state is in nowise dependent on the truth of Christianity, however much we may be indebted to Christianity for our certain knowledge of it; that even on the principles of Atheism there is no security against the everlasting continuance of self-consciousness, any more than there is against the inevitable stroke of death; that Christianity in either case assumes the fact, and addresses men as dying yet immortal creatures, while it reveals a way in which those "who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage" may be delivered from that fear, and raised to "a hope full of immortality." As death is not created or called into being by Christianity, so neither is the awful future which lies beyond it: the Secularist not less than the Christian has to do with it.

Mr.Holyoake seems, at least occasionally, to be sensible of this solemn truth.

"I am as much concerned," he says, "as this reverend gentleman can be, as to what shall be _the issue of my own condition in the future_; I am as much concerned _in the solution of this question_ as he is himself; and I believe that the view I entertain, or that any of us may entertain, _conscientiously_, will be our justification in that issue, if we should come to want justification.

When we pass through the inexorable gates of the future; when we pass through that vestibule where death stands opening his everlasting gates as widely to the pauper as to the king; when we pass out here into the _dim mysteries of the future_, to confront, it may be, the interrogations of the Eternal,--I apprehend _every man's responsibility will go with him_, and no second-hand opinions will answer for us."[317] Is there not something here that should arrest the attention and awaken the anxiety even of the Secularist himself?
He sees before him the inevitable event of death, and beyond it "the dim mysteries of the future;" he _may be_ called to "confront the interrogations of the Eternal," and then "every man's responsibility will go with him." Surely there is enough in the bare _possibility_ of such a prospect to justify more than all the interest which has ever been expended upon it even by the most "anxious inquirer." But, haunted by these solemn thoughts, Mr.Holyoake takes refuge in the other alternative of his dilemma: "If there are other worlds, those will best be fitted for the enjoyment of them who have made the welfare of humanity their business in this." Secular philanthropy is the best, and only needful, preparation.

With this any belief in regard to the future is unnecessary, without it no belief will be of any avail: for "the view which any of us may entertain, conscientiously, will be our justification in that issue, if we should come to want justification;" "No second-hand opinions will answer for us.