Different
fates, indeed, awaited the departed souls, but these rarely, if ever,
were decided by their conduct while in the flesh, but by the manner of
death, the punctuality with which certain sepulchral rites were
fulfilled by relatives, or other similar arbitrary circumstance beyond
the power of the individual to control. This view, which I am well aware
is directly at variance with that of all previous writers, may be shown
to be that natural to the uncultivated intellect everywhere, and the
real interpretation of the creeds of America. Whether these arbitrary
circumstances were not construed to signify the decision of the Divine
Mind on the life of the man, is a deeper question, which there is no
means at hand to solve.
Those who have complained of the hopeless confusion of American
religions have but proven the insufficiency of their own means of
analyzing them. The uniformity which they display in so many points is
nowhere more fully illustrated than in the unanimity with which they all
point to the _sun_ as the land of the happy souls, the realm of the
blessed, the scene of the joyous hunting-grounds of the hereafter.
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