40 STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS Av HUMAN REASON. chamber, Omy good father, says he, how much am I obliged td you, whoare going to deliver me from a great deal of torment I3aptism, answered I, does not only deliver from the torment of hell, but intitles us to the enjoyment ofa place inparadise : O how happy will it be foryou to go to heaven, eternally to live in the presence of God! I do not, said the sick man, understand what you mean, nor, perhaps, have I explainedmy meaning clearly to you : You know I have lived a long time upon the emperor's bounty :' The bonzes, who are perfectly well acquainted with all the transactions of the other world, assure me, that I shall be obliged after my death, by way of recompence for my pension, to serve him, and that my soul will infallibly go into one of his his post-horses, to carry dispatches from court, through all the province. They have therefore been advising me to mind my duty in that new state ; not to stumble, nor kick, nor bite, nor hurt any one : Run well, and eat little, and be patient, say they, and you may move the gods to compassion, who oftenof a good beast make at length a person of quálity,,or a considerable man- darin. I protest, father, the verythoughts of it make me quake it never comes into my mind but I tremble ; yet I dream ofit every night, and sometimes, methinks, in my sleep I. am already is the harness, ready to run at the first jerkof the postillion. Then I awake in a great sweat, and half-mad, scarcely knowing whether I am a man or a horse. But alas ! what will be my sorrow, when this will be no more a dream, but a reality. This, therefore, father, is the course I took. They tell me, that those of your religion are not subject to those changes i that men are always men, and are in the other world of the same, kind as they are here. I beg of you therefore to receive me amongyou. I know your religion is hard to observe ; yet if it had ten times more difficulties, I am ready to embrace it ; and whatsoever troubles it put me to, I had rather be a christian than be turned into a beast." The father Le Comte, however gave him' a little better instruction, and, as he tells us, had the comfort to see him die a good christian. But in the main he as- sores Its, the superstitions of thepeople are tonumberless, that he does not believe any nation under the sun is so full of whimsies as China. And pray, Lógisto, hewmuch tviser or happier shóuld the have been in this island of Great Britain, notwithátanding this self-Sufficiency of our reasón, if Christianity had never cóme amongst ús? Tt is true, ive have hot matiy memoirs left of the religion of ottr ancestors in the days ,òf heatheuisni. Strain) tells us, that the Britons worshipped Ceres, and her daughter Proserpina above any other gods : The daughter is known to be the queen of hell, and the mother a sort of earthly or infernal goddess. Whether these were originally British deities, er
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