Yet another persistent belief has beset the imagination of the religious
ever since religion spread among the poor, or, rather, ever since
commercial civilization produced a hopelessly poor class cut off from
enjoyment in this world. That belief is that the end of this world is at
hand, and that it will presently pass away and be replaced by a kingdom
of happiness, justice, and bliss in which the rich and the oppressors
and the unjust shall have no share. We are all familiar with this
expectation: many of us cherish some pious relative who sees in every
great calamity a sign of the approaching end. Warning pamphlets are in
constant circulation: advertisements are put in the papers and paid for
by those who are convinced, and who are horrified at the indifference of
the irreligious to the approaching doom. And revivalist preachers, now
as in the days of John the Baptist, seldom fail to warn their flocks to
watch and pray, as the great day will steal upon them like a thief in
the night, and cannot be long deferred in a world so wicked. This belief
also associates itself with Barleycorn's second coming; so that the two
events become identified at last.
There is the other and more artificial side of this belief, on which it
is an inculcated dread. The ruler who appeals to the prospect of heaven
to console the poor and keep them from insurrection also curbs the
vicious by threatening them with hell. In the Koran we find Mahomet
driven more and more to this expedient of government; and experience
confirms his evident belief that it is impossible to govern without it
in certain phases of civilization. We shall see later on that it gives
a powerful attraction to the belief in a Redeemer, since it adds to
remorse of conscience, which hardened men bear very lightly, a definite
dread of hideous and eternal torture.