Page:An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798).djvu/413

 a detestation of moral evil, and a love and admiration of God, and of moral excellence.

Our ideas of virtue and vice are not, perhaps, very accurate and well-defined; but few, I think, would call an action really virtuous, which was performed simply and solely from the dread of a very great punishment, or the expectation of a very great reward. The fear of the Lord is very justly said to be the beginning of wisdom; but the end of wisdom is the love of the Lord, and the admiration of moral good. The denunciations of future punishment, contained in the scriptures, seem to be well calculated to arrest the progress of the vicious, and awaken the attention of the careless; but we see, from repeated experience, that they are not