After Abigail Adams died in 1818, John wrote to Jefferson:
“I do not know how to prove physically, that we shall meet and know each other in a future state; nor does Revelation, as I can find, give us any positive assurance of such a felicity.
My reasons for believing it, as I do most undoubtedly, are that I cannot conceive such a Being could make such a species as the human, merely to live and die on this earth.
If I did not believe in a future state, I should believe in no God. This Universe, this all would appear, with all of its swelling pomp, a boyish firework.
And if there be a future state, why should the Almighty dissolve forever all the tender ties which unite us so delightfully in this world, and forbid us to see each other in the next?” |