and elevating, not the harsh theorising of soulless professors, but the lovely and gentle thoughts of inspired teachers. All black, dark, and pernicious elements would be eliminated, and doubt would forsake the Church where nothing that wounds the sensitive soul is heard.

As to the influence of the spirit of love on the future of our race, but little need be said, because its effects are so palpable and divine. Justice alone would smooth away all the absolute wrongs and wretched violences which now disfigure the world and shame humanity; but love would add consolations for all the natural and unavoidable griefs which must still remain, and it would also by constant and unselfish interest in the welfare and happiness of man multiply indefinitely the joyfulness of human life. The social relation would be purified and sweetened while perpetual peace reigned among the nations, and the toil and ingenuity and wealth of man would be uninterruptedly devoted to the progress of his race.

XII.

THE OUTER DARKNESS.

"THE dread of something after death.' In the vague undefined fear described by these words we catch a glimpse of the terror of life. While we live we know. A man is conscious of the worst that can befall him this side the grave: and however severe may be the suffering he anticipates, he may brace himself up to face it, endure it, or submit to it, and so conquer it; but the 'something after death' is unknown, and the unknown is constantly fraught with terror. When we can face a thing, measure our strength against it, we can find ground for a hope that we shall not be overcome by it. But when the strength of a power is indefinite and its instruments unseen, we fly or despair. And this is the attribute of the hereafter which under some conditions constitutes its terribleness. Of ourselves we cannot penetrate it, we seem to know nothing of the agencies which are at work in it;

but as we know that there are opposing or evil agencies at work here, we dread lest in that unexplored region they may be able to act with unrestricted freedom and to our eternal injury. I contend that the gospel is the dissipater of this fear. By faith we acquaint ourselves with the unknown, and find that it is not evil but good which is there set free.

The origin of the doctrine of future punishment it is not difficult to detect. Conscience, that awful

presence in man, being disobeyed, disturbs his peace of mind, and fills him, he knows not why, with restless forebodings which take definite shape beneath the influence of a superficial acquaintance with the common as well as with the extraordinary phenomena of nature. The darkness is peopled by him with beings begotten of its own gloom, the thunder and the lightning are taken to be the weapons of a revengeful and injured deity, and the subterranean fires are invested with supernatural horror and are dreamed of as the destination of the offending spirit after death. Thus superstition grows, and under the ingenious but misguided hands of so-called religious teachers is shaped into definite and enduring dogma, and life is surrounded with a horror from which the priest

hood never attempt to release it, and men are through the fear of death all their lifetime subject to bondage. And since the majority of men do occasionally if not frequently and constantly disobey the voice and the law of God, so are they as certainly disturbed by the action of conscience, which never ceases to exercise its functions. Thus they are rendered incapable, by the apparent confirmation of the doctrine by their own feelings, of ever arriving at the truth concerning the real nature of this mysterious fear and the superstitions which have from time to time grown out of it. But when a man escapes the pernicious effect of improper training, and is enabled by the power of God to live a holy life, and is inspired with a desire to discover truth, he finds this-that obedience to the holy law of God absolutely dispels all fear, his conscience approves his conduct, and no inward disturbance obscures his intellect, and he learns not only that, so far as he is concerned, there is nothing for him to fear, but also that the objects which he had been taught to dread have no real external existence, that the hell and the devils of the corrupt or ignorant are only dark dreams of man's own guilty imagination, and that the consequences of sin are close and immediate,

and are not postponed to an indefinite time or a distant ghastly region.

But the bias of the corrupt human mind is always towards fear: and the very religion which is the hope of the world when misunderstood becomes its terror. The vague fear attains a fixed and permanent shape, and the unknown assumes definite but terrible and appalling proportions. Departing in a straight line from the real intention of the gospel, Christian teachers have constantly so presented the doctrine of future punishment as the primary article of their creed, that Christianity has been made to add to the burdens and perplexities of this life, and to inrpart an appearance of dread reality to the imaginary torments of the next.

no more.

The modern theological and poetical idea of future punishment, eternal physical penal torment, hell-fire, is for the most part made up from the imagery of the Apocalypse, which is imagery and The Revelation of St. John is a vision of the future course of events on earth, that is, the future from the date of the vision itself, the conflict of the good and evil powers, and ultimate supremacy of the good.

But even the dazzling imagery of the Apoca