"There may be, for aught I know to the contrary, a Gehenna in another world, but that that Gehenna will be a place of eternal torments, I cannot believe. My conscience revolts with unspeakable horror at a thought at once so dishonouring to God and so against His attributes of Love and Mercy. For the greater part of my life I believed firmly in the dogmas of the Westminster Confession of Faith, but, since I have studied the Scriptures exegetically on this subject, I have ceased to believe what so many Preachers, Creeds, Catechisms, Books, Hymns, &c., teach respecting an eternal Hell. I have thought for myself and seen how both the written and unwritten Book of God shows that not one atom or molecule, nation or people, which he has created, will ever be annihilated or given over to hopeless suffering. This is affirmed not only in the Scriptures but also in God's dealings with men and nations in all ages as recorded in history, and even as exemplified in the great book of Nature through scientific investigations. Change, evolution, growth, are cosmical laws by which all the phenomena in Nature and even in Grace are effected, and, as I see it, will ultimately terminate in universal perfection.

Poet Laureate in "In Memoriam" says—

"O yet we trust that, somehow, good
Will be the final goal of ill,

To pangs of nature, sins of will,

Defects of doubt and taints of blood;

'That nothing walks with aimless feet,
That not one life shall be destroyed,
Or cast as rubbish to the void
When God has made the pile complete.'

The

"Why this is all new to me. O that I could but believe it."

There was now, evidently, a gleam of hope entering my patient's mind, a ray from the "Father of Lights,' which would, I had no doubt, "shine more and more unto the perfect day."

The next day she told me that during the night she had reflected much on what I had said, and I expressed a hope that it had been of some comfort to her. "Well, yes," was her reply, but, quoting some texts of Scripture, such as, believing in Christ," "the fire that shall never be quenched," &c., she added, "In the face of these it was difficult to believe that all men would be saved, and to trust in the universal influence of the mercy and love of God."

I endeavoured to explain these texts according to the present aspect of biblical criticism, and inquired whether it is not infinitely harder to believe that God would punish, eternally, the vast majority of His own creatures, than to believe that He would save them? Christ's conception of God was that of a Father-a God of Love, who would, in His own time, in the ages to come, gather together, in one, all things in Christ, both those which are in the heavens and those which are upon the earth.”

"Ah! I never thought of that," was the reply, "in the ages to come. Then do you really think that God will hereafter give those who have died unsaved an opportunity of coming to Him?”

"I cannot doubt this," said I, "as I cannot for a moment believe that a merciful and righteous Father has limited the ultimatum of His love to His human

family to the period of our present existence—an existence which, at the most, is very brief and very imperfect, and especially when we consider that onefifth part of all human creatures die, in childhood, before the age of five years. No! I think this life is but the beginning of our pupilage. Here we are under indifferent masters, themselves badly instructed in the things of God. We are here only learning to spell the alphabet of God's great Wisdom. We

are as

'An infant crying in the night,

An infant crying for the light,
And with no language but a cry.'

We are destined, in God's great school, to go constantly up, from class to class, 'until we all attain unto the unity of the faith of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.'

"If this life should prove the only school in which we are ever to receive our education in the things of God, how can we reconcile the justice of the Most High towards His human family, as we find it exemplified in history? We there learn that men, in pre-Adamite and primitive ages had very faint ideas of God. Vast are the evolutions through which the minds of men have passed, from those periods of the worship of a scarabous crocodile to those of the worship of the great Javeh. Setting aside, as many do, the legend of the Garden of Eden, man was left, when he was first created, utterly destitute of an idea of God. We learn from the Vedas, the oldest

Scriptures of humanity, that man's first conception of a Supreme Power was connected with the Sun, which the Hindoos called Deva—the bright or the shining one, and with storms and earthquakes, which they regarded as a power of destruction. Hence

sprang up the dualism of Good and Evil powers. which has, more or less, characterised the faiths of all the world from that age to this, and which is now incorporated in Christian theology as God and Devil. 1

"Men in these primitive times, viewing these two terrible agencies, began to worship them, and even to offer sacrifices to them, thereby thinking either to gain their friendship or to avert their wrath. During all the ages which have elapsed since then, millions of men and women have lived and died without ever having heard of God or of His Son-have lived and died in absolute ignorance of everything pertaining to a future life, or to the conditions of its inheritance. Now, if we are to believe the teachings of the Greek, Roman and Protestant Churches, all those multitudes are now and for ever will be in a state of torment. Can any blame attach to those unfortunates for their ignorance? Must we not rather ask why God did not instruct them as to the terrible alternative which, according to the popular teaching of the Churches I have named, He had determined upon? Surely, sooner or later, as a righteous God and loving Father, He will give all His human family the opportunity of being reconciled to Him."

1 See Max Müller's "Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion."

my

These, dear Doctor, are cheery words," said hearer.

"Surely not too cheery for a God of love and omnipotence," I answered.

A few days after this conversation I perceived that the ideas of an angry God and an eternal Hell had lost much of their hold on my friend's mind, and that she was beginning to view God as her Father and Friend, and not as a foe. On another occasion she said "If God be thus good, why is it that He permits suffering, sin, sorrow and death to dwell among us?”

"These are indeed," said I, "mysteries to our finite minds. But by the aid of that wonderful instrument, the Microphone, we may one day be privileged to listen to the 'music of the spheres,'

'For ever singing, as they shine,

The hand that made us is divine.'

Could we but penetrate so far, we might hear, to our inexpressible joy, voices which would tell us that those sounds of suffering which so perplex us, as proving the sorrows of Nature, are not, in reality, so deep as we supposed. Then, too, a vast amount of suffering and mental worrying arise from our violation of natural laws; from intemperance in eating and drinking, from want of sanitary precautions, from over haste to be rich, from dishonesty and overreaching, all of which must inevitably result in sorrow to ourselves and to others. Thus far we cannot justly charge upon God the responsibility.

"A little girl asked her mother 'why God permitted the cholera,' and was assured 'that it was the Lord's