moral obligation; but it is a mere question of fact, and human experience may carry us some little way towards deciding it. Men are undoubtedly able to suppress the reasonable certainty of the future; but they are also able to heap sin on sin in spite of a penalty of which they have almost an ever-present dread. Hell is emphatically the Italian's bugbear; yet the first temptation which crosses his path is followed by his submission. But there are more sweeping methods of evading this belief. The Church of Rome modifies the dogma by the purgatorial fire; the popular belief of Protestants dispenses with purgatory altogether, and sends all men practically to heaven. The doctrine of endless suffering is in effect nullified. Few really maintain now, that all who do not die in the active love of God, remain for ever face to face with his anger. There would be no such scruple in believing that in all, without respect of persons, the eternal fire will continue to purge away the dross from the pure ore, as long as any dross remains. The checks on sin would be increased in power, and the sense of moral obligation quickened, because it would be set free from a belief which to natural human instinct appears self-contradictory and immoral.

But what is the experience of legislators in all ages and countries? If men will not be deterred by any penalty short of endless damnation, that is to say, a penalty than which they can conceive none higher, then clearly all apportionment of civil punishment must merge in the one penalty of death. The idea is a very old one; but, whether in England or at Athens, it has simply defeated its own end, if that end be the diminution of crimes. Diodotus warned the Athenians that they might punish all their enemies with death, but they would only induce them still more to take the chances of escape. The same gambling spirit runs into things spiritual. The doctrine which tells the good man that if he dies with any sin not repented of, he will sink into hell, still leaves it possible that the wicked man may live to repent. Thousands have the belief of Balaam, that the mere wish to die the death of the righteous will somehow or other issue in its fulfilment.

There remains yet the fact, which it is impossible to ignore, that the mitigation of a penalty is not necessarily followed by the multiplication of the offences for which it is inflicted. When Cleon proposed to punish the revolted Mitylenæans by an indiscriminate massacre of all the men, he was carrying out a theory of punishment which seems to be heartily accepted by the Archbishop of Dublin. In his belief, as in that of the Athenian demagogue, "the object proposed by human punishment is the prevention of future crimes, by holding out à terror

• Thucydides, iii. 4, 5.

to transgressors. Both alike put a part for the whole; and if the theory were true, it would relieve judges from all duty of apportioning punishment to offences. English judges of the present day feel this task of apportionment more and more to be a very strict duty; and it would seem that people do not steal more sheep and handkerchiefs because they no longer run the risk of being hanged for the crime. Undoubtedly, if there is but the one penalty of death for almost all offences, the task of legislation is wonderfully simplified. It implies no exalted idea of divine justice, if we believe that its penalties are fixed by the same kind of vindictive indolence. The legislation of England is more and more making the reformation of the offender a coordinate object with the prevention of crime. According to the popular theology, it has already risen to a higher idea than is exhibited in the justice of an all-merciful God.

The contrast is strong; and nothing but authority will constrain men to tolerate it. Hence it is that, in spite of the antagonism of modern science, in spite of the tacit abandonment. of some parts in the narrative of the Old Testament, in spite of the acknowledged hopelessness of defining the limits and conditions of inspiration, the theologians who uphold the popular belief cling to some theory of inspiration with greater tenacity, it would seem, than ever. Hence it is that the Christian world is fast splitting up into two sections: the one tempted to believe itself in antagonism with Christianity; the other regarding the progress of modern thought with an alarm alike unreasoning and useless,-useless, because it is impossible to check the rising tide; useless, because the flood, which assails a mere traditional teaching, does not even threaten the Body of Truth, which is the real inheritance of Christendom; useless, because this truth will shine out with unclouded lustre when the artificial safeguards of an inconsistent theology shall have been utterly swept away.

It is of course possible for a man to reject and deny any truth or dogma whatsoever; but only a distorted vision will sec a growing tendency in the present day to set aside the great body of Christian doctrine. If, however, there be any one dogma which can produce no other sanction than that of authority, it must undergo the stringent scrutiny of an age which, with all its shortcomings and all its sins, is bent on getting at the truth of facts. Men will not be deterred by ecclesiastical decisions from closely sifting every argument in favour of a doctrine of punishment which is at variance with all natural instincts and affections. They see that the clergy, who are said to have subscribed it, do not really believe it, that no one really believes it. They know how to distinguish a genuine from a spurious belief. They know

* Scripture Revelations of a Future State, p. 219.

that the time was when men might be said to have this faith, when the thought of the broad gulf yawning to receive all sinners heightened their convictions of the essential impurity of all material things. They know how that belief displayed itself. Bernard believed it, when he deliberately broke up the home which he loved. Jerome believed it, when he did battle with the fiends of hell in his cave at Bethlehem. Francis of Assisi believed it, when he took Poverty for his bride, and gathered round him the hosts which forswore every earthly joy to avoid the flames of hell. The forms of the sacrifice might vary, its essence was the same. Macarius might plunge himself naked into a morass, to brave the sting of insects able to pierce the hide of a boar. Simeon on his pillar might afflict soul and body with heat and frost. But in one and all, in proportion to the sincerity of their faith, there was the same vehement rejection not only of every earthly pleasure, but of every thing which could only be termed not a torment or a plague. The teachers of our day go about to reconcile their belief in the final ruin of almost all mankind, with a natural love of ease and a feeling of self-complacency. The curse which, they affirm, rests upon the world, rests on it, it would seem, in name only. It does not lessen their liking for the world's good things; it does not break their sleep by night, or greatly torment their souls by day. They look on mankind as on beings of whom few can escape the undying fires; but they can mingle in the world of science, or trade, or politics, and shape their actions by the dictates of a time serving expediency. In the eyes of Benedict, or Columba, or Damiani, no further proofs would be needed of a complete and deliberate unbelief. But while some insist loudly that God cannot have mercy on men after their pilgrimage here is ended, the greater number are content to tell their people that justice is with God the consummation, and not the contradiction, of that which is justice with men. It is impossible to deny that such is becoming more and more the teaching of the clergy of the Church of England. Preachers resort less and less to the elaborate demonology of Dante or of Milton; they instinctively abstain more and more from attempts to define the method of future punishment. Is it possible to bring together more convincing evidence that the doctrine is not really believed? Is it possible to produce a stronger reason why they, who know that these things are so, should come forward boldly and honestly to declare it?

This age is one of much serious thought, and the efforts to arrive at truth for the truth's sake are neither feeble nor insincere; but it is not preeminently an age of martyrs or confessors. They who have thought most deeply and anxiously are conscious that they have passed through more than one stage of belief and faith; and they feel that the change which is coming cannot, on the

whole, be accomplished with the same weapons which fought the battle of Teutonic against Latin Christianity. No great experience is needed to show them, that others have undergone or are undergoing the like changes. Not a few who, if pressed to declare their belief, would express their abhorrence of the pictures of hell-torments drawn by the Bishop of Oxford, received their orders with the most sincere acceptance of the High-Church popular theology. Not a few passed from this state of temporary repose into a hard struggle, which only did not issue in submission to the Church of Rome. The teaching which had impressed on them the unity of the Church, and the unimaginable fearfulness of schism, justified and enforced the inquiry which was to determine whether they were in the right position themselves. It was of no avail that they led the holiest life, if they questioned but one single point in all the faith of Catholic Christendom; it was of no avail that their faith and their lives were what they should be, if their belief was professed and their works done where they ought not to be done and professed. The rising of a doubt was the signal for flight; for to doubt and linger, and to die in that doubt, was to be lost for ever. The Church of Rome was catholic, even by the admission of her enemies; her orders were allowed to be valid; her dogmas retained the faith of the church in all ages, although they may have overlaid it. She could offer them security, and security was every thing in a life where the accident of a moment might remove the Christian beyond the reach of hope and mercy. It was hard to escape from these doubts and fears without casting aside the burden of sacerdotalism. It was scarcely possible to remain without the pale of Rome, while the paramount necessity of Catholic communion seemed to thrust aside every other; but it was easy to emerge from these mortal fears into the belief in a divine kingdom embracing all ages and all lands, into a belief which did not dare to limit the mercy of God, which placed the salvation of man in the conformity of his will to the Divine Will, in a constant dependence on his love and grace.

Such as this has been the history of many an English clergyman during the last ten or twenty years. They may pass now by many names; they may be regarded by the world as belonging to the High Church or the Broad Church; but they who search out such matters closely may see that their faith rests now on the conscious conviction of a moral government of truth and justice, as men, with all their wickedness and all their ignorance, construe and accept those terms. It is impossible not to see whither these things are tending; it is mere hypocrisy to pretend that we do not perceive it. The sentences of ecclesiastical courts may arrest, but cannot turn back, the course of

modern thought. They do not profess to concern themselves with the truth as such; and the truth, as such, is the one end and aim to which every channel of science and research is converging.

And finally, the charge to such of the clergy as hold a faith like this, to quit their posts and set up some new sect, will fall on unheeding cars. Why should they abandon a church in the body of whose teaching their faith is deeper than ever, because some choose to determine what that church has left undefined? Why should they leave the centre of all happy memories and all bright hopes, when nowhere else can they look for the same peace and consolation? Why should the Bishop of Natal desert the Christians and the heathen, among whom and for whom he has so long laboured earnestly and heartily, because he will not, and cannot, propound to them a dogma which makes the assertion of perfect righteousness an unintelligible riddle? Why should he not go on to do his duty by entering his most solemn protest against falsehoods which are "utterly contrary to the whole spirit of the gospel," and which operate "with the most injurious and deadening effect both on those who teach and on those who are taught"? Plainly he would be acting wrongly, were he not to do so. The Church of England has accepted the task of preaching a gospel, nor can any one say that she has wholly failed in preaching it. It remains to be seen whether she will cast forth men who are ready to spend and to be spent in God's service, because they are more than ever convinced that his justice, his mercy, and his love alike endure for

ever.

The judgment of the Court of Arches in the case of Mr. Wilson would, even if it were final, avail little or nothing on the other side. Dr. Lushington asserts, in the clearest language, that he is not concerned with the truth of doctrines, but simply with the fact whether they are or are not maintained by the Church of England. The judge is not concerned with questions of biblical interpretation. He is ready to concede all liberty, if only "the plain, literal, and grammatical sense" of authoritative formularies be not contravened. So far as regards the doctrine of eternal punishment, they who deny that it is of necessity endless for those who undergo it, may most honestly accept the issue. They would admit without hesitation that the words of the Athanasian Creed "clearly assert that eternal life shall be the portion of the good, and everlasting fire the destiny of the bad." They would assert, further, that this was their own sincere conviction. On nothing does the Bishop of Natal insist more earnestly than on this, that there is "an eternal or ever*Judgment in the case of Fendall v. Wilson.