into slaughter of his retinue.

Indeed East Indian SUTTEE, in which a widow was burnt on the funeral pile of her husband, belongs to the same ghastly family of religious fancies.

SECTION XVII.

FURTHER TENDENCY.

IN considering the moral tendency of a doctrin on Human Nature, it is vain and illogical to exclude barbarians, who hav formed so large a mass: but also in civilized races and modern time we meet grave mischiefs from the "Spirit-World," where Fancy claims to wanton. From it has sprung Invocation of the Dead, prime germ of Polytheism ever reblossoming. Notoriously in ancient India, Greece and Rome, the invocation of deceased Parents and Heroes, as of Saints in Christendom, culminated into worship and deification. Even in modern India among the Theistic Brahmos a vehement proclivity to invoke in prayer the Spirits of ancestors has appeared. Nay, in philosophic Germany a like warning comes to us from the case of the accomplished historian Berthold Niebuhr, who in one of his published letters informs a friend (with apparent complacency) that he prayed to the Spirit of his first wife to aid his second wife in her birthtravail. So easily does baneful superstition glide in, since to the disembodied spirits whom we glorify no limits of Space or Power ar assignable. Fancy is at the bottom of the idea which she moulds at pleasure; Fancy therefore naturally rides supreme to the end. Out of the same vagueness of the "Spirit-World" which Fancy paints in her own hues, come the vulgar beliefs in Ghosts, Magic and Necromancy, all generally debasing to the intellect

and enervating to bravery. When moral advantages ar claimed for the belief that the soul survives the body, we ought not to forget the counterpoise from its fostering of superstition and undermining of Monotheistic Worship. Hence the severity of Mosaism against wizards and witches.

Until

OUR sage Judges and Magistrates claimed a belief in Hell to guarantee the validity of oaths. Little they knew of the horrors entailed by this belief, in many directions. It is not here pretended that a belief in life after death necessarily or logically requires belief in Hell Fire, much less a belief that the non-acceptance of a creed is an offence unpardonable with God. But hitherto nations hav found it much easier to imagin an awful Hell than a desirable Heaven. The old Greeks readily understood Furies and maddening torment; but as to the Elysian fields, the poet of the Odyssey makes the great Achilles say, that the life of a slave on earth is far better. the forces of life ar spent, or disease is agonizing, to desire Heaven would be morbid and unnatural. Necessarily, where future Retribution is received in theory, the only effectiv practical belief is in Hell, -a Hell not for oneself (for no vile sinner believes that his vileness deserves it), but for one's opponents, political perhaps or religious. Thus the poet Dante paints his political foes in Hell: Christians in the middle age put Moslems there, Moslems consign Christians to it. ["Come away from him!" screamed an African woman to a girl, to whom Captain Clapperton put a question. "He is a Christian, who

"eats pork and will go to Hell."] This deadly doctrin has exasperated contempt and hatred between Christians and Moslems, has hardened Christians into cruelties against Jews, into worse still against Heretics; cruelties, which without a belief in Hell could hav had no lodgment in religious theories. Bigotry and Cruelty, it has been said, nowhere vanish from the multitude, until crushed out by disbelief in this authoritativ creed.

It is not easy to exhaust the tale of mischief which the tenets of Hell and Purgatory ar still working; but from one side only does the topic concern my present argument; viz., the question raised in Section xiv., What is the Moral Tendency (on* a broad national scale) of believing in a Future Life of Retribution for Saints and Sinners? The practical result is very weak from the tenet of Heaven;-except that under religious persecution it may animate martyrs and keep them faithful to their convictions. But from the tenet of Hell, which always tends to be the more powerful influence, while religious credulity is unimpaired, great exasperation of malignant sentiment arises; nay, it gravely darkens the believer's view of the Divine character. A clear proof is found in a very popular argument against capital punishment; viz., that "it hurries a sinner away to the "dread Tribunal, giving him no time to repent." The multitude pity the sinner in spite of his sin and crime, but count that God will be less merciful and considerate than they ar! When the Hell is believed to be actually Eternal, the case is worse and worse; but no "Purgatory" is ever thought to be less than a day's roasting alive.

* My Unitarian critics cannot justly forbid the inquiry on a broad scale. Of course my argument is addressed, not to them, but to the "Judges and Magistrates," &c.

SECTION XIX.

IMPROVED MODERN CREED.

AMIABLE modern Christians more and more refuse to retain with Spurgeon and the Salvationists the doctrin of Hell. Paul never teaches it, and seems in Romans xi. and 1 Cor. xv. to propound Final Universal Salvation. So in 1 Timothy iv. 10, "God is the Saviour of all men, especially of those that believe." But when these amiable reasoners glorify their private creed, which the General Church has never accepted, the thought presses, that we hav no experience how it will work if generally adopted. Hitherto among Protestants, eminently in Wesleyans and Salvationists, zeal for "conversion," has chiefly turned on saving souls from Hell; to which the word Salvation is banefully confined.

We must hope that when no longer stimulated to practical zeal by the frightful theory that impenitent Vice damns people to Eternal Hell, they will not undervalue the noble result of converting sinners for the sake of this world, even though they believe the sinful "doomed to be saved" in the next world.

But when preachers do not rest the belief of a blessed future for us all on a miraculous revelation, yet (very often indeed) the tenet is quietly assumed by them as scarcely needing proof and encumbered by no difficulties. In Indian Brahmos this perhaps may be ascribed to Eastern heredity, which naturally imbibes ancient metaphysics and psychology. But in our "Free Christian " Churches, which disclaim authority as any basis of belief, whose laity also ar well aware that miracles tampering with physical law for moral objects justly call for intense jealousy and suspicion, it is to me wonderful

that the preachers account elaborate* argument for Life after Death superfluous.-I write under correction, if I am wrong as to fact. That the belief makes one comfortable and "ennobles mankind," seems (as far as I can learn) to most of them a sufficient proof.

SECTION XX.

FUTURE OF THE WICKED.

In the heart of every savage is engraven the motto, that "the Violent must expect like Violence;" and as Prometheus in Eschylus expresses it, "That foe should "suffer from foe, is no-wise unseemly." Incipient philosophy then sets up an Axiom, "The evil-doer "deserves to suffer evil," and the doctrin of "Life for "life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth," easily gains currency. If the kinsfolk of a murdered man, alledging special extenuation, accept pecuniary compensation and condone the murder, ere long the public and the law-giver take fright, lest mild treatment encourage crime: the Judge is forbidden to pity an offender, and "Retribution without "Mercy" is enacted.

Religious thought next transfers the law of the Human to an imagined Divine Tribunal. Retribution for crime, if it be not inflicted in the present world, is thought nevertheless inevitable. When public curse follows into

* I accept from a Unitarian minister the explanation, that I do not know of such sermons because they ar not always printed. He adds the information that the Rev. George Dawson avowed his belief in Immortality to vary with his mood. The Rev. Charles Voysey writes to me that our belief largely depends on our power of vehement love to an individual.