"promise them redress and happiness in a future blessed "existence?" One question may be answered by another: "What comfort hav the believers in Eternal Hell and "Heaven for 1700 years past been able to giv effectually "to nineteen out of twenty of the cruelly wronged and "miserable?" and "what to the pious who ar aware that many of their dearest hav died impenitent ?" It is no new fact, however painful, that it is hard for the outsider to bring comfort to the miserable by any abstract doctrin. A kind heart, prompting kind deeds and kind words never fails to bring some relief. To cultivate such a heart, is excellent but not, to make the pleasantness of a doctrin any more than of a reported fact, a measure of its truth.

SECTION XXII.

MY OWN IDEAL OF HEAVEN.

ALL my life I hav never particularly wished to go to [the Christian] Heaven. It is certainly too monotonous for an Eternity. The negativ side of it sounds all right. Absence of pain, of mental disquiet, of cold and heat, of hunger and thirst, of turmoil and contention, of toil and weariness, of sin and death,-thus much I understand, and for a moment approve; but all this is completely provided in the old Hebrew grave, without any after-life. To make a new life desirable, it must giv us something to do, something worth striving for, and a career by which we may improve in Virtue. Some modern speculators hav suggested that in Heaven we shall all learn the mysteries of Science and more beside. Just so, Cicero's talker imagins that his soul, escaping from the body, will mount aloft in the atmosphere until it floats steadily

in a stratum of its own density, and then will delight itself in the magnificent spectacle of this Earth in all its parts, its geography and its landscapes. Moving about with inconceivable velocity (for what is so swift as Mind?), without toil it will enjoy endless scenes of beauty. (Tusc. Q. i. 18, 20.) But Beauty and Science in entire isolation cannot satisfy a human soul or mind long. We emphatically need moral relations, old or new. If we ar to retain activ powers, we need some objects that worthily call out those powers. If we ar to increase in Virtue, we need occasions for self-denial, self-controul, and self-sacrifice. But these cannot exist, where there is no want, no offence, no pain. Want and pain, toil and trial, cannot be wholely banished out of my Heaven. Pursuing the thought, I find (like the simple savage) that no world is to me desirable, which has not the elementary principles dominant with us: only let not their sterner forms be in such excess as to crush immature virtue. Out of this I infer, that, but for man's misconduct, this world is in the main as good a world as we can wisely desire. If only,--if only !-the better men could rule over the worse, would not that make upon this Earth as good a Heaven as we ar capable of receiving?

SECTION XXIII.

A HEAVEN ON EARTH.

Is it Quixotic to imagin the better men ruling over the worse? Which class is the more numerous? The answer partly varies with time and place, partly depends on the meaning of the epithets. Nowhere can the Many stand criticism by saint or sage; yet the Many every

where hav a deep interest in Justice, and those who profit by Injustice ar the Few; while from Injustice spring the great miseries of this world, entailing Enmity, Crime and Vice. Were not a vast numerical majority on the side of Law (which is supposed to be Just) crime could not be punished. In every industrious, law-abiding community the popular sentiment for Justice vastly preponderates, and is amenable to wise exhortation. To be practical, let our argument be confined to England. Those who claim to be "the Salt of the Earth" hav, as their proper function, to rally the force of Opinion and direct it to the aim of making the national institutions and the national policy just. Old institutions, founded on conquest, ar seldom likely to be just. A true Church must be open-eyed on this point. It would hav been Quixotic at the birth of Christianity to deal with national affairs. Apostles necessarily limited their task to saving out of the world "an Elect Remnant." The time of "leavening the whole mass" was not yet ripe. But three centuries later, the Bishops of the Church woke up to a new ambition of claiming the whole world as "the "kingdom of God and his Christ." How and why they failed, this is no place to tell: but that the failure was complete and disastrous is manifest in the horrible fact, that after fifteen centuries more, to this very day, without public rebuke, Statesmen who prate of Christianity act as though Might made Right.

There always hav been individuals (and there ar plenty among us now) so unselfish, so sympathizing, so loving, so just, so thoughtful and discreet, so activ in lessening temptation to immature virtue, that they make a little Heaven all round them; but they ar seldom aggressiv against public evil. Individuals ar not strong enough. Societies ar formed to contend against special evils; but however useful this may often be, they constantly thwart

one another, each claiming precedence. Only Christian Churches, or other Churches united on our common Morality, comprizing a massiv force of men and women pledged to ALL VIRTUE, ar equal to the battle against Ambition and Avarice. Ambition in a Court turns on

royal or national pride. Ambition in military, naval, or civil servants and aspiring merchants turns almost wholely on AVARICE, which crushes and corrupts weaker nations, demoralizing us at home. Let us hope that the Churches, learning their strength, will learn their duty better than hitherto, and abandoning partial interests, will struggle for universal Justice, alike in legislation and in Foreign policy. If England led the way, many other nations would follow, and the effort which Little Faith calls Quixotic would redound to world-wide blessing.

Hitherto, alas! the Churches seem to hav interpreted the sacred prophecy that "nation shall not make war "against nation," in the curious sense that there is to be no war in Heaven. Else,-did it never occur to a single Bishop, that to bring about fulfilment of the prophecy is the Church's sublime task? Must we wait for Disestablishment to moralize the Clergy?

SECTION XXIV.

WILL THE FITTEST SURVIVE ?

ACCORDING to the New Gospel all ar "to go to Heaven." All human souls ar traditionally accepted as immortal; souls of babes, souls of barbarians which rejoice in bloodshed, and hav little more moral development than apes and lionesses, which love their young. From a Catholic priest I learned that, under certain circum

stances, to baptize an unborn child is approved by the Church. Ar we thus to extend the idea of inevitable immortality?

Yet if that exceptional boon is to be granted for moral reasons, the grant (methinks) would discriminate morally. The theory suggests as program,—(1) annihilation to all to whom immortality would be as encumbering as to dead wolves; (2) continued life to all who hav passed well enough through God's primary school to be fitted for an upper form. Under this regimen, Darwinianism would triumph; for the Fittest would survive.

SECTION XXV.

MY OVERSTRAINED ARGUMENT.

I HAV never been able to giv up the belief which pervades both Hebrew and Christian thought, that God verily has a "peculiar people," his "fellow-workers." Proceeding from this basis, I hav overstrained an argument in my "Theism," and am bound to retract it. This world (I argued) was designed by its Author to be a School of Virtue to man, his highest creature in it. But if Virtue, by Divine decree, perish with each virtuous man, then the Divine aim is thwarted by its own enactment, and a normal blight seems even to impair the Divine Counsels and the Divine Bliss.

I now argue against myself as follows. If the Divine aim be the moral advance of the race collectivly, it is not necessarily made void when good souls cease to liv: for, their Virtue may hav helped forward the Virtue of survivors, as in Science the "Lamp" is passed on. The nobler souls do not liv in vain, if their work survive;