this stage of our discussion, not amiss to observe, that the same difficulty is encountered, whenever Miracle is propounded. Inexperienced man lightly believes in miraculous tales. To giv to Joshua longer daylight for slaughtering a beaten enemy, seemed an adequate moral reason for arresting the Sun's movement in heaven. To manifest his controul of the elements, Jesus walked on the water of the Lake of Galilee. To deliver the host of Israel from Pharaoh, the waves of the Red Sea stood up like a wall to the right and to the left, and opened a passage through the depths. To minds which hav insufficient acquaintance with human inaccuracy and our vehement love of the marvellous, Miracle passes without severe scrutiny: yet experience teaches even the multitude how very ill we (homunculi) judge in what crisis a moral reason will be adequate with the Most High for breaking the continuity of his physical laws. Our wishes would multiply miracles a thousand-fold. phenomenon might warn us, how wrong we all ar likely to go, if we imagin that we can by our moral insight survey physical law from above, and suggest corrections or exceptions which the Divine Author will find reasonable in the interest of morality.

This

SECTION XXXIII.

CONCLUSION.

IN Section viii. above, I propounded that only if the moral argument for human immortality were unambiguous as well as weighty could it bring supplement and correction to the Physical Analogy which leans so strongly to the opposit side. My reasonings thirty years ago (quite sincere, though prompted by an eager desire to establish

my case) differ so vastly from my present reasonings (equally sincere) that I find the moral argument to be undeniably double-voiced, and therefor to me inefficacious. In confessing this, I feel pain, especially through fear lest I seem to scorn a tenet very sacred to the piety of the moderns. Yet after all, I do but vindicate the old Hebrew doctrin against that "Oriental philosophy" which the Pharisees borrowed and Christianity has passed on to us by mere routine, in a miscellany of notions which we hav discarded as silly and noxious error. The creed of Isaiah and Jeremiah sets Religion on a simpler, surer basis, at once more popular and less offensiv to Scientists; on which also it is less liable to degenerate into sentimental unreality, selfishness, subtleties of theory, and contempt of this world as transient; while Events and our widest Knowledge proclaim that it is, not indeed Eternal, but an eminent type of Permanence. Such too was the sentiment of the Hebrew sages. But I still maintain, that Knowledge being inevitably limited, a margin beyond always exists for Opinion and Conjecture; an area which I call a Penumbra between Light and Darkness. In this Penumbra for many long years I hav quite happily left this question. It will be at once understood, that I am not anxious to press anyone to quick decision on a topic with which I myself hav dealt so leisurely.

But here it occurs to me to digress. When I first heard that an esteemed American philosopher had pronounced it hard to decide whether Christianity had been to the world more beneficial or more pernicious, I thought the doubt to betoken a jaundiced mind. On further thought I concluded that under Christianity he comprized all the mischiefs and horrors of the Papacy, and, if so interpreted, he might not be wrong. But now in a new aspect the same doubt confronts me.

For, the Christianity of Luther, Zuingle and John Wesley, equally with Romanism, has taught that all mankind ar born under the wrath of God, that this globe is early destined to fiery destruction, that no good is to be expected from it, (for neither sages nor saints can mend it,) and that future good will come only in a heavenly home, which Christ has gone to prepare. Necessarily, whoever heartily accepts this creed, thinks labor for the improvement of this world all but useless. Its evil state being inevitable, he not only will not himself struggle for any fundamental change, but will use all his moral and religious influence to induce oppressed classes and nations to submit quietly to outrageous injustice from pretentious authority, under the belief that "in another world" all will be set right. very unimportant is "the world which passes away" !Has not such a creed played a fatal part to paralyse those efforts for a better Present which history recognizes as essential for improving this world?

How

Thus on one point I am willing to utter a confident judgment. Belief in a Future Life becomes pernicious, first, if the argument require us to disparage the present life, which is certainly God's work, and his only work directly known to us. To speak with contempt and despair of this world cannot glorify its Author. How much better judged the old Hebrew: "God saw that it was good."

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All thy works praise thee, O God." Again, the belief is mischievous, if, as always hitherto, it divert good people from striving to tear up the roots of Evil. From the true Church ar due to the World, not a mere salving of wounds, as "mercy" to the wretched, but sounder bases of Society, to prevent Injustice, Impurity, Cruelty and Misery, hitherto dominant in spite of Christianity.

I hav heard of a good Scottish minister, who defined as the right object of life for each of us :--"To leave this

"World better and bonnier by reason of our having been "born into it." Clearly this is our divinely allotted task:--and he who is faithful in little, may be trusted with much. Our best preparation for another world, if we expect another world, is, by working for Justice and Mercy in this.

I thought I had here written my last line; but I see now that it remains to sum up, for simple truthfulness and for the convenience of anyone who may assail these pages. They assert that the doctrin of Heaven and Hell has its source, not in Christianity, much less in Judaism, but in a shallow and monstrous Oriental Theosophy. They plead that this doctrin is not only unproved, but unprovable; that the idea of Hell or fiery Purgatory is wholely pernicious, and that of Heaven (variously and on the whole) far from harmless.

POSTSCRIPT TO SECOND EDITION. ·

WHETHER it is worth while to notice a critic's question, when he misunderstands the posture of an argument, is very doubtful: yet, when he seems friendly, it is more respectful to answer it. I am asked, Why I am not shaken in my Theistic belief on the ground that many heathen believers pervert religion; if I argue against Human Immortality by the topic that it is believed perversely? I marvel that one who is certainly far from ignorant of my writings, is unaware that in my mind the cases are not at all parallel. My belief in GoD is founded on the present world of which we hav immense and certain knowledge. No stupidity of men or nations can annihilate or impair that knowledge. The logic which infers

intelligence acting in the heavens is the same as infers intelligence in other beings besides myself. In the opening of my "Theism" I hav avowed that a Divine "Mind is "visible as directly as each man's Mind to his fellow." The doctrin which Atheistic scribblers sometimes address to me, about "a Self-Acting Universe," I despise as fetish superstition, disgraceful to a modern scientist. Contrariwise the belief in a future world does not rest on knowledge, but on moral aspiration. A hypothesis is advanced (not an assertion supposed to be provable), that the human spirit is a part of an unseen infinit world of spirits (whether in Space or out of Space, attached to matter or unattached), and must liv eternally. Of this vast Conception no direct evidence is propounded :only in its favor was pleaded that the belief ennobles mankind, makes future retribution possible and conduces to human virtue. Obviously in such a posture of the argument, any facts which attest that the belief in many cases conduces to cruelty or to religious folly ar `damaging, and must proportionably cut away the only ground of belief. The theory has no basis of known and acknowledged science to maintain it, unless we can accept Ghosts and Necromancy as such.--Turn from this to Theism; and I say: no cruelties or baneful superstitions of erring religion tend to invalidate the clear, positiv certainty, that this Universe which we see and know,about which we hav not to guess and fancy,--was built up and is at every moment sustained by INTELLIGENT POWER acting on every clod of matter with accurate knowledge of distance, and in every living bosom: nor can any folly of a barbarous creed weaken my conviction as to the moral qualities which my Reason attributes to our glorious Superior and Overseer.

I think my critic must know that I never touched the topic without protesting (whether against Lord Brougham,