to disbelieve that the consequences of snatching at it were so severe as God had threatened. Nor can the sinner well continue in the state to which one sin has brought him. For when he assumes that God will not punish as He has threatened to do, he is already beginning to dictate to God how He shall punish. He will not believe that loss of light and love, a diminution, in fact, of his thinking and willing powers, follows upon sin. Yet is not sin or loss of light in a spiritual being far more intelligible than those penal fires with which heathen as well as Christian writers frighten the unrighteous? Such fires can easily be represented as a merely metaphorical description of pain, or as coarse figures intended to frighten minds already made coarse by wickedness, or as a relic of times in which fire was looked upon as a substance and one of the four elements. But of loss of light and love in an uncorporeal spirit we can form a very fair idea. If a man, then, likes to put out of sight "the everlasting bonfire" as a fiction, we can hardly deny that a person capable of choosing is intelligibly punished for choosing wrong by an abridgment of his power to choose right; that is, by that loss of light and love which he has brought upon himself. The Supreme Legislator must punish in some way those who infringe His laws. He has given to certain beings the power to choose good, and so to be like Himself. They prefer to choose bad, and so He abridges their power of becoming like Himself. There cannot well be a more intelligible punishment for a being who chooses to make himself less like to God. If then the action of fire on spirits be hard to understand, their punishment is not. Yet the final result of such punishment must be a hatred of the punisher, and a desire to be, in order to hate. To force annihilation upon such a being would surely be a stultification of the original gift of free

will and personality. I say the final

result, because a man who had no distinct revelation on the subject might fancy that Satan having first made up his own mind to rebel, then led eight or nine others to rebel, then persuaded them to lead more to rebel, and so on. And

the final result of this series of acts of rebellion would be a hatred of Him Who punished the rebels.

Perhaps we might assume too that there is in all thinking creatures something analogous to the instinct of selfpreservation in animals. Whether thinking creatures ever deliberately desire simple annihilation may fairly be questioned. Suicide is so often accompanied with mental derangement that it can hardly afford proof that thinking creatures deliberately desire absolute annihilation. If it is committed by a man who is perfectly sane, it perhaps amounts to little more than a rash determination to try for a change of scene. If after their time of trial is over, creatures know that no such change of scene is possible without begging God's pardon, the chances are that the analogon to the instinct of preservation will have become stronger in them and more pronounced. To be is a resemblance to God, and such a resemblance as creatures do not deliberately and willingly part with. When to be is an essential condition of to hate, it is likely that this instinct should be inconceivably strong in the damned. God's rule is to give such an instinct even to unconscious creatures, and we cannot expect Him to abrogate that rule with conscious creatures. To me the desire of self-preservation seems so strong that I cannot conceive a man wishing to be another person. I can conceive him wishing to have another man's attributes, as, for instance, the wisdom of Solomon, the penetration of Aristotle, or the imagination of Shakspeare; that is, he wishes the self which he is to have these, and not himself to become the persons who have these. If then it is hard to conceive of any one wishing to forfeit his own individual personality, it is much harder still to conceive him wishing to forfeit as by annihilation he would forfeit-personality altogether. A lost spirit, it would seem then, would, if offered annihilation, be influenced by this desire of preserving his own personality; or perhaps this desire would influence him over and above that desire to hate God still of which we have spoken. However, I would not press this consideration too

eagerly, though I think it worth suggesting.

Against all this it may urged that the whole notion of personality is exclusively Christian; that it is a notion without which the world got on very well before Christ; that its very antagonism, that creatures would be absorbed at last into God, was, and perhaps still is, the most popular of all beliefs. How then can you found any argument for eternal damnation upon that individual personality of men and angels in which so large a body of thinking and unthinking men has professed an entire disbelief? I reply that I do not believe the notion of personality to be exclusively Christian, but only the nomenclature which gave it, in the thoughts as well as in the language of men, such a prominence as it had not before possessed. But punishments, whether inflicted by law-givers in this life or threatened in the next, assume the belief in personality in men's minds. Thus, when Plato tells us that bad men upon their deathbeds are frightened at the myths about hell lest they should prove true, assuredly he represents persons afraid, not for others, but for their own individual selves. When Cicero says there is no theatre for virtue greater than conscience, he means not another's conscience but a man's own. An implicit belief in personality survived in spite of the efforts of heathenism to put it down. I have just mentioned conscience, which will suggest an illustration. There is no word for conscience in ancient Greek, nor for that matter in Hebrew either; but there are adequate proofs that the reality was known to Greeks and Hebrews. In like manner, though frankly admitting that both the doctrine and the discipline of Christianity have done a great deal to give such a prominence to personality as it had not before, I deny that the reality was unknown to men's consciences before Christ.

But it may be still urged in spite of all which has been here said-Granting that it would not do to turn fallen persons adrift upon the creation unless they asked pardon and promised amendment, still imprisonment would surely be enough without the eternal fire and worm (what

ever they may be) to torture them! I reply that to me it is impossible to see how they could be imprisoned without pain. As they were created to be social beings, and still retain a social nature, solitary confinement would inflict pain, perhaps even greater pain than they now suffer. Confinement with others who have chosen bad company must also inflict pain. For wickedness may be said to lie in worshipping self and not God, and where each and all worship self, there there must be interminable discord and seemingly an ever-increasing confusion. If any one rejoins that this is but a negative punishment when compared to the torments which the upholders of eternal punishment represent God as positively inflicting, it may be replied that God, as the Author and Maker of all natures, may, in a certain restricted sense, be said to do whatever comes from these natures, and so be said to inflict the torment which a choosing social nature has brought upon itself. He may even have distinctly designed that if such creatures make an ill use of their choosing and social powers, they shall be the executors of their own punishment. Thus we might in one breath say that their pains all come in the course of nature, and in another remind ourselves that God instituted that course of nature. If creatures know that fire will burn, and yet take a course which is sure to lead them into it, it is their own fault if they suffer; and surely this is just as bad, whether the fire be material, as some think, or metaphorical, as others think. And it is worth observing how in the Bible God speaks of their fire not my fire, of the tormentors not my tormentors; for such expressions are calculated to remind us that those who suffer from them suffer from their own fault. * Indeed the mere sight of

* I do not know if an ingenious person might not maintain that the fre ήτοιμασμένον τῷ διαβόλῳ κ.τ.λ. means "which the devil has got ready," i.e., for men. Certainly the phrase is very different from what ὃ ήτοίμασεν ὁ Θεός would be. If S. Theresa was shown the place which the devil had got ready for her, we should have a case which would illustrate the use of

διαβόλῳ as an ablative and not a dative.

countless lost spirits would be, not to take instances from what the other senses would suggest, a pain which they mutually inflict upon themselves.

If there be any worth in what has been here urged, it will put the Universalist into an awkward position. He pretends to be a defender of God's mercifulness, but tacitly assumes what would convict God of abominable cruelty. For the Universalist tacitly assumes that there are a number, a vast number, of God's creatures quite ready to beg God's pardon, but that God is unwilling to grant that pardon. When the eternal distinction between persons and things, which conscience suggests, is put out of sight, it is quite possible to adopt, at least by implication, opinions derogatory to that goodness of God of which men pretend to be defenders. For it would appear upon a little reflection that it does not matter at all under what kind of punishment, temporal or eternal, these unfortunate beings are. A being who will not forgive when he is asked for pardon is a cruel being, unless the punishment is administered in order to reform the offender. But to endeavour to reform him is to treat him like a person who has a will and can ask pardon if he chooses to ask it. To set him free from either temporal or eternal punishment without reformation would be to treat him like a thing. But the Universalist writes as if he and his pen were beings of the same rank, and as if he as well as it could be mended without any co-operation of his own. He never troubles himself to consider how far it is even possible for God, Who gave to some beings personality, afterwards to treat them as if they were things and had no personality, and could be made good again without any co-operation upon their own part.

This brings me to observe that there may be people who would agree in the main with what I have said, but would yet complain that I had not urged in defence of eternal punishment the natural immutability to good which many writers

suppose to have become inherent in fallen spirits. I am afraid I must acknowledge my own disbelief in the natural

immutability of any created spirit. But I could not discuss a matter involving so many intricate subjects without making this essay longer and more tedious than perhaps it is. At all events it will be seen that I have argued throughout on the opposite supposition. I have supposed that the devil could ask pardon if he would. Now, could not would be the fit exponent of a belief in his physical immutability, as would is of his moral immutability. Physical immutability perhaps would lie in an inability in the intellect to perceive the beauty of virtue, and moral immutability in a disinclination in the will to revere it. But if the devil does not see the beauty of virtue, how can he take pleasure in marring it? The bare mention of such questions will suggest the impossibility of discussing them in an essay which can only hope for readers on account of its brevity.

Others again might wish what the heathens have said about future punishments to be urged here. But in order to do so, it would be of little purpose to quote the Greek and Latin classics; one would have to discuss all which could be picked up upon the subject from Greenland to India, and from China to Peru, in order to give a fair estimate of human tradition thereon. And this process would evidently lead to many discussions, which would make this essay unreadably long.

John of Salisbury has said that it is a sign of an ungrateful mind not to acknowledge the source from which one has profited. I will therefore own that this paper is little more than an amplification of a dialogue between God and Satan which S. Bridget gives in one of her revelations. Satan complained that God had forgiven Adam, but would not forgive him. Almighty God replied-"But you have never asked me to do so." answer, I think, is unmeaning, if it be true that fallen beings are so immutably bad as not to have the power to ask. A little reflection, I conceive, will show any one that the line of thought pursued in this paper is briefly summed up in the pregnant reply which I have quoted by memory from S. Bridget. J. B. M.

This

THE INTERNATIONAL.—I. THE deplorable state of Spain, torn by faction and civil war, following so soon upon the horrors of the Paris Commune, is directing attention more closely to the aims and working of the International Society. Dating but from yesterday, this secret association is already deeply steeped in blood and crime. The parent of the Paris Commune, it stands convicted of guilt of the blackest dye; and to-day it is doing its utmost to surpass in Spain its frightful deeds in France. At first designed simply to unite the working men of Europe in one immense TradeUnion, it has now for several years professed principles the most atheistic and revolutionary, and has become the sworn foe of religion, of property, of the family. In 1869 the society, through the Socialist Alliance of Geneva publicly declaring itself atheistic, demanded the abolition of all worship and of marriage, the substitution of science for faith, the abolition of all distinction of classes, and the social equality of the sexes. While putting forward the rights of working men as its ostensible aim, the International has been labouring by means of correspondence and busy propagandism to knit together the workmen of the world, in order to insure their universal domination, and thus to accomplish its true aim the Social Revolution. Based upon atheism and communism, it is essentially the enemy of Christian society. Not only does it menace every throne and established Government, but it is the foe even of the unity and individuality of every nation. Proclaiming war between classes, its progress and development would be alike fatal to civilization and society. Its aim is nothing short of the universal uprooting of the prevailing social system. Could it realize its dreams and ambition, no position and no person would be safe from its tyranny. By means of wonderful activity and complete organization the Association grew enormously during the the first seven years of its existence, and in the year 1871 it was estimated to be 350,000 strong in Great Britain alone,* while on the Continent its adherents were * Edinburgh Review, October, 1871.

counted by millions. At the time when the war broke out between France and Germany the International had completed its organization in Paris, and the disorder which ensued on the fall of the French Empire and the subsequent siege of the capital furnished the propagators of its doctrines with a fertile field in which to sow the seeds of socialism and civil war. Its worthy offspring, the Commune of Paris, attempted to carry into practice its impious and levelling doctrines, and all the world knows what heartrending horrors were the result of that attempt. Society then began to perceive to its cost what the true mission of the International was.

The organization of the International, like that of allied secret sects, is admirable for its unity and completeness. The founder of this permanent system of conspiracy, Karl Marx, concisely depicted its composition thus-“The Congress is the head, the General Council is the heart, and the Section is the arm." While holding its assizes in the chief capitals of the world, London has been until recently its head-quarters. In this city have met together Karl Marx, Herman Jung, Eugène Dupont, Vésinier, Vermorel, Félix Pyat, Bergeret, Cluseret, and Dombrowski -names which tell their own tale so graphically as to render comment superfluous. To these we must add Mr. Odger, who has been connected with the society from its foundation, who has filled the office of President of Committee and even that of Chairman of the General Council. After the Commune had been crushed amid a sea of blood and flames, the General Council proceeded to justify its acts by issuing an address on "The Civil War in France," in which among other things the assassination of the hostages of La Roquette was defended. This address was signed by the whole of the General Council, and among the names appended were those of Mr. Odger and Mr. Lucraft. English public opinion however refused to condone their participation in such an act, and ultimately these two men were forced to explain their conduct, and finally to withdraw from the General Council. We have here a proof that the Social Revolution is in

our midst, and that the International has sufficient moral power, as an able reviewer remarked in 1871, to efface the natural instincts of Englishmen on the subject of assassination.

pro

The International is particularly hostile to the middle class, its ill-will being specially directed against the capitalist. Thus it opposes by word and action not only every form of Monarchical Government, but also every Republic which falls short of the most levelling Socialism. The wealth of the capitalist and the broad acres of the landowner are the prizes which tempt the longing eyes of the Internationalists and explain the rapid extension of socialist principles, no less than the important position the " letarian" sect has already gained for itself in Europe. The chief means to be employed for achieving their ends is the abolition of individual ownership in the soil, which, together with property in the shape of mines, railways, and machinery of all kinds, the Internationalists propose in some heroic fashion to transfer from their present owners to the community at large, while they would wholly abolish the right of inheritance as a first great step towards that redistribution of property they so much desire. Now it is evident that such wild aims as these can never be realized while society rests upon its present foundations of the family, the State, and the Church. Therefore, to carry out their objects they are driven to make war on these three pillars of society. Eugène Dupont declared at the Congress of Brussels, in 1869, that "the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 were but revolutions of form and not of base; that the foundations of society must be changed; and that the real field of revolution was the social question." During the reign of the Commune one of the articles of the federals declared plainly—“The International Association of working men will continue to exist, notwithstanding the efforts of impotent persecution, until every employer, capitalist, priest, and political adventurer shall have disappeared from off the earth." No possible doubt then can remain of the fact that the International is the foe of all those institutions which every reasonable man holds most

Sunt lachrymæ rerum!--Virgil. WE had left the royal orange groves of Aranjuez some fifteen miles behind us, and were approaching Toledo, a locality of absorbing interest. There was a violation of congruities amounting almost to desecration in traversing by steam and rail this classic ground, where all around was redolent of poetry, romance, and venerable associations. A herd of camels employed in the palace grounds contented themselves with rearing their stately heads as our train passed them, and pursued their measured tread through the brushwood as if, hardened to such discrepancies, they could regard us with equanimity. "El dorado Tajo "-the Pactolus of Spain-too, followed its mazy course with dignified indifference to the hurry and noise and speed with which modern utilitarian philosophy sweeps the traveller along its banks, scarcely leaving him time to admire the artless but effective harmony between the grey green of the sober-foliaged olives and the severe character of the historic domain.

A broad road, planted on either side with pollard maples, open to an extensive horizon on the right, but bounded by rocky steeps on the left, serpentines from the Gara to the ancient city of many memories.

There is a tact which we appreciated in contriving this interval between the jerking of carriages, the rushing of steam and bustle of a station, and the arrival

*