to the other of this system of eschatology, no attempt is made to give its place to that unique break in the flow of time-that "one supreme divine event to which creation moves "-upon which Scripture is so precise and so emphatic, and to which in its various phases it so eagerly reverts, the principal among them being the Second Advent, the Resurrection of the body, and the General Judgment. Inferentially Canon Farrar recognizes it, as elsewhere, so in the passage which refers approvingly to Martensen's expression, "a realm of progressive. development in which souls are prepared and matured for the final judgment." But it never seems to have occurred to him, not only that neglecting to face the consideration deprives his treatise of its claim to philosophical completeness, but that some of the strongest arguments for the positions which he most dearly prizes are to be found in its acceptance. When he desired to arraign the idea of the "doom passed irreversibly at the moment of death on all who die in a state of sin," he might have pleaded that this theory in its naked completeness reduced the General Judgment in the case of all those lost ones to a ghastly but empty "march-past," and in the case of the redeemed to a "march-past" as truly unreal-though joyful and triumphant. Let us, however, hold the faith of Scripture and the Universal Church, that at some totally uncertain--and as I believe still indefinitely far-off-day, the whole human race will recommence existence under new conditions of endlessness, and of "spiritual" embodiment, and that this will be the date at which the doom will be recorded; then the mode and the time of that gradual discipline of the sin-stained soul on which Canon Farrar so eagerly dwells assumes a definite and intelligible place in the economy of the divine order. Among the fallacies of the popular theology which are intimately connected with those which he denounces, although unnoticed by him, is the crassness which refuses to see that the conditions of the disembodied soul before the Resurrection, and of the soul reunited to the "spiritual body" after that event, must be generically different. Whatever the characteristics either of "Paradise" or Heaven may bewhatever may be those of the "prison" or of the "lake of fire"-it is clear that the respective differences between the members of either pair must be as substantive as their resemblance can be, or else the "Resurrection" as a fact is eliminated. Canon Farrar himself gives unconscious evidence of a similar confusion by the way in which he distributes the after-death probation by reserving that of the intermediate state to the "imperfect souls who die in a state unfit for heaven," while he co-ordinates more punitive sufferings with his idea of hell. Sufficient attention has hardly been directed to the circumstance that the mutual operation of the hard materialistic doctrine of Purgatory which has obtained in the Roman Church, and of its theory of canonization, combine to produce a confusion between the intermediate state of the disembodied soul and the Heaven of the risen "spiritual"

man, similar to that which has been engendered amongst ourselves by the savage theology of the Calvinist terrorist. By the Roman system the "Saint "-the being capable of invocation and the causer of miracles-is, in the pre-resurrection aiov, in "Heaven," enjoying the Beatific Vision—that is, he occupies the position which Scripture assigns in virtue of the Resurrection to the risen denizen of that Heavenly Jerusalem which has yet to be revealed. A familiar and recent illustration of this confusion is afforded by a hymn written by a most determined Romanist, but widely popular among religionists of very different schools-Faber's "O Paradise." Nothing can be more evident than that the holy enjoyment which the poet yearns after in “Paradise” is in truth the consummated "rapture" of the "New Jerusalem."

I may be allowed to deviate for a few moments from the direct discussion to suggest that in any exhaustive treatise on the subject the relation of scientific discovery and of the revealed deposit of doctrine must be faced. In itself I welcome science, for-as I am unable to conceive two antagonistic systems of truths-I believe that scientific discovery and revelation must be identical, and that the apparent discrepancy proceeds from the pride or the stupidity of those who strive to make a quarrel where God intended harmony. In this particular relation of the intermediate state it is undoubted that a long term before the Judgment-day makes the Taidevois of the better, and the punitive anguish of the worse, soul more easy of comprehension than it would be in the opinion of those who sum up the history of the human race in an arbitrary four thousand years before the Incarnation and of perhaps an almost exhausted two thousand years afterwards. It may be urged against this suggestion that after all the period before the Judgment must resemble a terminable annuity, and end in a vanishing value. But if we are to believe the intimations given of the condition of the latter times, virtue then will be so heroic in its sufferings and vice so flagrant in its enormities that a very short period materially considered will be sufficient to sum up far-reaching results. I may be pardoned for referring to one fact strongly insisted upon by anthropologists on considerations which, to an outsider, seem irrefragable, and which I venture to think comes to the succour of revelation where the popular chronology appears least able to help. Arguments seem wanting to establish any theological value attaching to the physical length of the "days" of the Creation, however long or however short might be the space of time which that word indicated. But the received doctrine of Adam's fall and Christ's Redemption, as revealed to us in Scripture, involves an hereditary and not a tribal connection of the human race with the first man. Now no candid student can deny that it is at least very difficult to reconcile the descent of all mankind, as past history and contemporaneous ethnology reveal it, from one couple, according to

resurrection.

the Ussherian chronology. But, once the "antiquity" of the human race is granted, this difficulty vanishes. Again, to recur to the The popular pre-scientific idea of the world's history is, roughly, that a chaos retrospectively infinite was followed by a short-lived"kosmos," in which no great changes have occurred, or will occur, until it shall come to an abrupt end and be succeeded by a very different "new creation." The appeal to mankind to believe the latter fact rested, according to this hypothesis, on no scientific analogy, and the sceptic could plausibly urge that the burden of proof lay against it. This he can no longer do in the light of modern science, which has revealed the mysterious working through bewilderingly protracted ages of physical and chemical mysteries to which the ostensible "face of nature" gives hardly any clue. The appearance-according to some law which is not less natural because fore-ordained and predicted—at some indefinitely future period of cosmic life of "spiritual" bodies, which shall bear to actual man an analogy which St. Paul explained by the figure of grain and of the mature wheat plant, can no longer be scouted as à priori unscientific. The worst which any votary of "evolution," who may at the same time be a freethinker, can, if he be consistent, say of it, is that it is unproven.

I must conclude these remarks, which are, it will be seen, in the nature of a demurrer. It is impossible now for Canon Farrar to withdraw his eloquent but incomplete and emotional exposition of an arbitrarily chosen fragment of a complex mystery. But it is equally impossible that he can, in the hours of analytical retrospect, be content to leave the question of man's eternal hereafter in a condition in which, so far as he has made it his own, so much has been unsettled in proportion to that which has been settled. Discussion must follow, nay, it has already begun, and among the various topics which will force themselves upon public attention, a foremost place will certainly be given to the contrast of the intermediate state as the abode of the disembodied soul, and of the "heaven" and the "hell" which will be the lot of the "spiritual" man. This is a truth very plainly stamped upon Scripture, and signified in the Creeds, although most strangely neglected in the narrow systems of modern popular religionism. The Church of England, I believe, from the prudent moderation of its dogmatic statements, enjoys an advantage in reconciling ancient formularies and modern thought which other communities have let slip by the harsh rigour of their traditionary pronouncements. When holy and humble men of heart have appreciated in reality, and not as a mere phrase of decorous formalism, that the world, both seen and unseen, is together God's one perfect creation, and that all reason, all experience, all Scripture, unite in the teaching that the divine work of discipline goes on behind as well as before the veil, they will then be able to accept, not as the vindictive menace of intolerant cruelty, but as the yearning

monition of solicitous love, that voice of our fathers in the faith which comes to us across the centuries, realizing Christ" with "us" upon all the days, even to the completion of this finite term," sympathizing with the soul's continuous training in life and in the after-life, clinging to the judgment-seat, coupling, in the name of God, good faith and good works as the way of life

Quicunque vult salvus esse, ante omnia opus est ut teneat Catholicam Fidem quam nisi quisque integram inviolatamque servaverit, absque dubio in æternum peribit.

"Ad Cujus adventum omnes homines resurgere habent cum corporibus suis et reddituri sunt de factis propriis rationem. Et qui bona egerunt, ibunt in vitam æternam : qui vero mala in ignem æternum."

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A. J. B. BERESFORD HOPE.

XVI.

P to this point the subject of the discussion has been, I think, exclusively in the hands of clergymen. But the everlasting condition of half the men, women, and children, that have been born since Adam, and that will be born till the stars fall like untimely figs -a few hundreds of millions or so every generation-can hardly be an ecclesiastical preserve. There is even a point of view from which a problem so tremendous, so appalling, may make a simple man rather impatient of the sight of a learned professor setting himself to grind the solution out of a revised text, with Liddell and Scott at his elbow, and Tillotson and Tertullian somewhere handy. It is not a topic to be handled irreverently, but if ever there was a question on which every possible window of criticism, from natural religion, from the deeper humour of the heart, and even its despised "sentiment," should be frankly-and fearlessly-opened, this is such a question. I will attempt to open one or two of such windows.

One of the things which we must make up our minds upon is this: namely, that the difficulties about the "Infinite," the "Absolute," the relativity or non-relativity of all human knowledge-all difficulties, indeed, which refer themselves to metaphysical Ultimates-are to be cancelled on both sides of the question, if cancelled on either. We must not, for example, having laid it down that God is just and good, ride off from a moral difficulty on the back of the remark that we do not know what forms justice and goodness might take in an Infinite Being. Many a time have I heard from the pulpit, or read in tracts, the remark that "sin, being committed against an infinitely holy Being, hath in it a kind of infinity." It is not rude to say that the man who is capable of that hath in him a kind of stupidity. But it is very rare indeed to see a discussion of this subject in which difficulties of the order above specified are not called in or turned out at random, just as the case may seem to require. This is forbidden. Let us clearly

understand that we have to deal with this question "in terms of the moral system" (to use Mr. Mansel's phrase); and, having said that, let us stick to it. This alone will, I am bold to say, erase three-fourths of our trouble, and of the writing on the subject. Are we to speak of a Governor, a Father, who can be displeased, who can change the front he shows to us, whom we can obey or disobey, to whom we are related as living in time and space, and so on and on? Be it solet us remember it. Upon this footing we may legitimately say (for one instance) that the child or the subject must not at all times think he is completely able to judge of the procedure of the Father or the Ruler; but we are shut up from dragging in "the Infinite" to help us out of a difficulty.

We must take care, also, not to use moral terms fetichistically. Now this is constantly done. I think there is many a reader of these lines who will find, upon introspection, that he uses such terms as "the Divine holiness," the "Divine justice," with a haze around them which is purely fetichistic. But, when all is done, we can say no more, we can mean no more, we want no more than this-that God is wholly good. To the nature of the Divine disapprobation of wrong we have no clue but what we find in our own bosoms when we are at our best. A good man's disapprobation of wrong varies in height, depth, and otherwise; but if complete it would be the disapprobation felt by holiness. When I think of the milky way, or the stormy sea, or am thrilled by love or grief, any feeling of mine may become more lofty or more intense-may touch what we call "the bounds of the Infinite"but it does not change its nature. Nor can the addition of the word "Infinite" change its nature-or its function either.

The word "sin" too often is used as if there were something fetich about it. Now sin is wrong-doing considered or felt by me as between me and God—that is to say, as interfering with the love, trust, and reverence which are normal as between my Father and Ruler and myself. Yet there is, I think, in most minds, a sort of feeling connected with the word "sin" which it is difficult to describe except by some such phrase as academic superstition. I have, indeed, hesitated to use the title Ruler by the side of Father, because there seems to be a kind of superstition hanging about its ordinary use in theology. As if God, considered from our moral relations, were our governor in some (what shall I say?) occult, iron, adamantine, or inflexible sense. All these superstitions must be removed from the mind, if we would see our way clearly through this subject. There is nothing (as all historic observation proves, and as introspection will confirm) which the Academic Mind, especially if Theological also, is not equal to. "Enter Ens, the father of the ten Predicaments, whereof the eldest stands for Substance, with his canons; the next, Quantity and Quality; then Relation. is called by his name." Let your seraphic doctor once get his tools about him: he will then oppose Justice and