LITERARY NOTICES. 



131 



The discussion is thus launched, and the au- 

 thor proceeds to get such abounding proofs 

 of hell out of the most modern science as 

 must raise the spirits of his desponding 

 flock. The advance of science does not 

 trouble him ; he accepts its latest conclu- 

 sions in the most liberal spirit, but finds 

 them all subservient to his purpose. After 

 proving immortality on scientific grounds, 

 I12 goes on to establish that 



The law of affinity proves a hell. 



The law of association proves it. 



The law of growth proves it. 



The law of propagation proves it. 



The law of involution proves it. 



The law of evolution proves it. 



This is a pretty strong programme, but 

 what does the Rev. W. H. Piatt really mean 

 by " hell " ? One is led to suppose from 

 the way he starts off that he means to stick 

 to the literal, old-fashioned notion, and not 

 yield to any amelioration of modern theol- 

 ogy in regard to this important term. In- 

 deed, he gives a side-thrust at Mr. Beecher 

 by putting a passage from Beecher's San 

 Francisco lecture into the mouth of his 

 skeptic as follows : " ' Any way,' said the 

 skeptic, ' the old creed and religion must 

 give way. There is just as certainly a 

 change in the whole religious thought of the 

 race as that the sun shines. Doctrines taught 

 fifty years ago are neither taught now as 

 they then were nor believed as they then 

 were believed.' " This the preacher stoutly 

 denies. But, when he says "antipathy of 

 evil to good is hell," is he not making a new 

 definition that would have been scouted by 

 orthodox theologians half a century ago? 

 Again, he says, " ' Suffering makes all places 

 hell just as mental suffering is greater than 

 bodily suffering so its hell is worse,' said the 

 preacher. ' We have been taught that hell 

 is a locality, and so it is. The shadow and 

 the beam each have its place. But as a 

 village is nothing to an empire, to a conti- 

 nent, to a hemisphere ; as the center is 

 nothing to a circumference ; as a point is 

 nothing to all space, so is the placed hell 

 of past teachings as nothing to the unplaced 

 hell of science. To the evil ' all places are 

 hell.' Hell is in the presence of broken law, 

 whether in mind or matter, in time or eter- 

 nity.' " 



A quarter of a century ago this would 

 have passed for flat UniversaLism. 



The Reign of Gon not the Reign of 

 " Law." By Thomas Scott Bacon. 

 Baltimore : Turnbull Brothers. Pp. 

 400. Price, $1.50. 



A prosy, unreadable book by a very de- 

 vout but foolish man, who is in a state of 

 anxious alarm at the progress of science, 

 and proposes to resist it by clinging with 

 increasing desperation to the most literal 

 orthodox interpretation of Scripture. We 

 do not by any means intimate that the au- 

 thor is a fool ; on the contrary, he is what is 

 called " learned " ; that is, he quotes strange 

 lingos all through his text, and has, no 

 doubt, been through college. He can not 

 be strictly said to be ignorant of nature, 

 but he is in a far worse state of mind than 

 that of simple ignorance. There would be 

 some hope of teaching a Digger Indian many 

 elementary truths concerning natural things, 

 because he has no fatal prepossessions re- 

 specting them ; but this enlightened Chris- 

 tain has got his head so filled with the de- 

 tails of a great theological system, and is 

 so palsied with fear lest it should be dis- 

 turbed, that no real knowledge of nature 

 can get entrance or hospitable reception in 

 his mind. For example, in his chapter on 

 our present geology and astronomy, he in- 

 sists that " we may yet find that God chose 

 to do all that work of creation in twenty- 

 four, or in one hundred and sixty hours of 

 our present time, which it is absurd to doubt 

 that he could do." Of what use are proofs 

 to an intellect in such a condition as this ? 

 When many years ago the fossil shells of 

 marine life were found on the tops of high 

 mountains, and the question arose how they 

 came there, the monks readily replied that 

 they were created at first in their fossil forms 

 with the divine intention of testing men's 

 faith in the power of God to do things ex- 

 actly as he pleased. This is now regarded 

 as sufficiently absurd, and is often quoted 

 to illustrate the stupidity of the monks ; but 

 their frame of mind survives in our author. 

 In a foot-note he says : " Indeed, it is far 

 more rational to think that the eternal Lord 

 made in a moment of time all this nature, 

 and with its suggestiveness to the merely 

 worldly mind of long processes of creation, 

 meaning this as one of those mysteries of 

 spiritual discipline which we find every- 

 where else, and which are greater than 

 all matter, thus trying and training our 



