2 32 BIRD LIFE GLIMPSES 



An eminent naturalist and spiritualist thinks that 

 immortality (of one species only, apparently) with 

 eternal progress, would justify all, and turn seeming 

 wrong into right. For myself, I cannot see how one 

 single pang, upon this earth, can ever be justified, 

 seeing that, on any adequate conception of a deity, 

 it both never need, and never ought to have been 

 felt. This very progress, too, with which we are 

 to comfort ourselves, must be accompanied with — 

 indeed is made dependent upon — great, almost in- 

 finite, suffering, lasting through enormous periods 

 of time. The sin-seared soul does, indeed, rise, 

 at last, and become purified — but through what ? 

 Through the horrible tortures of remorse. That, 

 no doubt, is better than another view. It is the 

 best, perhaps, that can be conceived of, things being 

 as we know them to be. It makes the best of a 

 bad job — but there is still the bad job. The eternal 

 stumbling-block of evil and misery remains. If 

 these need not have been, where is all-goodness, 

 seeing that they are ^ If they need, where, then, is 

 infinite power, and where, without it, is justice ? 

 I do not say that these questions cannot be satis- 

 factorily answered (though I think they never will 

 be by us, here), but 1 say that the spiritualistic 

 doctrine does not answer them. Numbers of 

 other difficulties, more graspable by our reason, 

 appear to me to attend the conception of spiritual 

 progress, and especially of spiritual suffering, in 

 a future state, as taught by many spiritualists — 

 say by the late Stainton - Moses ; but perhaps a 

 discussion of these does not, strictly speaking, fall 

 within the province of field natural history. 



