74 



being eternally punished, and being in a state or 

 •condition where one suffers conscious punish- 

 ment eternally is most unworthy and absurd. 

 Neither physical death, as a penalty, nor eternal 

 death as the wages of sin, introduce their victims 

 into a state of unconscious punishment. Did the 

 murderer believe the extinction of physical life 

 terminated the sufferings due his crime, he 

 would seek rather than avoid it. The thought 

 that the last stroke of earthly vengeance and law 

 launches him into a condition and place where he 

 will just begin to realize the lashings of con- 

 science and feel the repugnance of defamed vir- 

 tue, goes far to make death a penalty more near- 

 ly suited to his crime, and also the analogy to 

 the " wages of sin." 



Carlyle says: — "On the whole we are not here 

 altogether to tolerate. We do not tolerate False- 

 hoods, Thieveries, Iniquities, — we say to them, 

 'Thou art not tolerable ! We are here to extin- 

 guish falsehoods, and put an end to them in 

 some wise way. Tolerance has to be just in its 

 very wrath, when it can tolerate no longer." 



It is only a morbid sentimentality, entirely at 

 variance with what we see interwoven with the 

 whole web of existence, which prompts one to ig- 

 nore this essential condition of things. A vacil- 

 lating prince in a time of impending revolt, or 

 .an irresolute judge in the face of defiant crimin- 



