CHAPTER VIII 



PURGATORY AND DAMNATION 



HELL, in the usual acceptance of the term, we may dismiss 

 as being only a necessary invention of man for the more perfect 

 government of an imperfectly evolved mind. The necessity 

 of such a doctrine will be shown in its right place, but any 

 such conception necessitates that God should be both cruel and 

 a fool, both of which are incomprehensible to a logical mind, 

 for how could infinite love be cruel, or how could infinite 

 wisdom inflict an everlasting punishment from which no good 

 can be attained ? But purgatory and damnation are necessities 

 of evolution. Purgatory is and must be the long and bitter 

 struggle and the necessary suffering that evolution inflicts in 

 the continuous fight for a perfect existence. Damnation can 

 and must be the eternal destruction of any species, race or 

 family who, failing in the struggle for existence, dooms 

 itself to eternal death by extinction, and so loses both life, 

 soul and power of self re-creation. 



Now, the whole of Evolution demonstrates this form of 

 purgatory, for God not only inflicts punishment in this life 

 by imposing poverty, sickness, disease and premature death 

 on those who neglect to make the best use of their time, 

 brains, mind, body and soul, but by the laws of descent per- 

 petuate the punishment on their offspring. In many cases 

 this purgatory is the means of rousing many to make a better 

 strife for existence, or by humbling them in their own esteem, 

 prevents excessive conceit, producing over-rashness or excess 

 in other ways calculated to debilitate their physical and mental 

 qualities, or is used by God to show them up so that thej 

 may become an example to deter others from like excesses. 

 But all faults against our state of life, all selfish acts, and 

 all sins of indolence and omission other than those sent to us 

 for our good and advancement for a portion of our lives or a 

 fixed period of evolution, will be judged in the balance of fate 



