122 
fusedly, they again believe, however, they are using the 
principle of Continuity.) Heaven is, to them, what ie 
Emperor Hadrian’s verses represent. But we ask, does that 
represent the Christian hope ? Hell to them, is the Gehenna 
of “Eternal evil.” But the former is very constantly attenu- 
ated, the latter very fearfully palpable; the f°|- “ er ev *^cent, 
the latter essential.— Is that the Christian belief ? —Is Eternal 
evil” thinkable, — i.e. ab eterno? _ . . 
49. But this subject of Heaven and Hell is scarcely suitable we 
must own, to be here fully entered on. It is sure, indeed, to 
occupv the mind of the next generation to an extent hitherto 
unknown, and that, (together with our authors having dwelt 
on it), may justify this brief notice, though it may be but 
brief. It is to be feared the mental and ethical feebleness or 
a physical-science age just beginning to feel after first principles 
of thought and being, will but gradually be aroused to a 
knowledge of subjects of higher reality, as pre-supposed by 
the phenomenal, and giving it all the reality it has. ' But we 
must not delay, or altogether hold back on that account. 
What Christianity means by the future, of which rt gives 
warning and threatening, cannot remain always as indefinite as 
now. What, according to our Religion, is Salvation . and 
what Perdition? will surely be inquired; and that before long. 
Christian doctrine on this subject cannot be passed by in silence 
in an argument for Immortality. If physical science had to 
delineate an immortality, it ought to have even gone further 
than our authors into the Personal significance of the I uture to 
which we are physically, if not morally, tending. 
The weight and solemnity of the reference to heaven anc 
hell are enhanced by the popular theory as to 
The doc- uio i i. •_ ^ , 
trines intensi- eternal physical pleasures for the “ sat ed, and 
tinarianism. tortui’e in reserve for all failures in Probation. A 
terrible passage involving this teaching, in an article in the 
Fortnightly Review, by a writer so clear-headed as Professor 
Clifford, simply shows that he has identified Christianity \ut i 
a thoughtless and uneducated Predestinarianism, and has not 
learnt our Theology at all. He only knows of a theory 
which has perverted every article of our faith which it lias 
touched, and furnished rough-and-ready grounds for popular 
infidelity, in classes of people learning but the alphabet of 
thought, aud stumbling over its first letters.f 
* See extracts from The Church of All A ges. Hayes : London, 
t See extracts as to Eternal Punishment in Mr. White’s Lijc in Christ , 
pp 03—73. See also The Bible and its Interpreters, pp. 90-107. 
