"Wars of words, wars of words," has not enough blood been already shed for words, and must the fires of the stake be rekindled for them? Men dispute about the words "eternal punishments," "everlasting burnings;" but do you know that what you now understand by eternity was not understood in the same way by the ancients? Let the theologian consult the sources of his faith, and he, like the rest of you, will see that in the Hebrew text, the words which the Greeks, the Latins, and the moderns, have translated as endless and irremissible punishment, has not the same meaning. Eternity of punishment corresponds to eternity of evil. Yes, so long as evil continues to exist among you, so long will punishment continue to exist; it is in this relative sense that the sacred texts should be interpreted. The eternity of punishments, therefore, is not absolute, but relative. Let a day come when all men shall have donned, through repentance, the robe of innocence, and, on that day there will be no more weeping, wailing, or gnashing of teeth. Your human reason is, in truth, of narrow scope; but, such as it is, it is a gift of God, and there is no man of right feeling who, with the aid of that reason, can understand the eternity of punishment in any other sense.

If we admit the eternity of punishment, we must also admit that evil will be eternal; but God alone is eter* nal, and He could not have created an eternal evil, without plucking from his attributes the most magnificent of them all, viz.: His sovereign powers; for he who creates an element destructive of his works is not sovereignly powerful. Plunge no more thy nournful glance, O human race, into the entrails of. the earth, in search of chastisements. Weep, but hope; expiate, but take comfort in the thought of God who is entirely loving, absolutely powerful, essentially just.

Union with the Divine Being is the aim of human existence. To the attainment of this aim three things are necessary - knowledge, love, justice; three things are contrary to this aim - ignorance, hatred, injustice. You are false to these fundamental principles when you falsify the idea of God by exaggerating His severity, thus suggesting to the mind of the creature that there is in it more clemency, long-suffering, love, and true justice, than you attribute to the Creator. You destroy the very idea of retribution by rendering it as inadmissible, by your minds, as is, by your hearts, the policy of the Middle Ages, with its hideous array of tortures, ex-ecutioneers, and the stake.