Spirits will suffer eternally if they remain eternally wicked; that is to say, if he were never to repent nor to amend, he would suffer eternally. But God has not created beings to let them remain forever a prey to evil; He created them only in a state of simplicity and ignorance, and all of them must progress, in a longer or shorter time, according to the action of their will. The determination to advance may be awakened more or less tardily, as the development of children is more or less precocious; but it will be stimulated, sooner or later, by the irresistible desire of the spirit himself to escape from his state of inferiority, and to be happy. The law which regulates the duration of a spirit's sufferings is, therefore, eminently wise and beneficient, since it makes that duration to depend on his own efforts; he is never deprived of his free will, but, if he makes a bad use of it, he will have to bear the consequences of his errors. The duration of the punishment of the human soul depends upon its own free will, although said punishment may be imposed upon it for a fixed time, but the Great Creator wills only the good of man's soul, and always welcomes his repentance and the desire to amend his ways, and the inflictions and penalties imposed upon the soul in spirit life are never eternal as many suppose.

Those who believe this to be a fact, should interrogate their common sense and reason, and ask themselves whether an eternal condemnation for a few moments of error would not be the negation of the goodness of God? What, in fact, is the duration of a human life, even though prolonged to a hundred years, in comparison with eternity? "Eternity;" do you rightly comprehend the word? Sufferings, tortures without end, without hope, for a few faults. Does not your judgment reject such an idea? That the ancients should have seen, in the Master of the Universe, a terrible, jealous, vindicitive God of the Christians, who places love, charity, pity, the forgetfulness of offenses, in the foremost rank of virtues, and who could not lack the qualities which He has made it the duty of His creatures to possess. Is it not a contradiction to attribute to Him infinite love and infinite vengeance? You say that God's justice is infinite, transcending the limited understanding of mankind; but justice does not exclude kindness, and God would not be kind if He condemned the greater number of His creatures to horrible and unending punishment.

Could He make it obligatory on His children to be just, if His own action towards them did not give them the most perfect standard of justice? And is it not the very sublimity of justice and of kindness to make the duration of punishment to depend on the efforts of the guilty one to amend, and to mete out the appropriate recompense, both for good and for evil, to each, according to his works?

Set yourselves, by every means in your power, to combat and to annihilate the idea of eternal punishment, which is a blasphemy against the justice and goodness of God, and the principal source of the skepticism, materialism, and indifferentism that have invaded the masses since their intelligence has begun to be developed. When once a mind has received enlightenment, in however slight a degree, the monstrous injustice of such an idea is immediately perceived; reason rejects if, and rarely fails to confound, in the same ostracism, the penalty against which it revolts and the God to whom that penalty is attributed. Hence the numberless ills which have burst upon you, and for which we come to bring you a remedy. This task we point out to you will be all the easier because the defenders of this belief have avoided giving a positive opinion in regard to it; neither the Councils nor the Fathers of the Church have definitely settled this weighty question. If Christ, according to the Evangelists and the literal interpretation of His allegorical utterances, threatens the guilty with a fire that is unquenchable, there is absolutely nothing in those utterances to prove that they are condemned to remain in that fire eternally.

Hapless sheep that have gone astray, behold, advancing towards you, the Good Shepherd, who, so far from intending to drive you forever from His presence, comes Himself to seek you, that He may lead you back to the fold. Prodigal children, renounce your voluntary exile, and turn your steps towards the parental dwelling. Your Father, with arms ready open to receive you, is waiting to welcome you back to your home.