tellectual, spiritual woman, with a
heart under her bodice, can for a moment seriously believe that the
greater number of the high-minded men, the noble and lovely women, the
ingenuous and affectionate children, whom she knows and honors or loves,
are to be handed over to the experts in a great torture-chamber, in
company with the vilest creatures that have once worn human shape?

"If there is such a world as used to be talked about from the pulpit, you
may depend upon it," she said to me once, "there will soon be organized a
Humane Society in heaven, and a mission established among 'the spirits in
prison.'"

Number Five is a regular church-goer, as I am. I do not believe either
of us would darken the doors of a church if we were likely to hear any of
the "old-fashioned" sermons, such as I used to listen to in former years
from a noted clergyman, whose specialty was the doctrine of eternal
punishment. But you may go to the churches of almost any of our
Protestant denominations, and hear sermons by which you can profit,
because the ministers are generally good men, whose moral and spiritual
natures are above the average, and who know that the harsh preaching of
two or three generations ago would offend and alienate a large part of
their audience. So neither Number Five nor I are hypocrites in attending
church or "going to meeting." I am afraid it does not make a great deal
of difference to either of us what may be the established creed of the
worshipping assembly. That is a matter of great interest, perhaps of
great importance, to them, but of much less, comparatively, to us.
Companionship in worship, and sitting quiet for an hour while a trained
speaker, presumably somewhat better than we are, stirs up our spiritual
nature,--these are reasons enough to Number Five, as to me, for regular
attendance on divine worship.

Number Seven is of a different way of thinking and feeling. He insists
upon it that the churches keep in their confessions of faith statements
which they do not believe, and that it is notorious that they are afraid
to meddle with them. The Anglo-American church has dropped the
Athanasian Creed from its service; the English mother church is afraid
to. There are plenty of Universalists, Number Seven says, in the
Episcopalian and other Protestant churches, but they do not avow their
belief in any frank and candid fashion. The churches know very well, he
maintains, that the fear of everlasting punishment mor