ence in evil necessitates everlasting suffering, since
evil induces misery by the eternal nature of things; and this, I fear,
is inferable from the analogies of Nature, and confirmed by the whole
implication of the Bible.

'What attention have you given to this subject? and is there any fair
way of disposing of the current of assertion, and the still deeper
under-current of implication, on this subject, without admitting one
which loosens all faith in revelation, and throws us on pure
naturalism? But of one thing I always feel sure: probation does not
end with this present life; and the number of the saved may therefore
be infinitely greater than the world's history leads us to suppose.

'I think the Bible implies a great crisis, a struggle, an agony, in
which God and Christ and all the good are engaged in redeeming from
sin; and we are not to suppose that the little portion that is done
for souls as they pass between the two doors of birth and death is
all.

'The Bible is certainly silent there. The primitive Church believed
in the mercies of an intermediate state; and it was only the abuse of
it by Romanism that drove the Church into its present position, which,
I think, is wholly indefensible, and wholly irreconcilable with the
spirit of Christ. For if it were the case, that probation in all
cases begins and ends here, God's example would surely be one that
could not be followed, and He would seem to be far less persevering
than even human beings in efforts to save.

'Nothing is plainer than that it would be wrong to give up any mind to
eternal sin till every possible thing had been done for its recovery;
and that is so clearly not the case here, that I can see that, with
thoughtful minds, this belief would cut the very roots of religious
faith in God: for there is a difference between facts that we do not
understand, and facts which we do understand, and perceive to be
wholly irreconcilable with a certain character professed by God.

'If God says He is love, and certain ways of explaining Scripture make
Him less loving and patient than man, then we make Scripture
contradict itself. Now, as no passage of Scripture limits probation
to this life, and as one passage in Peter certainly unequivocally
asserts that Christ preached to the spirits in prison while His body
lay in the grave, I am clear upon this p