al retribution;
of fancying God to be a careless, epicurean deity, cruelly indulgent to
sin, and therefore, in so far, immoral.

They say--"We believe firmly enough in moral retribution. How can we
help believing in it, while we see it working around us, in many a
fearful shape, here, now, in this life? And we believe that it may work
on, in still more fearful shapes, in the life to come. We believe that
as long as a sinner is impenitent, he must be miserable; that if he goes
on impenitent for ever, he must go on making himself miserable--ay, it
may be more and more miserable for ever. Only do not tell us that he
must go on. That his impenitence, and therefore his punishment, is
irremediable, necessary, endless; and thereby destroy the whole purpose,
and we should say, the whole morality, of his punishment. If that
punishment be corrective, our moral sense is not shocked by any severity,
by any duration: but if it is irremediable, it cannot be corrective; and
then, what it is, or why it is, we cannot--or rather dare not--say. We,
too, believe in an eternal fire. But because we believe also the
Athanasian Creed, which tells us that there is but One Eternal, we
believe that that fire must be the fire of God, and therefore, like all
that is in God and of God, good and not evil, a blessing and not a curse.
We believe that that fire is for ever burning, though men are for ever
trying to quench it all day long; and that it has been and will be in
every age burning up all the chaff and stubble of man's inventions; the
folly, the falsehood, the ignorance, the vice of this sinful world; and
we praise God for it; and give thanks to Him for His great glory, that He
is the everlasting and triumphant foe of evil and misery, of whom it is
written, that our God is a consuming fire." Such words are being spoken,
right or wrong.

Such words will bear their fruit, for good or evil. I do not pronounce
how much of them is true or false. It is not my place to dogmatize and
define, where the Church of England, as by law established, has declined
to do so. Neither is it for you to settle these questions. It is rather
a matter for your children. A generation more, it may be, of earnest
thought will be required, ere the true answer has been found. But it is
your duty, if you be educated and thoughtful persons, to face these
questions; to consider seriously what these men would have you
consider--whether you are believing the exa