ough sanction the fires of the mediaeval Hell. But even
cancer and the Putumayo are not a denial of what Stevenson called "the
ultimate decency of things." They are temporary, not eternal.
Thoughtful Christians can no longer accept the old Hell, because it
would mean, not the final triumph of righteousness, but the final
defeat of God. Many of those who dutifully cling to the dogma of their
Church on the point would agree with the French cure who said that he
believed in Hell, but he did not think there was anybody in it except
Voltaire. And even Voltaire will nowadays seem to most people to be
hardly a sufficiently scandalous person to deserve infinite millions
of years of anguish. The truth is, Hell shocks our moral sense.
Tennyson put the modern disbelief in it with a theatrical forcibleness
when he said that, if after death he woke up, even though it should be
in Heaven, and found there was a Hell, he would turn round and shake
his fist in the face of God Almighty. Since Tennyson's time Hell's
foundations have subsided: the ancient flames have died down; and man
has now for the background of his days no fierce and devouring
universe, but a cricket score-board and a page of "thinklet"
competitions in a penny paper. Perhaps the antithesis is an unfair
one, but some cosmic sense has certainly been lost to the general
imagination. No doubt it will return as moral ideas take the place of
materialistic terrors; for out of the wreck of the fiery Hell a moral
Hell is already rising. A moral Purgatory, one ought to say--a place
of discipline made in the image of this disciplining earth. For the
terrors of death and evil and pain all survive, and, even if we
abolish utterly the Devil with the pitchfork, and put in his place the
Button-moulder, is that a figure a pennyworth less dreadful? No, the
escape from Hell is not so much a holiday as we thought. There is
still an interval of adventure between us and Paradise, and all the
perils and fears to be overcome as of old. We have chased an allegory
from our doors, but its ghostly reality returns and stands outside the
window. And salvation and damnation remain the two chief facts under
the sun. And the saints and the parsons--and everybody, indeed, except
gloating old Tertullian--were right after all.

VII

ON CHEERFUL READERS

There has been an increasing demand lately for cheerful books. Mr
Balfour began it--at least, he gave it a voice by quoting approvingly
a phr