two former? I am told
that Scripture gives no warrant for a third state. She says that it
does--that it teaches that implicitly, as it teaches other, the very
highest doctrines; some hold, the Trinity itself. . . . It may be
proved from Scripture; for it may be proved from the love and
justice of God revealed in Scripture. The Protestants divide--in
theory, that is--mankind into two classes, the righteous, who are
destined to infinite bliss; the wicked, who are doomed to infinite
torment; in which latter class, to make their arbitrary division
exhaustive, they put of course nine hundred and ninety-nine out of
the thousand, and doom to everlasting companionship with Borgias and
Cagliostros, the gentle, frivolous girl, or the peevish boy, who
would have shrunk, in life, with horror from the contact. . . .
Well, at least, their hell is hellish enough . . . if it were but
just. . . . But I, Lancelot, I cannot believe it! I will not
believe it! I had a brother once--affectionate, simple, generous,
full of noble aspirations--but without, alas! a thought of God;
yielding in a hundred little points, and some great ones, to the
infernal temptations of a public school. . . . He died at
seventeen. Where is he now? Lancelot! where is he now? Never for
a day has that thought left my mind for years. Not in heaven--for
he has no right there; Protestants would say that as well as I. . .
. Where, then?--Lancelot! not in that other place. I cannot, I will
not believe it. For the sake of God's honour, as well as of my own
sanity, I will not believe it! There must be some third place--some
intermediate chance, some door of hope--some purifying and redeeming
process beyond the grave. . . . Why not a purifying fire? Ages of
that are surely punishment enough--and if there be a fire of hell,
why not a fire of purgatory? . . . After all, the idea of purgatory
as a fire is only an opinion, not a dogma of the Church. . . . But
if the gross flesh which has sinned is to be punished by the matter
which it has abused, why may it not be purified by it?'

'You may laugh, if you will, at both, and say again, as I have heard
you say ere now, that the popular Christian paradise and hell are
but a Pagan Olympus and Tartarus, as grossly material as Mahomet's,
without the honest thorough-going sexuality, which you thought made
his notion logical and consistent. . . . Well, you may say that,
but Prote