it in the pulpit
as they once did. It is considered too shocking for our modern notions.
I have no patience with such weakness, such folly--worse than folly. It
seems to me even more wrong to try and hide this terrible danger from
ourselves and from others than to deny it altogether, as some poor
deluded souls do. Mr. Lyndsay, have you ever realised what the place of
torment will be like?"

"Yes; once, Mrs. Mostyn."

"You were in pain?"

"I suppose it was pain," I said.

For always, when anything revives this recollection, seared into my
memory, the question rises: was it merely pain, physical pain, of which
we all speak so easily and lightly? It lasted only ten minutes; ten
minutes by the clock, that is. For me time was annihilated. There was no
past or future, but only an intolerable present, in which mind and soul
were blotted out, and all of sentient existence that remained was the
animal consciousness of agony. I cannot share men's stoical contempt
for a Gehenna, which is nothing worse.

"Mr. Lyndsay, imagine pain, worse than any ever endured on earth going
on and on, for ever!"

A bird, not a thrush, but one of the minor singers, lighting on a bough
near us, trilled one simple but ecstatic phrase.

"Do you really and truly believe, Mrs. Mostyn, that this will be the
fate of any single being?"

"Of any single being? Do we not know that it is what will happen to the
greatest number? For what does the Book say? 'Many are called but few
are chosen.'"

Through the still, mild air, across the sun-steeped gardens, came the
voices of the children--

"Aunt Eleanour! Aunt Eleanour!"

"Many are called," she repeated, "but few are chosen; and those who are
not chosen shall be cast into everlasting fire."

There was a pause. She turned to look at me, and, as if struck by
something in my face, said gently, soothingly:

"Yes, it is a terrible thought, but only for the unregenerate. It has no
terror for me. I trust it need have no terror for you. After all, how
simple, how easy is the way of escape! You have only to believe."

"And then?"

"And then you are safe, safe for evermore. Think of that. The foolish
people who wish to explain away eternal punishment, forget that at the
same time they explain away eternal happiness! You will be safe now,
and after death you will be in heaven for evermore."

"I shall be in heaven for evermore, and always there will be hell."

"Yes."

"Where the others will be?"