ased. Civilised
men and women will not--positively _will_ not--be damned at the old
rate. The clergy are obliged to accommodate their preaching to the
altered circumstances; hence we hear of "Eternal Hope," and "Ultimate
Salvation," and similar brands on the new bottles in which they seek to
pour the diluted old wine of theology.

Archdeacon Farrar is the type of this new school--at least in the Church
of England. He is a wealthy pluralist; in addition to which he earns a
large income as a writer of sentimental books, that immensely tickle
the flabby souls of "respectable" Christians. Not quite illiterate, yet
nowise thoughtful, these people are semi-orthodox and temporising. They
take the old creed with a faint dash of heresy. Hell, at any rate, they
like to see cooled a bit, or at least shortened; and Archdeacon Farrar
satisfies them with a Hell which is not everlasting, but only eternal.
We believe that Dr. Farrar expressed a faint hope that Charles Bradlaugh
had not gone to hell. It was just possible that he might get a gallery
seat in the place where the Archdeacon is booked for a stall. Dr. Farrar
is not sure that all the people who were thought to go to hell really go
there. He entertains a mild doubt upon the subject. Nor does he believe
that hell is simply punitive. He thinks it is purgative. After a billion
years or so the ladies and gentlemen in the pit may hope to be promoted
to the upper circles. Some of them, however, who are desperate and
impenitent, and perfectly impervious to the sulphur treatment, will
have to remain in hell forever. The door will be closed upon them as
incorrigible and irredeemable; and the saints in heaven will go on
singing, and harping, and jigging, regardlesss of these obstinate
wretches, these ultimate failures, these lost souls, these everlasting
inheritors of perdition.

Humanity is growing day by day. So is common sense. Every decently
educated person will soon insist on the abolition of hell. The idea of a
lost soul will not be tolerated.

A theologian of painful genius (in its way) imagined a lost soul in
hell. He had been agonising for ages. At last he asked a gaoler "What
hour is it?" and the answer came "Eternity!"

Thoughtful, sensitive men and women, in ever increasing number, loathe
such teaching, and turn with disgust from those who offer it to their
fellows.

We are not aware that men have souls, but if they have, why should any
soul be _lost_? We are not aware