which are described in the cheerful
manuals known as, _A Glimpse of Hell_, and _Hell open to Christians_.

Those who witnessed the recent revival of _Hamlet_--a revival which it
would appear is destined to be historic--cannot have failed to notice
how the great master of song permits himself to express the perverse
conception that death is synonymous with everlasting moral stagnation.
Hamlet steals into his murderous uncle's apartment, sword in hand, but
discovering the criminal upon his knees, forbears to strike then, lest
somehow his devotions should save him from his doom. No, he will wait
until the miserable creature is off his guard, so that death may
overtake him at a moment when no prayer or cry for mercy is possible.
As though a momentary act could undo the mischief of years! As though
a man is in himself any different after years, of crime because he
utters a sudden cry for mercy! And, as though by killing him at an
opportune moment, Hamlet could damn his soul for ever! And it will be
noted, moreover, that the ghost emphasises the treachery of which he
has been the victim, in that he was sent into eternity "unhouseled,
unaneled," as though momentary acts can make up for years wasted and
misspent. As well might one scatter one's fortune in luxury and
riotous living, and resolve to win it all back in a moment, as misuse
these glorious powers of mind and will we bear within us, turn them to
evil, steep them in iniquity, and then think to suddenly turn and by a
single act bend them successfully to the arduous service of the good.
This is stern teaching, but it is the truth; and a mercy would it be, a
mercy would it have been for us all in the days of our youth, if
instead of the too frequent insistence on the doctrine of the
forgiveness of sin, the doctrine of compensation and retribution, as
taught by Ralph Waldo Emerson, had been instilled into our hearts. "Ye
shall not go forth until ye have paid the last farthing," is the
teaching. Dare to break those solemn laws, to pervert these mysterious
powers we possess, Amen, Amen, we cannot escape retribution; we cannot
go forth until we pay the last farthing.

And this last thought prepares for the statement of our view of the
attitude a rational religion takes up in the solemn presence of death.
"Stoicism shall not be more exigent," said Emerson of the new Church.
We take no lax view of life and its responsibilities, but we refuse to
magnify death into the on