redible that so _many_
would wish it to be otherwise, and fight you about it? And among
those _many_ are numbers, whose lives, weighed truly as to their
merits by the scale of the sanctuary, would kick the beam _against_
those _they_ condemn.

"Once I did believe that some perished altogether at the end of the
world--were annihilated, as having no souls. After this, I believed
that the world was made up of incarnated children of God and
incarnated children of the evil spirit; and then I came to the
belief that _the two are in one_.

"With reference to the doctrine of annihilation, I do not think it
gives the same idea of God as is obtained from this other view. It
may show force to annihilate, but we should think more highly of a
monarch who would, by his wisdom, kindness, and long-suffering,
turn a rebel people into faithful subjects, than of him who had the
land wasted and utterly destroyed his rebellious subjects. I do not
think that after the declaration, 'It is _finished_,' there can be
any more probation; punishment brings no one to God."

Once more, writing on the 16th May 1883, he says:--

"I have become much more timid about speaking of these matters of
universal salvation, yet perforce one comes to this question. If
every one lives, then he must live by the fact of his possession of
an emanation of the Life of Life, which must be good, and never can
be evil. This emanation is the cause of his existence, his life in
fact, and that I regard as the '_he_.'"

Perhaps the best answer will be found in Sir William Butler's "Life of
Gordon." Dealing with Gordon's difficulty about future punishment, he
says with truth:--

"Yet never lived there man who in his own life had seen more of the
vast sum of human wrong-doing which has to be righted somewhere,
and on which no sword of justice ever lights in this world. He does
not seem to have asked himself the question, If I am shooting and
hanging these maker of orphans; if I am punishing with stripes and
chains these sellers and buyers of human flesh, and doing it in the
name of truth and right, is the Great Judge of all to be denied His
right to use the sword of justice upon those who are beyond my
reach? Are nine-tenths of the evil-doers on earth not only to
escape the penalty of their crimes, but often and often to be
favoured rea