LETTER II.

MY DEAR A----: The two questions that press upon every mind, and that Mr. ---- has shown again and again, with wonderful pathos, by dying beds and at open graves, are pressing upon his, are these: Is there a God? Is there a future state of existence? To these questions the best answer Mr. ---- has to give is, "We do not know." He seems confident that there is no personal God, and "we cannot say whether death is a wall or a door, the beginning or the end of a day, the spreading of pinions to soar or the folding for ever of wings, the rise or the set of a sun." With all this uncertainty, he is absolutely sure that there is no future state of suffering for evil-doers. He does not know whether there is any future at all, but he does know that there is no future of sorrow. He is profoundly ignorant as to the _fact_ of a future, but has decisive knowledge as to the _nature_ of the future, if there is one. "Rather than that this doctrine of endless punishment should be true," he says, "I would gladly see the fabric of our civilization, crumbling, fall to unmeaning chaos and to formless dust, where oblivion broods and even memory forgets."

Now, it may be quite true that Mr. ---- has this preference, yet this does not settle the case. We can fully understand how any man should shrink from the terrible possibility of future suffering. Orthodoxy has no more delight in it than has infidelity. But it is not a question of preference: it is a question of fact; and the point I submit for your reflection is this--whether Mr. ----, on his own ground, is authorized to affirm that there is no future state of suffering for any. He says we do not know whether there _is_ any future state. Very well. Then, certainly, we do not know what _kind_ of a future state there may be, if there is one. If Mr. ---- is not able to assure us that there is no future for us at all, he surely has not the ground to assure us of any kind of a future, good or bad. There may be a future of joy, there may be a future of suffering; there may be both. Mr. ---- is too good a lawyer to undertake to prove anything by mere negative evidence. He "leaves the dead with Nature, the mother of all," and "Nature," as to any sure utterance upon the future, is as silent as are the lips of the dead themselves.

Mr. ---- does not believe in a personal God. _You_ are not sure whether there is one or not. There may be; there may be none. If there is, we cannot know it. Let us see what we gain on either supposition.

Suppose there is a God, though I cannot know it or I cannot know him. Then, clearly, I cannot know what he is; I cannot know what he may do. It is quite possible that this unknown God may be a God who hates what we call sin, and who will punish it, and who will punish it just as long as it stands an offence in the moral universe, whether it be in this world or in the world to come. No agnosticism can deny this conclusion. The darkest as well as the most radiant scenes that Christian faith brings within our view _may_ be eternally true. I may be immortal, and it may be an immortality of joy or of sighing for me as I use this life and the truth that God has made known to me in this life.

Let us take the other hypothesis. Suppose there is no God; suppose Mr. ---- has satisfied me that there is no supernatural revelation, and no personal God to make one. Has he made it well for me hereafter? Has he delivered me from all fear for the future? Has he saved me beyond question from "the serpent of eternal pain"? If there is no God, does that make it certain that there will be no future suffering for any man? Let us see. We are here in a world of suffering. How came we here? and how did suffering come here? If we came without a God, who will prove that without a God we may not go elsewhere, and that suffering may not go with us? Here we are--by natural law, by evolution, by chance--as part and particle of the one eternal unity; however it may be, we are here, and we suffer. We know what pain of body and pain of mind are. We have felt the sting of death, and no law of nature, no power of evolution, has ever lighted up for us the darkness of the grave. Now, the question we want answered is this: If "Nature" has brought us into this state where there is so much of what we call sin, and so much bound with it that we call suffering, how do we know that the same "Nature" may not continue the same facts hereafter? Nay, what assurance can Mr. ---- give us that "Nature" is not a power that may in some future frenzy cast us into a state _far worse_ than the present? Is he so far possessed of all the secrets of "Nature" that he _knows_ the time will never come when she may strike us with a force more terrible than any retributive judgment of God? If "Nature" works now in storm and fire, in earthquake and pestilence, in disease and torture and death, in the sorrows of memory, the horrors of remorse and dread forebodings of coming woe, _how do you know that she may not manifest herself thus hereafter and through the ages to come_?

If Nature is, as Mr. ---- says, the mother of us all, there are times when she manifests her motherhood appallingly. And when are these manifestations to end and how are they to end? If under her regal sway we find that, as a fact, sin and suffering are connected here, can any man prove that it may not be a law of "Nature" herself that sin and suffering shall be connected eternally? If in the imperial reign of "the mother of us all" there are chains and scourges, prisons and scaffolds, thunderbolts and flames, cyclones and famines and ocean-graves, will any man prove that somewhere in the darkness and mystery of the future there may not be, in the long outworking of this reign, something worse than a hell, worse than an undying worm, worse than a quenchless fire?

It is, I admit, a fearful thing to fall unprepared into the hands of the living God; but if I must choose, give me that, a thousand times, rather than the terrific possibilities that overhang us all if we are to be eternally at the disposal of a blind, inexorable, soulless, merciless "Nature." The Judge of all the earth will do right; at the worst we shall receive no more at his hands than we deserve; but no created being can tell us what we shall receive at the hands of an irresponsible, pitiless "Nature" though she be "the mother of us all." There is nothing so dark and terrible in all the woes of the Bible as the possibilities that Mr. ---- offers us in his gospel; and there is this difference: the Bible opens wide a door of hope for all who care to enter it; Mr. ---- leads us out into the outer darkness and leaves us there. Is it worth while for any man to spend his life in persuading us to make this exchange of despair? And is it worth our while--yours or mine--to make it?

Truly yours, C----.