Chapter XV: Testimony of Reason

Divine Gift of Reason--Its Proper Sphere--No Dogmatism--Is Sin An Infinite Evil?--Infinite Penalty Impossible to Be Rendered--Justice Can Delay--Good Cannot Perish--Testimony of Dickens--Endless Punishment Would Increase Moral Evil--The Divine Character Never Changes--Time but a Short Epoch--Our Capacity of Development--Salvation of Infants--The Insane--Imperfect Christians--Their Destiny--Good Unchristian Men--Where Will They Go?--"All Souls Are Mine"--Worth Preserving--Fate of the Heathen--Reclaimed in the Next Life--Human Freedom Never Destroyed--Provision for All--A Dreadful Hymn--Divine Sacrifice Not in Vain--Bringing Good Out of Evil--Final Triumph of Goodness--Sin Is Abnormal--Will Therefore Cease--Law of Gradual Change--Sins of the Mind--The Race Might Easily Have Been Intercepted--Endless Torment Cannot Be Believed--The Mind's Affinity for Truth--True Punishment Is Reformatory--Alleged Divine Cruelty--Agony of Eternal--Ingersoll and His Shafts of Ridicule--Incentive to Good Works--Unfathomable Divine Love--"Joy Cometh in the Morning"

XVI.

THE CASE OP SAUL.

Divine Methods of Reclaiming Men--"The Chief of Sinners"--Changed' in a Moment--No Violence Done to His Freedom--Yet Sovereign Power--The Mystery of Grace--View of McCosh--Supremacy of Conscience--Sir Isaac Newton's Wonderful Alertness of Mind--Reason and Intuition--Capturing the Most Incorrigible--Evil Environment--Suffering a Necessary Factor--Agony of Remorse--Eternal Hope.

XVII.

ETERNAL SEPARATIONS.

An Everlasting Pang--David and Absalom--Strained Ideas of Late Momentary Repentance--King Solomon--King Saul--The Gracious Character of Sympathy--George Eliot's View--A Strong Argument for Restoration--Heresy of a Minister's Wife--A Minister's Orthodox View--Wonderful Goodness of a Criminal--Where Will He Finally Go?--Our Very Imperfect Friends--Glossing Over Their Faults When They Are Gone--Our Instinctive Hope for the Worst--Restoration the True Solution--A Final Era of Joy.

XVIII.

NOT REALLY BELIEVED.

Present Enthusiasm for Missions--Former Lassitude--The Basis of Missionary Enterprise--Supposed Damnation of the Heathen--If Really Believed Would Drive Us to Frenzy--Minister's Monday Meeting--Pretence Cuts the Nerve of Enthusiasm--Restoration the True Incentive--Effective Because Reasonable--Torment Not Really Believed--The Heart Often Truer Than the Head--Necessity for Preparatory State--Could Not Have Details Revealed--Orthodoxy of the Torment View--Trying to Believe It--Be Not Afraid of the Truth--Extreme Calvinists Signally Honored--The Reason Why--Our Innate God-given Convictions--Meagre Expenditure for Missions--Tacit Acknowledgment That Endless Suffering Is Not Believed.

XIX.

WORKING MEN AND THE CHURCH.

Efforts to Attract Working Men to the Church--Restoration Would Largely Solve the Difficulty--Common Sense of Working-Men--Glorious Expansion of Truth--Recasting Traditional Views--The True Basis for Unity.

XX.

THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN.

Beauty Evolved from Chaos--Future Capacity of Motion--Gleams of the Invisible--Changing Into the Divine Image--Crying Out for God--From Barrenness to Beauty--The Glow of the Firefly--The Effulgent Divinity--Universal Sense of Beauty--Sunset on the Prairie--Guardian Angels--Death As Seen from This Side and That--Sunset on Yellowstone River--A Drop of Dew--Reality of Heaven--The Literal and the Figurative--The Spiritual Body--Expanding Glory of Creation--Sunset in Dakota--Lights Dim and Clear--Christ's Unsullied Purity--A Rent in the Cloud--An Imprisoned Lark.