ers live a merry life until the eleventh hour, and then
give God "the last snuff of the candle" as Father Taylor put it,
whereas others repent early but never manage, all through a long life,
to escape the suffering caused by their own deeds in youth. In some
cases, at any rate, on this side of the grave, Salvation does not
involve the least remission of penalty, while in others apparently no
penalty will ever be endured either on this side of death or on the
other. The poor drunkard who repents does not find that repentance
gives him back his wrecked constitution, but the selfish, grasping,
cruel-hearted wrecker of homes and lives may just be in time with his
trust in the "finished work," and go right home to glory while his
victims struggle and suffer on amid the conditions he has made for them
on earth. Curious justice this!

+Christian thought never quite consistent about Death and
after.+--There is no need to labour the point; popular evangelical
views of the punishment of sin are incredible when looked at in a
common-sense way. But they are even more chaotic on the subject of
death and whatever follows death. It does not seem to be generally
recognised that Christian thought has never been really clear
concerning the Resurrection, especially in relation to future judgment.
One view has been that the deceased saint lies sleeping in the grave
until the archangel's trump shall sound and bid all mankind awake for
the great assize. Anyone who reads the New Testament without prejudice
will see that this was Paul's earlier view, although later on he
changed it for another. There is a good deal of our current, everyday
religious phraseology which presumes it still--

"Father, in thy gracious keeping
Leave we now thy servant sleeping."

But alongside this view another which is a flagrant contradiction of it
has come down to us, namely, that immediately after death the soul goes
straight to heaven or hell, as the case may be, without waiting for the
archangel's trump and the grand assize. On the whole this is the
dominant theory of the situation in Protestant circles, and is much
less reasonable than the Catholic doctrine of purgatory, however much
the latter may have been abused. But under this view what is the exact
significance of the Judgment Day and the physical Resurrection? One
would think they might be accounted superfluous. What is the good of
tormenting a soul in hell for ages and then whirling i