?

Could the saved be happy and passive in heaven when the muffled
shrieks of their brethren, faint from the distance, fell on their
ears? In tones of love and pity that would melt the very
mountains, they would plead with God to pardon and free the lost.
Many a mourning lover would realize the fable of the Thracian poet
who wandered into Hades searching for his Eurydice; many a heroic
son would emulate the legend of the Grecian god who burst through
the iron walls of Tartarus and rescued his mother, the unfortunate
Semele, and led her in triumph up to heaven.

Could the angels be contented when they contemplated the far off
lurid orb and knew the agonies that fed its conscious conflagration?
Their gentle bosoms would be racked with commiserating pangs,
they would fly down and hover around that anguished world,
to moisten its parched tongues with the dropping of their sympathetic
tears and to cool its burning brows with the fanning of their wings.

Could Christ be satisfied? he who once was rich but for our sakes
became poor? he whose loving soul breathed itself forth in the
tender words, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy
laden, and I will give you rest"? he who poured his blood on
Judea's awful summit, be satisfied? Not until he had tried the
efficacy of ten thousand fresh crucifixions, on as many new
Calvaries, would he rest.

Could God suffer it? God! with the full rivers of superfluous
bliss rolling around thy throne, couldst thou look down and hear
thy creatures calling thee Father, and see them plunging in a sea
of fire eternally eternally eternally and never speak the
pardoning word? It would not be like thee, it would be like thine
adversary to do that. Not so wouldst thou do. But if Satan had
millions of prodigals, snatched from the fold of thy family, shut
up and tortured in hell, paternal yearnings after them would fill
thy heart. Love's smiles would light the dread abyss where they
groan. Pity's tears would fall over it, shattered by the radiance
into rainbows. And through that illumination THOU wouldst descend,
marching beneath the arch of its triumphal glories to the rescue
of thy children! Therefore we rest in hope, knowing that "Thou
wilt not leave our souls in hell."

CHAPTER V.

THE FIVE THEORETIC MODES OF SALVATION.

THE conceptions and fore feelings of immortality which men have
entertained have generally been accompanied by a sense of
uncertainty in regard to the nature of th