itical ruler, acting from without, by wilful methods, and
inflicting arbitrary judgments on his rebellious subjects. He
should be conceived as the dynamic Creator, acting from within,
through the intrinsic order and laws of things, for the
instruction and guidance of his creatures. His condemnation is the
inevitable culmination of a discordant state of being, rather than
the verdict of a vindictive judge or the sentence of a forensic
monarch. Every retribution is an impinge of the creature in the
creation, and, so far from expressing destructive wrath, is an act
of the self rectifying mechanism of the universe to readjust the
part with the whole. With what pernicious folly, what cruel
superstition, men have attributed their own miserable passions to
their imperturbable Maker, breaking his infinite perfection into
all sorts of frightful shapes, as seen through the blur and
effervescence of their own imperfections! So the sun seems to go
down with his garments rolled in blood, and to set angrily in a
stormy ocean of fire: but really the great lamp of the universe
shines serenely from the unalterable fixture of his central seat,
and all this spectral tempest of blaze and glare is but a
refraction of his beams through our vexed atmosphere.

God being infinitely perfect, does not change his dispositions and
modes of action like a fickle man. His intentions and deeds are
the same here and everywhere, now and always. If we wish to learn
in what manner God will prepare a hell and punish the impenitent
wicked after death, we must not, as men did in the barbaric and
mythological ages, make an induction from the treatment of
criminals by capricious and revengeful rulers in this world; we
must see how God himself now treats his disobedient children for
their demerits here, assured that his eternal temper and method
are identical with his temporal temper and method.

Well, then, how does God treat offenders now? Incapable of anger
or caprice, he retains his own steady procedures and absolute
serenity unaltered, but leaves the culprits to endure the effects
of their perverted bearing towards him and towards the order he
has established.

If a man lies or defiles himself, or blasphemes, or murders, God
does not dash him from a cliff or cast him into a furnace of fire.
There would be no connection of cause and effect in

that; and to suppose it, is a gross superstition. He leaves the
offender to the reactions of his own acts, the