that there is a God, but if there is,
why should he _let_ any soul be lost? Sending souls to hell at all is
only punishing his own failures. If he is omnipotent he could have made
them as he pleased, and if they do not please him it is not their fault,
but his own. Let it be distinctly understood that a creator has no right
over his creatures; it is the creatures who have a right to the best
assistance of their creator. The contrary doctrine comes down to us
from the "good old times" when children had no rights, and parents had
absolute power of life and death over them.

In the same way, God had absolute power over his creatures; he was the
potter and they were the clay; one vessel was made for honor, and one
for dishonor; one for heaven, and one for hell. But civilisation has
changed our conceptions. We regard the parent as responsible for the
child, and God is responsible for the welfare of his creatures. A single
"lost soul" would prove the malignity or imbecility of "our father which
art in heaven."

HAPPY IN HELL.

Professor St. George Mivart is a very useful man to the Jesuits. He
plays the jackal to their lion; or, it might be said, the cat to their
monkey. Some time ago he argued that Catholicism and Darwinism were in
the happiest agreement; that the Catholic Church was not committed, like
the Protestant Church, to a cast-iron theory of Inspiration; and that
he was quite prepared to find that all the real Word of God in the Bible
might be printed in a very small book and easily carried in a waistcoat
pocket. That article appeared in the _Nineteenth Century_. In the
current number of the same review Mr. Mivart has another theological
article on "Happiness in Hell." He says he took advice before writing
it, so he speaks with permission, if not with authority. Such an
article, being a kind of feeler, was better as the work of a layman. If
it did not answer, the Church was not committed; if it did answer, the
Church's professional penmen could follow it up with something more
decisive.

Professor Mivart perceives, like the Bishop of Chester, that
Christianity _must_ alter its teaching with respect to Hell, or lose
its hold on the educated, the thoughtful, and the humane. "Not a few
persons," he says, "have abandoned Christianity on account of this
dogma." The "more highly evolved moral perceptions" of to-day are
"shocked beyond expression at the doctrine that countless multitudes
of mankind will burn fo