e positive suffering," thinks Mr. Mivart, "will never cease for
those who have voluntarily and deliberately cast away from them their
supreme beatitude." Do you want to know what this positive suffering
is? Well, wait till you get there. All in good time. Whatever it is,
the "unbelievers" will get _their_ share of it. The editor of the
_Freethinker_ may look out for a double dose. Professor Huxley will not
escape. He is an aggressive Agnostic; one of those persons who, in the
graceful language of Mivartian civility, do not "possess even a rudiment
of humility or aspiration after goodness." "Surely," exclaims our new
Guide to Hell, "surely if there is a sin which, on merely Theistic
principles, merits the severest pains of hell, it is the authorship of
an irreligious book." Which leads _us_ in turn to exclaim, "Surely, yea
thrice surely, will hell never be wholly abolished or deprived of its
last torture-chamber, while Christians require a painful place for those
who boldly differ from them." Mr. Mivart, it is true, confesses that
"those who are disturbed and distressed by difficulties about hell
include many among the best of mankind." But they must not write
irreligious books on the subject. They must wait, in patience and
meekness, until Mr. Mivart gives them satisfaction.

Let us now summarise Mr. Mivart's position. Uni-versalism, or the final
restitution of all men, he rejects as "utterly irreconcilable with
Catholic doctrine." Those who are saved go to heaven--after various
delays in purgatory--and enjoy the Beatific Vision for ever. Those who
are lost go to hell and remain there for all eternity. They lose the
Beatific Vision, and that is their chief punishment. But hell is not a
really dreadful place--except, of course, for the writers of irreligious
books. It may have its equator, and perhaps its poles; but between them
are vast regions of temperate clime and grateful soil. The inhabitants
are in a kind of harmony with their environment. They are even under a
law of evolution, and "the existence of the damned is one of progress
and gradual amelioration." We suppose it may be said, in the words of
Napoleon, that the road is open to talent; and enterprising "damned
ones" may cry with truth--"Better to reign in hell than serve in
heaven."

Hell must be regarded as a most desirable place. Mr. Mivart knows
all about it, and we have his authority for saying it is "an abode of
happiness transcending all our most vivid