not a few of them gloat with satisfaction over the prospect of ‘infidels’ gnashing their teeth in that fiery gulph prepared for the devil and his angels.  By this odious class of fanatics neither the worm that dieth not, nor the flame never to be extinguished, is deemed sufficient punishment for the wretch whose thoughts concerning religion are not as their thoughts.  By them the imagined ’Creator of the Heavens and the earth’ is dressed, up in attributes the most frightful.  Witness the character of Him implied in the conceit of that popular preacher who declared ’there are children in hell not a span long’—­a declaration which could only be made by one whose humanity was extinguished by divinity.

Our pulpits can furnish many such preachers of ‘a religion of charity,’ while a whole army of Christian warriors might be gathered from metropolitan pulpits alone, who deeming it impious to say their God of mercy would permit the burning of infants not a span long, do nevertheless, firmly believe that ‘children of a larger growth’ may justly be tormented by the great king of kings; and as ignorantia legis non excusat is a maxim of human law, so, according to them, ignorance of divine law is no excuse whatever, either for breaking or disregarding it.

The Author of this Apology was recently in Scotland, where a vast number of religious tracts were put into his hand, one of which contains the following among other striking paragraphs:—­

’Man could, not create himself, and far less can he save himself.  When God made him, he brought him out of nothing; when God. saves him, he brings him out of a state far lower and worse than nothing.  If in the one case, then, everything depended, upon God’s will and decree, much more in the other.  There can be no injustice here.  Had God pleased, He might have saved the whole world.  But he did not; and thousands are now in hell, and shall be to all eternity.’

’Hell is peopled already with millions of immortal souls doomed to fiery wrath; while Heaven is filled with ransomed sinners as vile, yea perhaps viler than they.’ [83:1]

If the writer of this horrid nonsense do not blaspheme, there surely can be no possibility of blaspheming.  If he do not impute to his God of mercy cruelty and injustice the most monstrous that can enter into human conception, all language is void of meaning, and men had far better cease ‘civilising,’ and betake themselves to woods and wilds and fastnesses, to enjoy the state of mere brutishness so infinitely preferable to that reasonable state in which they are shaken and maddened by terrible dreams of a vengeful cruel God.

                           Better be with the dead
          Than on the tortures of the mind to lie
          In restless ecstacy.

Better, far better, roam the desert or the forest like any other brutes, than educate ourselves and others into the monstrous belief in a God who might have saved the world and would not; who predestinates to endless and unutterable agonies; who has with the one hand peopled Hell with millions of immortal creatures, while with the other has filled Heaven with millions of ransomed sinners, as vile, yea perhaps viler than they.