Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/39

 rich man in want and misery hereafter, simply because he enjoyed his abundance in this life; while the poor and miserable in this life was rich and happy in the next. "Son, thou, in thy lifetime, receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented." Here then, if we are bound to the literal, is quite a new religion, by which the conditions in this life and the next are to be simply and exactly reversed. Such a religion might be called the Nemesis of the Grave, and it might possibly exist, as our President Black has suggested, in coloured sun systems or other eccentric parts of the universe. We have dismissed, even without a hearing, all this Nemesis part of the case, but once more we have picked out, and clung to, the everlasting fire.

Reed strongly opposed the Sabbatarian view, regarding it even as a serious stumbling-block in the Christian pathway to the great body of the Christian people. The view that good, honest, necessary labour could be sinful at any time or on any day of the week, placed us, at once, at variance with common sense. The Judaic idea was special, inferior, and, as regarded Christians, past and done with. The Christian ideal had superseded the old Israelitish division into secular and sacred days, because, whether in the shop, the field, or the Church, Saturday or Sunday, we were alike in the service of God. Nor should we lower this high standard because there are still many minds which do not, or cannot, rise to it. The portentous.