Page:Dawn of the Day.pdf/107

Rh of such a sermon, “nearly all sounds that could be heard were those of people who died in bitterest agony." Let us never forget that it was Christianity which turned the death-bed into a “bed of agonies,"and that, by the scenes which since then have been enacted thereon, and the terrible sounds which here, for the first time, appeared possible, the senses and the blood of countless witnesses and of their posterity wero poisoned for a lifetime. Imagine a harmless man who cannot forget having heard words like these : "Oh eternity! Oh, would I had no soul! Oh, would I had never been born! I am doomed, doomed, lost for ever! Six days ago you might have helped me.But it is all over now; I am now the devil's own; I will go down to hell with him. Break, break, poor hearts of stone! Will you not break? What morecan be done to hearts of stone? I am doomed that ye may be saved! There he is! Yea, there he is, Come, kind devil! Come !"

‘’Justice inflicting punishment.’’—Misfortune and guilt —these two have been put on one balance by Christianity, so that, whenever the misfortune which follows upon guilt is a great one, even now the magnitude of the offence itself is quite involuntarily referred back to it.But this is not the antique way of thinking, and therefore Greek tragedy—wherein misfortune and guilt are so