Page:The kernel and the husk (Abbott, 1886).djvu/307

Letter 26] He will ultimately do the best thing for each; but what that "best thing" may be I cannot tell in detail, although I am very sure that it will be one thing for St. Francis and quite another for Nero. For the rest, all the elaborate structures and fancy-fabrics of Heaven and Hell, Purgatory, Paradise, Limbo, and other regions, whether theologians or poets be the architects, appear to me built upon the flimsiest foundations, tags of texts, fragments of words, quagmires of metaphor, quicksands of hyperbole. No; such real knowledge—or shall we say such conviction?—as we have about the eternal future of the dead, is to be based, not upon argument or inference from minute and disputable interpretations of small portions of Scripture, but mainly upon our faith in the divine righteousness and power. You will not, I hope, misunderstand my words that "God will do the best thing for each," or draw from them the inference, "Then he is a Universalist after all." I took for granted—I hope I was not wrong—that you would remember the definition of justice which you have read in Plato. In fact therefore I merely expressed in those words my conviction that God would be "just" to us after death. Might we not also define the highest mercy, in the same terms in which we define the highest justice, as being the feeling that prompts us to "do what is best for each"? And, if so, does it not seem to follow that in Hell God will not cease to be merciful, and in Heaven God will not cease to be just? And hence are we not brought close to the conclusion that Heaven and Hell are not really places, but the diverse results of the operation of the Eternal—the just Mercy, the merciful Justice—upon the diverse dead? But here the question widens and deepens into expanses and depths altogether too vast