orable to Him and more beneficial to man may certainly be counted on as nearer the truth.

I have stigmatized the ordinary clerical statement in regard to this matter as an unproved assumption. Will it be said that my own assumption, being also unproved, stands on the same footing as the other? I reply that two statements, one reverential and the other dishonorable to God, cannot possibly stand on the same footing. God's gifts of reason, and conscience, and the sense of discrimination between fitness and unfitness, absolutely forbid that we should regard these two statements as equally probable, or as standing on equal terms in any manner, for a single moment. No supposition imputing evil or folly to the heavenly Father is for a moment to be admitted, or even entertained as a matter of question. The clerical theory is condemned and ruled out of court by its own inherently vicious character. An infinitely wise God certainly will not give up as worthless the creatures on whom He has seen fit to bestow immortal souls and moral sensibilities. An infinitely good God certainly will not abandon to sin that which He can reclaim to holiness by taking a day or two more (a thousand years or two more) to do it in.

By these considerations the way is cleared for our inquiry into the true significance of what is called “death," and the amount of preparation (if any) necessary for man (in his relation to God) to meet it.

Death is a severance of the connection between the man and his body. The body dies, the man continues to live. The clergy talk gravely about a man, when his body dies, going "into the presence of God!" They might as well talk of his going into the presence of God when he takes off his clothes every night to go to bed! Was he ever, for a moment, out of the presence of God? Has he not, from the very beginning of his existence, been thoroughly and absolutely in God's presence, and under His supervision, and within His control? This must be admitted, even by the people who teach (and make a profit of) the contrary doctrine. The laying aside our fleshly garments, then, will not bring us more into God's presence or under His power, than we were before; it will change neither our characters nor God's character, nor yet the relation between the two. He will still be the heavenly Father; we shall still be His offspring, created according to His pleasure, and of course for some purpose accordant at once with an almighty Father's power, and with an affectionate Father's love. It is absurd and unjustifiable to suppose otherwise.

Certainly, it is nothing new, or strange, or startling, to say that God wishes men to choose right rather than wrong, good rather than evil, holiness rather than sin. What I say is that this admitted preference of His does not change, nor tend in the slightest degree to change, when the man's mortal body drops off from him, and ceases to be a part of him. God is unchangeable! Most certainly, then, He will not change from good to evil; most certainly, the death of man's body will not diminish His desire that the man himself should have right desires, a right will, right affections and purposes! Wishing this, then, He will certainly continue to use the

means towards it, and will necessarily provide for each soul, in some one of His "many mansions," that combination of tuition and discipline which is suited to lead it towards good and away from evil; to renew, in some form, the lesson which, we must conclude, the experience of this world is meant to teach, that good seed produces good fruit and evil seed evil fruit. Obviously, great numbers of human beings leave this stage of their eternal existence without having learned this lesson. Some have failed to learn it through immaturity, some through weakness, some through wickedness; but whichever of these is the actual cause of failure in the case of any individual, the facts remain unchanged that it is desirable for him to learn this lesson, that the unchangeable God still wishes him to learn it, that the Allwise will still provide for him appropriate means of instruction and discipline, and that the loving Father will bless and aid all his attempts to use such means. Not one of these points can be impugned without an imputation, irreverent or calumnious, or both, against the heavenly Father. To say that He favors, and will assist, all human efforts to do right, in whatever planet, world, or stage of existence, is honorable to Him. To say that He will care less in the next stage of existence for human improvement, and that He will provide less for the connection between improvement and welfare, is to be unjust and irreverent towards Him.

From all this it inevitably follows that the relations of God to the soul and of the soul to God continue absolutely unchanged after the death of the body. Wrong-doing after that point, as before it, will certainly prove inju rious; right thinking, right feeling, right action, will certainly prove beneficial. As before death, so after, he who does, speaks, thinks evil, will assuredly be worse off for it, and he who loves and seeks good will assuredly be better off for it. This is the lesson which, we must suppose, God means to teach us, theoretically and practically, in the course of that neverending existence which we are to share with Him. Have you not learned it yet? Not this month, not this year, not in this earthly life? So much the worse for you. The work remains to be done, and until it is done you fail to obtain the welfare which God has placed within your reach. Every postponement of this work is not only a positive loss to you, but a wandering astray, the course of which you must painfully retrace before reaching the goal. If you have conceived or been taught so wrong an estimate of God as to fear Him, and avoid instead of seeking communion with Him, you fail (for the time) of securing the greatest advantage, of enjoying the highest blessing. This is the lesson that you are to learn, the abiding consciousness that God is the tenderest of fathers, the best of friends, far rather to be trusted, confided in, resorted to, than any human friend. While you remain without recognizing this truth and acting in conformity with it, in this world or in any other, so much the worse for you. That's all !

Is such a being to be feared? Is the surest of helpers, the tenderest of lovers, to be feared? His rod, and His staff, both of them are used for our comfort and welfare. The more one is involved in need, pressed down by guilt, surrounded with difficulty, the more need of just such a helper. If

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death did indeed take us "into the presence of God," this would be an added benefit; but God is with you as a loving friend and father equally the moment before death and the moment after; and whatever change that event has brought to you, it has brought no change to Him. He knows you, loves you, is ready to help you, and is desirous that you should appreciate and welcome his help, equally before and after the little circumstance called death. I counsel you of fearing Him, whenever and however He appoints you to die. trust thoroughly in Him, and die without a thought If a person should ask you clothes to-night?-you would be puzzled to know what he meant. If it appeared that he meant that you would be more in the presence of God, and more in danger of harm from Him, after undressing yourself, you would think the inquirer foolish or superstitious, and pay no regard to him. But when the parson asks if you are "prepared" to lay aside your bodily clothing at the end of mortality's day, you think it, perhaps, an appropriate, a sensible, an important question. The force of habit, the errors of education, make it really appear so. relation between God and you, this question is as foolish as the other. But in fact, if asked with reference to the Are you "prepared " to meet your father at the breakfast-table to-morrow morning? Are you visit? Are you "prepared" to have him call upon you unexpectedly any"prepared" to meet him on returning home after a where? What childish reasonable and ill-founded questions! The child welcomes the father, and no, I beg the child's pardon - rather, what unrejoices in his presence at all times. Will it be said that that depends upon whether the child be good or not? I reply that, even in the latter case, it is only the child's ignorance that would lead it to fear the father's visit. What more appropriate time for the presence of the guide, the guardian, the best friend, the Father, than when the ward, the pupil, the child is doing or purposing wrong! If the latter feels ashamed or admonished on recognizing the presence of the former, are not those precisely the emotions needful and salutary for him? The true father will always do him good and never harm. The heavenly Father will do him good and never harm all the days of his immortal life. Let the dismissal of the body be welcome whenever He pleases to ordain it. ion for us in the future, is to lack faith. Reader, be not faithless, but To doubt of His wise and good provisbelieving.

LETTER FROM JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE RADICAL:

In your February number, Mr. Johnson commences his reply to my letter on "Authority," by saying that my criticism "seems to betray a very careless, or at best superficial reading, not only of his statements, but of the general subject." This notion, that I failed to comprehend him, and to comprehend certain laws of the human mind, as only "an unreflecting person," "incapable of perceiving principle at all," could do — constitutes a considerable part of the staple of his reply.

Now, the usual course of controversy would require that I should retort all these charges - declare that Mr. Johnson has misunderstood and misrepresented me—refer to what I said, and to what he said, and complain with a full orchestra that he has not done me justice, and that it is he, not I, who is "careless," "confused," and "superficial." The method of polemic discussion, in fact, reminds me of a dialogue between a gentleman of my acquaintance and his father, who, looking out of his window one morning, saw him kicking a favorite dog.

Father (indignantly.) "Why did you kick that dog?"

Son (reproachfully.) "Because he bit me."

Father.
Son.

"He did not bite you."

"Then I did not kick him."

So, in controversy, one party snaps at the other; the other kicks back; the first then asks why the other kicked him; the second replies, "Because you bit me;" the first then explains that he did not intend to bite, the other explains that he did not mean to kick; and so the matter ends.

I think it will save time, therefore, and be more satisfactory, if we omit all these personalities. Let your readers take for granted that I have accused Mr. Johnson sufficiently of being superficial and careless, of misunderstanding and misrepresenting my position, and let us go, at once, to the main question between us.

That question is, "Can there be Authority without Infallibility, and if so, what is its extent and value?" That, at least, is the point I suggested; and I think the occasion justified me in so doing. For Mr. Johnson's Discourse on "Bond and Free" commenced thus: "The great religious question of the age is that between Outward Authority and Inward Freedom. May we trust the free exercise of our natural faculties to give us the knowledge of Duty and of God, or does freedom come to nothing but delusion, and must we have supernatural teachers; creeds sent down from above, ready made, for our acceptance, not our investigation; sects, churches and books clothed with an authority that makes our liberty needless as well as wrong?" "These are opposite principles which I indicate. They exclude each other. If one is true, the other is false. If our souls may be trusted in the search for truth, then we do not need, and cannot have, authoritative teachers, creeds, churches, books," &c. &c.

I criticised this statement by saying that Outward Authority is not necessarily opposed to Inward Freedom,- that we may trust the free exercise of our natural faculties, and yet be helped by supernatural teachers; that sects, churches and books may have an authority which does not make liberty needless or wrong. Mr. Johnson confounded Authority and Infallibility. I distinguished them. I showed that there was a kind of Authority which was not Infallibility, which helped human progress instead of hindering it; and that, therefore, in attacking all Authority and confounding it with Infallibility, Mr. Johnson had shown a want of discrimination which blunted the edge of his argument.

To all which Mr. Johnson has substantially replied, that when he attacked Authority he meant Infallibility; that the majority of Christians believe the Bible infallible, and so that illusion needs to be attacked and dispelled; and that it is daubing the wall with untempered mortar to palliate this radical hostility between Freedom and Infallibility; that if I seek peace in this way, I get a peace which is no peace.

I answer, I do not seek any such superficial peace. But in order to