the loss of even the desire to be holy." "Let me look at that," said Mr. Cook. After reflecting on it some moments in silence he said, "I will stand by that statment." Hence it became his authorized definition of eternal punishment. Some days afterwards, when walking with him on the common, he said, "Why did you look so amused'the other day at my definition of perdition?" I replied, as I remember, that while the doctrine of endless punishment was to me to the last degree objectionable, this definition made it objectionable for altogether a new reason. The desire to be holy, I said, is a phrase which must mean conscience, and when one loses his desire to be holy he simply loses his conscience. That would make hell a very easy place. Yonder, at the North End, I said, you may see a condition of life I call perdition; and what makes it dreadful if it be not conscience protesting against sin? Take the desire to be holy out of the sinner and the inferno becomes his paradise. Hence your definition of perdition, I said, is too soft for my Universalist faith. Here the subject for the time dropped. In a Monday Lecture soon after, however, he gave this improved version of his definition (which I also quote from the printer port I have preserved): "I define perdition to be the final loss of the predominant desire to be holy." The definition has now grown by the addition of the word predominant. "There may be," says Mr. Cook, "subsidiary desires for holiness in the lost; but these are for their torment. Their controlling desire for holiness they have finally lost." I reviewed this lecture of Mr. Cook in a newspaper article, and without laying much stress on the matter in the course of my article I said: By the way, we would like to ask Mr. Cook if he has not given a definition of perdition which involves him in a contradiction with his theology, by making perdition after all rather a small affair. "The final loss of the predominant desire for holiness.' Of course one cannot lose what he has never possessed. According to this definition, therefore, one must have been in a saved state in order to be in a lost state perdition can come only to backsliding Christians." Some weeks after this I was in Mr.

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Cook's study on Beacon Hill. He was revising his lectures for the press. He turned to the lecture which had been the subject of my review, and on finding the sentence I had thus criticised, he said, "You are very hard to suit, but see if you can find any flaw in this definition of perdition which I propose to put into my book." He then read to me his thrice amended definition in the precise words, as I recall them, now found on the 29th page of his volume entitled Orthodoxy : "The failure to attain predominant love of what God loves and hate of what God hates is perdition." What is your objection to that? he asked. My objections, I told him, were fundamental and radical.

This is the process by which the definition grew. Mr. Cook evolved it, but I suppose he would acknowledge that I had some part in its development.

I propose now to state my fundamental and radical objections to Mr. Cook's doctrine of perdition.

The general doctrine implied by this definition may be thus stated: Sinful human beings are in a lost state, — failure to attain to Godlikeness in this world (where alone probation in the strict sense is possible) will under the natural law of the self-propogating power of evil, incur a remediless doom in the world to come, so that at death the lost soul has made its final and irreversible choice of evil.

Mr. Cook acknowledges that no alleged Bible doctrine can stand except it be reasonable. His constant appeal is to the test of the scientific method. A particular merit in the scientific method is that it makes a distinction between assumptions unproved and assured facts.

It is at the bar of reason I would test Mr. Cook's doctrine of perdition, and I ain glad to have it stated in what Mr. Cook regards or, at least, some years ago regarded as a flawless proposition.

In the meaning he gives to his definition I disagree with all its assumptions. There is one of the assumptions, however, with which my disagreement is only partial. It is beyond denial, I think, that sinners are in a lost state. I should, no

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doubt, define the lost state, however, especially as to its beginnings, differently from Mr. Cook. But I will raise no issue here. I assume that we should agree in this, that sin, being a transgression of God's law, is a forfeiture of God's favor and justly deserving his penalties.

Four other assumptions implied in Mr. Cook's definition of perdition are these:

1st. That sin is in its nature immortal.

2d. That death is a calamity to a sinful soul.

3d. That beyond death, for the soul dying sinful, is an ab solutely endless doom.

4th. That good is not in its nature an eternally aggressive power in the universe.

To all which, with thorough conviction, I offer denial.

I. Mr. Cook bases the proposition that sin is in its nature immortal on what he styles "the self-propagating power of evil." He affirms that evil character tends to permanence through the persistency of habit; that sin induces an increasing deadness of conscience, hence a growing moral deadness; that the will, under the rule of a predominent evil love, is continually being weakened for effective repentance or choice of good; hence, that evil, by its own self-propagating power, becomes permanent, or in other words is immortal.

Will this assumption stand the test of a scientific examination?

That there is, in the surface view of some of the visible tendencies of human life, a show of support for this proposition, I do not hesitate to acknowledge. But that the absolute immortality of evil can be scientifically predicated of these present and partial tendencies, ought not to be hastily assumed. Such a proposition must be based, if it can be made to stand at all, on an analysis of all the basal facts of our experience, or within the scope of our knowledge.

I agree with Mr. Cook, as I understand him, that the desire for holiness in the human soul is innate. I agree with him that, though it may not be in all souls a predominant love, it is indestructible. Can this, in faithfulness to human na

ture, be said of evil? Is the soul's love for evil innate? Is it indestructible? Is it true that, while the love of evil can be completely destroyed in a soul, the love of good never can be destroyed, not even in the Dantean abysses!

It is not to be denied that the love of evil may be so strong in a soul that it may be designated as the soul's second nature. This is, however, widely different from the proposition that the love of evil is innate that the original structure of human nature, conceived in its primal integrity, has in it the fac ulty of evil love. Not even the unmodified Calvinistic doctrine of total depravity quite says this. The fact that the desire for evil can be eradicated from human nature, and has been in saintly lives, and the fact that the love of good cannot be eradicated from a human soul a fact Mr. Cook changed his definition of perdition on purpose to recognize are premises from which the unnaturalness of evil may be logically deduced.

How can endless continuance be logically affirmed of any unnatural thing? Not to press the argument too strongly, does not a natural, indestructible desire of the soul prophesy its own final predominance, more truly than a desire which, however powerful for the time, is confessedly contrary to nature, can prophesy its final predominance?

It is a fact of human experience recognized by Mr. Cook in his definition, that no one can ever find content in sin. The conscience may be dulled and hardened, but never destroyed. Sin, therefore, necessarily tends to unrest an discontent. Nero comitted suicide; Lady Macbeth, Mr. Cook's familiar, was not apparently very happy while looking at the crimson stains on her hands which the waters of the ocean could not wash out. The logical moral is that the sinner is at warfare with himself. Truly the innate love of good the "subsidiary" yet indestructible desire for holiness-is no insignificant factor in this problem of finalities. In its actual workings it prophesies predominance, because no one can ever find rest or content, or a final state, in warfare against it. I hope I do not underrate the significance of the fact of the

persistency of evil habits. But, within the range of our experience, we know nothing of the final persistence of any evil habit. Every creed in Christendom, save pure Calvinism, says the vilest sinner may effectively repent any day or moment this side of death. Prodigals actually do repent, even after they have become morally companionable with swine. It is altogether gratuitous, therefore, to assume from any thing we know of human experience that evil, in any life, tends to permanence.

I see nothing in sin, or in the experience of sin, which, in itself considered, necessitates the belief that it will always continue. Evil carries in itself the seeds of its own destruction. "The natural penalty of sin," says Phillips Brooks," is repentance." Mr. Cook often quotes Herbert Spencer in the saying that the soul can never be at peace unless harmonized with its environment. Why does he not do justice to Herbert Spencer by quoting his entire proposition, which is, that good is the natural, hence the permanent in the universe; that evil is unnatural, hence evanescent, and destined to ultimate disappearance? Arthur Fuller read the world's history correctly when he said, "Nothing is finally settled which is not settled right." The destiny of no soul can be finally settled till it is settled right— till it is harmonized with itself and its environment.

I by no means exhaust my reasons for demurring from Mr. Cook's assumption of the immortality of evil. My reading of history, including that of some buried nations, has confirmed me in the belief that evil carries in itself the seeds of its own destruction. But not longer to delay on this part of my argument, I claim that it is, at least, an open question whether evil, in itself considered, tends to permanence. A larger analysis of human nature and experience suggests that the destiny of evil is not immortality but extinction.

II. Mr. Cook's assumption in his definition that death is a misfortune to a sinful soul, is altogether too stupendous a proposition to rest on slight or doubtful proofs. It should rest on definite and irresistible support.