sciousness of (1) God's devotion to perfection of being; (2) assures him of the presence of a love that is equal to the renovation and perfecting of the universe; and (3) imposes upon his conscience the absolute moral authority of this revealed criterion. By the first this action enables the world to discriminate its sin; by the second, exhibits the opportunity and power for righteousness; and by the third, "sets judgment in the earth."

Moreover, this atoning action evinces the ever-extending arms of divine benevolence, beckoning and wooing sinners, able and willing to save all. Thus is revealed in Christ the divine attitude, which is the real "mercy seat," with its awful agony, the real "blood of sprinkling." Acceptance of these by the sinner is that faith which subjects his actual to an ideal life. The sin-burdened soul, saying, "I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ," finds here the "throne of grace."

CHAPTER VI

ESCHATOLOGY

And they shall become one flock, one shepherd. . . . And they shall never perish.-Jesus.

ESCHATOLOGY, the doctrine of "last things," is a term which has generally been applied to the events which are expected to mark the ending of human affairs on earth, and the establishing a fixed destiny for all dependent persons. Our use of the term, however, can apply only to certain states of personal development which will characterize what we have termed the ideal, or perfect, universe. The perfect universe is the goal of love's evolution in its present cycle; but we contemplate that perfection not as a fixed end, or state, but as a perfected equipment for future, ever-advancing cycles of personal progressthe disembarrassed companionship of finite persons with the Infinite Person.

This perfect equipment will be the outcome of forces which are now in operation, the final resolution of questions which are now in process of being determined; and, hence, our eschatology is made up of the corollaries of this resolution. It does not threaten an arbitrary intervention of almighty power to reward friends and punish enemies in a special or extra-vengeful sense. It is the sum of results which will have been determined by the personal universe upon the conditions evolved by love. All-conditioning love is no respecter of persons.

Our planet, the earth, is, of course, a small affair in the world of quantities, and our race may be but a small company in the universe of persons. But our planetary life signifies this much, at least: it is a form of the lowest

conditions to the origin and development of personal creatures. How long the planet will continue to serve that purpose, and whether its functions will undergo a change, or have an end, must be a matter of speculation in the absence of a definite revelation. But this much seems clear our race will continue this earthly life until the final crisis, which is stated in the chapter "The Solution of Evil," is reached; when, on the one hand, racial and social abuses will have been corrected by the progress which will result from faith and love; and when, on the other hand, physical and social retribution will have destroyed the uncorrected and incorrigible elements of earthly society.

Moreover, the crisis passed, such will be the common consciousness of love's excellence and of the turpitude of evil that the lower tutelage of race conditions will be wholly superseded. Their flesh-and-blood form will be superfluous and, unable to contribute anything to the perfecting of personal life, will disappear. Whether this disappearance will be gradual, by the process of racial retribution in physical death, or a sudden and simultaneous transformation of all then upon the earth, is a question of mode, and, hence, is a mystery which may be a matter of revelation; but the fact is implied in the evolution of love.

The faithful persons thus changed-probably "in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye"-will join "the goodly company" who, like them, have attained to the common consciousness of universal companionship with God. When race conditions are thus cast off we shall, probably, have no use for the planet, at least in its present state.

There still lingers, however, a suggestion that the

interest to human spirits. This suggestion arises from the interest in the complete solution of evil which only members of the human race may have in common. The forms in which the persistence of faith and the final selfdefeat of evil shall be accomplished by our race may give its members a planetary grouping until each individual shall have entered upon the full consciousness of the perfect, universal companionship, or shall have sunken into the complete isolation of selfishness. However this may be, the utter self-defeat of evil, the persistence of faith and love, and the resultant ideal universe abide as the essential eschatology of love's evolution. In whatever grouping the sometime members of the human race may find themselves they are, nevertheless, factors in this mighty problem, and their several destinies are corollaries of its solution.

Individual destiny is the question which stands highest in our hopes and sinks deepest in our fears. This, because of natural, rightful self-love. Where, or in what conditions, does the solution of evil place each person concerned with it? This ground has virtually been surveyed in "The Solution of Evil," hence we need only sum up here the results there reached.

Four general classes comprehend all the members of our race: the innocent, the faithful, the selfish, and the incorrigible, or incorrigibly selfish.

The innocent include, first, idiots and infants. Their innocence is not moral, but natural, like the innocence of a bird or a lamb. If they have never exercised selfdetermination they have not attained to individual selfconsciousness. They are persons only in the sense of a bundle of personal conditions. Their life has not been one of self-determined personality, but merely the spon

is merely racial retribution, the dissolution of race conditions, must, so far as we can affirm, without a revelation on the subject, end their being. As to the idiotic, this statement applies only to those who are wholly so. There are some classed as idiotic who are but partially so unfortunate, but who are consciously self-determining. Yet their self-determination is exercised upon such distorted conditions that they do not discriminate moral motives. Although they have, by self-determination, attained positive personality they must be classed as innocent persons who will survive physical death, relieved of the physical organism which occasioned their idiocy. Again, some of the idiotic have evinced moral discrimination, and developed positive moral qualities, and, hence, according to their moral determination must be classed with either the faithful or the selfish.

There are tribes of men who, we are told, scarcely evince moral discrimination. Excepting a few individuals among them, they seem to have no personal determination, manifest none but racial qualities, and herd or mate from force of merely race conditions. Their selfishness is not more positive than the spontaneity of race instincts, nor is their sincerity distinguishable from the simplicity of natural impulse. If this is a true representation their personal existence must be thought to end with the collapse of race conditions in physical death. But we are prone to discredit these representations, and to believe them rather hasty conclusions affected by laying undue importance upon external culture as concerned in moral character. The elements of moral character are not largely derived from external culture, but chiefly from intuitional facts; they are born in us, hence are of that class of knowledge which we do not learn; untaught, or