Thus scientific conceptions, working in the popular mind, have fixed it upon the affairs of this world, and have reduced the various phases of the other, formerly so immensely important, to a shadowy inconsistency. Science, for example, has disposed of hell with ludicrous completeness. The old material hell, as Dante and the Middle Ages viewed it, a repository definitely under ground, with devils busily engaged over boiling cauldrons, has surely vanished, never to return. In the scientifically arranged physical universe there is no place for it. Even my friend Moody, whose ideas of heaven were so specific, does not attempt any such physical location of hell. And it is true that the orthodox still take refuge in moral torments, prolonged if not eternal horrors, which the erring spirit in wilful perversity inflicts upon itself. But it is doubtful if even the orthodox continue to take even these very seriously. There cannot be many persons who still suffer from the brooding gloom with which the concrete vision of hell genuinely oppressed thousands of sensitive souls in ages past. And in some respects this may be set down as a gain, since the misery to the sensitive souls was very real, while how far the fear of hell acted as a deterrent to souls of another order is always open to question. But, gain or loss, it will hardly be disputed that the boiling depths of hell have largely boiled away. Unfortunately hell, in departing, has shown a marked tendency to drag heaven with it. The same material difficulty of course obtains here also. Moody used to proclaim that heaven was tangible, mapable, a city like New York, only with more agreeable streets and doubtless better traffic arrangements. But it is hard for the most devout believer to-day to take so concrete a view. And it is not only that the pearly gates and golden pavements have gone. Their disappearance has given a rude jar to the belief in any kind of future life whatever. I am merely speaking of the average American man in the street, and perhaps of even the woman also. The negative views in such matters announced shortly before his death by so good, so upright, so in the largest sense Christian a man as Luther Burbank, are beyond a doubt the views more or less definitely formulated of millions of men in America to-day. The best they can say is, that it is their business to live the life here in the most energetic, straightforward, profitable way they can, to see that after their deaths their wives and children are provided for, and to leave any other lives to take care of themselves.