When it is once discerned that there is no endless torment, but that suffering in the next life is a divinely appointed means of reformation, how the mind is enlarged in the contemplation of the wisdom, power, and love of God! Yea, and what an uplift, and what a new direction, is given to our ideas of human perfection and blessedness! If there were nothing else, we have surely here a strong argument for final Restoration. Eternal blessedness is consonant with our nature; and though details of it are not revealed, it is reasonable to believe that it will ultimately be attained. But eternal suffering is abnormal and repugnant. Especially is it so as we rise in the moral scale. As a worthy ultimatum it cannot be entertained. It is far more reasonable to believe that under the perfect government of God, sin and all its resulting pain will finally be done away. Further; it would be hard to find a case of such utter wickedness as not to have some mixture of good as well. That gives us the reasonable hope that ultimately the good will triumph. And sometimes we find great goodness mixed with great evil. Just now I notice a very affecting report in the newspaper of a criminal in whom there must have been a wonderful mixture of good and bad. He was convicted of a serious crime, and sentenced to three years in the penitentiary. When he was leaving the city under arrest, and being taken on board the train that was to convey him to the place of confinement, a number of his late companions in crime appeared on the railway platform. They had come to bid him good-bye. And it was no formal leave-taking. With tears and sobs they flung their arms about his neck, and kissed him. So affecting was the scene that the policeman in charge was utterly broken down. But the man had to go to prison; and the chances are that the evil influences of prison life will dissipate much of that extraordinary goodness which must have been in him to develop so much affection. Be that as it may, the question must suggest itself to every thoughtful mind, "Where will that man go should he die in the meantime?" He is far too good for the world of woe; yet he is not fit for the better world until his criminal propensities are eliminated. How reasonable it is to believe in--we might say what a moral necessity there is for--a process of development of the good, and elimination of the evil. On the principle that what is good will survive, and that the evil will be extinguished, we can hope for nothing less. And when we remember that all men, and all conditions, and all worlds, are under the control of Him whose love is from everlasting to everlasting, we may believe that such a man's final destiny is the inheritance of the saints.