We hope we are now leaving behind us the ferocity which was formerly considered quite appropriate to religion. Indeed, a man was hardly accounted serious, if he was not severe. And the worst of it was, that God was considered severe. Men could read over and over again that "God is love;" but somehow the great truth was not received in its fulness. The idea of God's justice seems to have cast a baleful shadow over men's hearts and lives. Certainly heaven's own light is now breaking through the gloom. Many of the highest judgment and character now entertain views which their fathers would have repudiated as rank heresy. * * * * * It is a most unfortunate thing that we have derived from our bloodthirsty ancestors an impression of divine cruelty that is utterly opposed to the fact. And it is not so very long ago that such traditions were handed down to us. "What we forget," says the New York Evening Post, "is the short distance of time and space that separates us from our ferocious forefathers." Dr. Johnson in his 'Journey to the Western Islands,' relates the tradition that the Macdonalds--honored name to-day--surrounded the Culloden Church on Sunday, fastened the doors, and burnt the congregation alive. The entertainment received its perfecting touch when the Macdonald piper mocked the shrieks of the perishing crowd with the notes of his bagpipes. * * * * * "Perhaps an even more striking illustration of the survival of savagery may be found in men's religious beliefs--say, in the conception of a God who is a cruel man endowed with omnipotence. Grave divines were telling us within a generation that a just and merciful Father, for his good pleasure, had doomed certain of the non-elect to the most hideous physical tortures for all eternity. It was in 1879, about thirty years ago, that Herbert Spencer in 'The Data of Ethics,' stated the theory quite nakedly: The belief that the sight of suffering is pleasing to the gods,' He added: 'Derived from bloodthirsty ancestors, such gods are naturally conceived as gratified by the infliction of pain; when living they delighted in torturing other beings; and witnessing torture is supposed still to give them delight. The implied conceptions long survive.' "Some of our readers may recall the attacks upon Spencer, and even upon clergymen otherwise orthodox, like the late Frederick William Farrar, who doubted the doctrine of eternal torture." * * * * *