But I must add a word here to guard against the misapprehension that in saying this I am depriving man of the strength he finds in believing that he is personally known to God and an object of his care. Were I the ant's creator familiar with all the workings of its mind, I might regret, for its sake, the pride and scorn of its maker shown by its-action, because it was not rising to the perfection of nature of which it was capable. So, in that nature in which we live and move, which is too great to regard anything as-little, which is around all and in all, and which we believe to be conscious of all, there is--I cannot but think--some feeling which, for want of a better term, we must call a desire for the growth of his creatures (because in this growth lies their own happiness), and a corresponding feeling of regret when they injure themselves. But I say this in fear and reverence, knowing that human language has no terms in which to describe the nature we adore, and conscious that in the very act of putting ideas about him into words, I degrade the ideas and they no longer fully answer to the thought in my own mind. Silent adoration befits man best in the presence of his maker, only it is right to protest against the more degrading conceptions of him, although the higher conceptions are themselves far below what he really is. Sin then, being done against oneself only, cannot deserve an eternity of torture. Sin injures man already, why should he be further injured by endless agony? The infliction of pain is only justifiable when it is the means of conveying to the sufferer himself a gain greater than the suffering inflicted; therefore punishment is only righteous when reformatory. But _endless_ torture cannot aim at reformation; it has no aim beyond itself, and can only arise, therefore, from vengeance and vindictiveness, which we have shown to be impossible with God. Hell is unjust, secondly, because its punishment is excessive and aimless. It is also unjust, because to avoid it needs an impossible perfection. It is no answer to this to say that there is an escape offered to us through the Atonement made by Jesus Christ. Why should I be called on to escape like a criminal from that which I do not deserve? God makes man imperfect, frail, sinful, utterly unable to keep perfectly a perfect law: he therefore fails, and is--what? To be strengthened? by no means; he is to go to hell. The statement of this suffices to show its injustice. We cavil not at the wisdom which made us what we are, but we protest against the idea which makes God so cruelly unjust as to torture babies because they are unable to walk as steadily as full-grown men. Hell is unjust, in the third place, because man does not deserve it.