And then again I ask myself this question: Even assuming that Lord Hugh is right, and that it is our bounden duty to love the Germans, is love inconsistent with punishment? We postulate the love of God towards mankind, and we rightly regard it as the highest manifestation of what love means; but is it inconsistent with punishment for unrighteous action? Neither Revelation, nor Nature, nor History, knows anything of the conception which has been embodied in the words, "a good-natured God." Of Revelation I will not speak at length, for this is not the place for theological discussion; I only remark in passing that the idea of punishment for wrong-doing is not, as some sciolists imagine, confined to the Old Testament, though there it is seen in its most startling form; in the New Testament it is exhibited, alike by St. Paul and by St. Paul's Master, as a manifestation of love--not vindictive, but remedial. The disciplining love of a human father is used to illustrate the Divine dealings with insubordinate mankind. About Nature we need scarcely argue. "In the physical world there is no forgiveness of sins," and rebellion against the laws of righteous living brings penal consequences which no one can mistake. And yet again, has History any more unmistakable lesson than that "for every false word or unrighteous deed, for cruelty and oppression, for lust or vanity, the price has to be paid at last"? Froude was right. "Injustice and falsehood may be long-lived, but doomsday comes at last to them, in French Revolutions and other terrible ways." What we believe of the Divine Love, thus dealing with human transgression, we may well believe of human love, when it is called by duty to chastise unrighteousness. I do not suppose that John Stuart Mill was actuated by hatred of Palmer or Pritchard or any other famous malefactor of his time when he said that there are some people so bad that they "ought to be blotted out of the catalogue of living men." It was the dispassionate judgment of philosophy on crime. When the convicted murderer exclaimed, "Don't condemn me to death; I am not fit to die!" a great Judge replied, "I know nothing about that; I only know that you are not fit to live"; but I do not suppose that he hated the wretch in the dock. Even so, though it may be our duty to love our enemies as our fellow-citizens in the kingdom of God, we need not shrink, when the time comes, from being the ministers of that righteous vengeance which, according to the immutable order of the world, is prepared for impenitent wrong-doing. VI _HATRED AND LOVE_ I lately saw the following sentence quoted from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: "Hatred steels the mind and sets the resolution as no other emotion can do." The enlightened conscience of humanity (to say nothing of Christianity) repudiates this sentiment as ethically unsound and historically untrue; and yet, erroneous as it is, it is worth pondering for the sake of a truth which it overstates.