have not found, nor can I imagine, any influence so potent as this habit of praying for the dead, to detach the mind from petty and visible things, to unlock the spiritual world, to carry the soul up to the very source and centre of spiritual life, and to bring us into faithful communion with the Father of the spirits of all flesh. You see I have kept my promise of not arguing on this matter. I have simply told you how I have longed and doubted; how my doubts were dissipated by practice; and what strength I have personally derived from the practice. Probably this will seem to you, if interesting, at all events inadequate. “Logically,” you will perhaps say to yourself, “he ought to have attempted first to convince me that the eternal state of the dead is not finally determined at the moment of death; so that prayer may reasonably be expected to have some power to change their condition. He ought to have told me whether he believes in a Purgatory, or in a limited Hell; whether he is a Universalist; or whether he believes in the annihilation of all who are not to be saved. In a word, he ought to have given me a full account of his theory about the condition of the dead, before he commends to me the habit of praying for them.” Here I fear I shall terribly disappoint you; but, at the risk of whatever disappointment, I will confess to you the whole truth. This part of my Manual of Theology has large print, large margin, and several blank pages. I believe some things with such force and clearness that I prefer to say I do not believe them. I _see_ them: but about many other things which most people believe, I know little or nothing. Do I believe in a Hell? Yes, as firmly as I believe in a Heaven; but not in your Hell perhaps, and certainly not in the ordinary guide-books to Hell and Heaven. Perhaps some would call my Hell “merely retribution,” or “an illogical and ill-defined Purgatory;” and from their point of view they could be right in complaining of its indefiniteness; for they profess to know all about it and to be able to define it. But from my point of view I am equally right in speaking indefinitely; for I profess to have only a glimpse of it. Of the principles of Hell and Heaven I am certain, but of the details I am entirely ignorant. I know nothing whatever, and I know that no one else knows anything whatever, about the state of the dead; except that they are just as much in God’s hand when dead as when living, and that He will ultimately do the best thing for each; but what that “best thing” may be I cannot tell in detail, although I am very sure that it will be one thing for St. Francis and quite another for Nero. For the rest, all the elaborate structures and fancy-fabrics of Heaven and Hell, Purgatory, Paradise, Limbo, and other regions, whether theologians or poets be the architects, appear to me built upon the flimsiest foundations, tags of texts, fragments of words, quagmires of metaphor, quicksands of hyperbole.