Ask me what I trust to be in Heaven, and I can give you no answer save that one which I have often given you before—a being capable of loving and of serving God. Ask me the nature of Hell and Heaven, and my only reply is that they will be God’s retribution. Ask me whether all will be hereafter “saved,” and I am silent, or merely answer that God is good, and that I believe a time will come when we, in Him, shall look back, and around, and forward, and shall see that His work has been “very good.” Enough for me to work and fight on the side of God and against Evil, that His righteous Kingdom may come and bring with it the time when His work will be seen to have been “very good.” As for other details, I know nothing and delight in knowing nothing. I do not know whether I shall live again on earth or elsewhere; whether I shall be a being of three dimensions, or four, or of no dimensions at all; whether I shall be in space or out of space. It is far better to give up speculations about accidental trifles such as these: for accidents they are, as compared with the essence of the second life, which consists in Love. Do not give up the belief in that, at any cost; least of all, at the cost of a little banter. “But surely it is possible that our very highest and purest conceptions of Heaven may fall short of the reality.” Granted: but we must hold fast to the belief that there is at all events a proportion between our best terrestrial aspirations and their celestial equivalents. We must reject, as from Satan, the suggestion (was it Spinoza’s?) that there is no more likeness between God and our conception of God than between the constellation Canis and a dog. “God may not be Love:” I do not believe you: but if He is not Love, He will be some celestial form of Love, corresponding to our Love, only infinitely better. “You will not retain your individuality:” possibly not, but certainly we shall have something corresponding to individuality, only better. And so of the rest. We shall talk humbly, as beseems our microcosmic faculties; we are but the transitory tenants of a little world, which is to the Universe but as a dew-drop to the ocean: yet even a dew-drop exhibits the same infrangible laws of light and the same divine glories that are manifested in the rainbow and the sunset. So it is with a human soul: there are laws in it of righteousness and justice and retribution—laws which cannot be broken by the fictions and illusions of theology, but must be manifested in all places and in all time, now and for all eternity, on earth, in Heaven, in Hell. Footnote 36: Has not some confusion of thought arisen from a habit of confusing “just” with “severe”? I believe some men would feel more reverently towards God, if they would speak, not of His “justice,” but of His “fairness.” XXVII PAULINE THEOLOGY MY DEAR ——,