Now it does not require a very profound intelligence to see that popular theology is a mass of contradictions in regard to these things. By eternal the ordinary Christian usually means everlasting; why should punishment be everlasting? The worst sin that was ever sinned does not deserve everlasting punishment, and I have never yet met the Christian who would really and truly be willing to see a fellow-creature undergo it. There is no understandable sense in which justice could demand such a terrible sentence, even if it involved no more than everlasting unhappiness; how much more unthinkable it becomes if the punishment is to be everlasting, fiendish torment! If Salvation is first and foremost deliverance from this punishment, how is it that it does not take effect immediately? Justice would suggest that it ought to do so, for some sinners live a merry life until the eleventh hour, and then give God "the last snuff of the candle" as Father Taylor put it, whereas others repent early but never manage, all through a long life, to escape the suffering caused by their own deeds in youth. In some cases, at any rate, on this side of the grave, Salvation does not involve the least remission of penalty, while in others apparently no penalty will ever be endured either on this side of death or on the other. The poor drunkard who repents does not find that repentance gives him back his wrecked constitution, but the selfish, grasping, cruel-hearted wrecker of homes and lives may just be in time with his trust in the "finished work," and go right home to glory while his victims struggle and suffer on amid the conditions he has made for them on earth. Curious justice this! +Christian thought never quite consistent about Death and after.+--There is no need to labour the point; popular evangelical views of the punishment of sin are incredible when looked at in a common-sense way. But they are even more chaotic on the subject of death and whatever follows death. It does not seem to be generally recognised that Christian thought has never been really clear concerning the Resurrection, especially in relation to future judgment. One view has been that the deceased saint lies sleeping in the grave until the archangel's trump shall sound and bid all mankind awake for the great assize. Anyone who reads the New Testament without prejudice will see that this was Paul's earlier view, although later on he changed it for another. There is a good deal of our current, everyday religious phraseology which presumes it still-- "Father, in thy gracious keeping Leave we now thy servant sleeping."