Now, you know that, among the best and wisest of our present religious teachers, there is a gradual tendency to disbelieve, and to preach their disbelief, in the commonly received ideas of the Devil, and of his place, and his work. While, among some of our equally well-meaning, but far less wise, religious teachers, there is, in consequence, a panic spreading in anticipation of the moral dangers which must follow on the loss of the help of the Devil. One of the last appearances in public of the author of the 'Christian Year' was at a conclave of clergymen assembled in defense of faith in damnation.[A] The sense of the meeting generally was, that there _must_ be such a place as hell, because no one would ever behave decently upon earth unless they were kept in wholesome fear of the fires beneath it: and Mr. Keble, especially insisting on this view, related a story of an old woman who had a wicked son, and who, having lately heard with horror of the teaching of Mr. Maurice and others, exclaimed pathetically, "My son is bad enough as it is, and if he were not afraid of hell, what would become of him!" (I write from memory, and cannot answer for the words, but I can for their purport.) [A] _Physical_ damnation, I should have said. It is strange how seldom pain of heart is spoken of as a possible element of future, or as the worst of present pain. 50. Now, my friend, I am afraid that I must incur the charge of such presumption as may be involved in variance from _both_ these systems of teaching. I do not merely _believe_ there is such a place as hell. I _know_ there is such a place; and I know also that when men have got to the point of believing virtue impossible but through dread of it, they have got _into_ it. I mean, that according to the distinctness with which they hold such a creed, the stain of nether fire has passed upon them. In the depth of his heart Mr. Keble could not have entertained the thought for an instant; and I believe it was only as a conspicuous sign to the religious world of the state into which they were sinking, that this creed, possible in its sincerity only to the basest of them, was nevertheless appointed to be uttered by the lips of the most tender, gracious, and beloved of their teachers.