ETERNAL PUNISHMENT. The spirit in which this awful subject sub-ject is discussed by the general press, is, we fear, a mark of the absence in modern character of that reverential fear, which is the beginning of wisdom. wis-dom. Hell, under whatever aspect we view it, whether as a certain or uncertain j condition of future existence, whether I as temporary or everlasting in duration, dura-tion, whether accompanied or not with positive torments, is no subject for demon or senseless levity. The very mystery" that veils the dread expanse ex-panse into which the soul must plunge bereaved and palpitating, after, a violent and atronized throp. one hi- to inspire us with a feeling of suppliant horror. The brazen front that dares contemplate con-template this impending woe with jocose indifference s t'he forehead of a fool. The bloodless heart that shudders shud-ders not at the o'ershadowing of its bare possibility is the heart of an infidel. in-fidel. Ye approach the subject with dread, and only because flippant impiety demands de-mands this of use The doctrine of eternal punishment for the reprobate is conservative of every human interest, inter-est, and of. every human hope for here or hereafter. To treat it with that familiarity that savors of contempt. though unworthy of sense or humanity, is a subtle and successful method of insinuating this dangerous innovation into modern thought. The gates of hell that is the positive aggression of hell's power are not so fatal to the redeemed soul, as the removal re-moval from its convictions of the solemn dread of futurity. Where those gates may not prevail, the artifice may easily prevail that masks them from our view, or shrouds' them in uncertainty, uncer-tainty, or covers them with flowers stolen from the Eden of God's mercy. Herein the Prince of Darkness is cast out in Beelzebub, but this casting of him out from human apprehension is for him only a triumph and a gain. The outburst of rabid denunciation of God's justice that characterizes Protestant preaching on this subject is the final goal that their godless system sys-tem can reach. Perierunt cum Sonitu (they have perished with a clamor), will be the epitaph the future shall describe over the tomb where their last vital spark of Christian belief lies quenched forever. Rebelling jn the beginning from all authorative inter-, pretation of the divine mind, this faction fac-tion has found itself constantly face to face with difficulties both of reason and revelation . that it could neither surmount nor avoid. The. Sacred Scriptures Scrip-tures it boasted as its charter of reconstruction, re-construction, became for it a stumbling block and a snare. Reason, which it pointed to as the foundation stone of its shapeless edifice upheaved againwt it and brought the fabric block by block about its ears. Some form remained to the scattered fragments to show where they once fitted and how they were, for a time, sustained, but the wear and tear of elements, social and mental, divested these of all modelling, and now the miserable ruin lies a mass of in-eohertnl in-eohertnl rubbish. There is no longer among the sects even a pretense of knowing, or trying to know, what God has taught. Modern Protestant congregations (and they are a law both to themselves and to their preacher) will not hear what reason teaches. A morbid tenderness, bred of nerve and ganglion, not of brave humanity or -Christian compassion; compas-sion; a mawkish sentimentallsm. growing out of concupiscence; J.hese form their rule of ethical maxim and religious creed. . To accept the doctrine of hell, man needs a nobler and vaster physical energy en-ergy than is consistent with such spiritual spir-itual enervation. To accept the doctrine of evei lasting 1o!-y and everlasting pain, man must apprehend God and comprehend iin. That is, he must find his joy in the Creator, and not in the creature, be detached de-tached from sens? and the things of sense. But to recoil from the idea of just retribution, to wave aside God's just but terrible vengeance is more pleasant than this dull process of self- We are quite aware that this is a. more fitting subject for the pulpit or the spiritual conference than for a newspaper article, but when such a subject is bandied from sheec to sheet of the secular press with every non-chalence, non-chalence, a Catholic paper has the right . at least, if not the duty, to treat it with becoming seriousness. And have we not heard the insidious echo of this baneful bane-ful conspiracy agaiiiet truth in the half-uttered half-uttered sentiment from Catholic lips that this new doctrine was pleasant to the view, and good to the taste like the . evil fruit that brought ruin on the world? It is not quite so innocent a -thing as one. might imagine, to say: "I ' wish I could believe there was no hell." The wLh involves a desire of the tri- ' umph of falsehood over truth and of sin over God's justice, and it more -than indicates a latent talent for burst- -ing the bonds of law and conscience ' and subjecting the spiritual to the ani- nial nature. There are motives suffic-U-nt to oblige us to view this subject . with Christian awe, anJ Catholic sub- -mission t. truth, . - - The doctri.: cfhell for the true Cath- olic is the sanction, of lite faith, and the redress f his and the Church's sufferings arid -patient submission. If "4 there be ,no e ternal runishment, there can be "no Vtejrnal justice; if there be - no eternal justice, there is- no God. Go J Sin Hell--thtise are three neces- A warily dependent ideas. Given any two H of them, the' third is peremptory. If thc:e be God and hell, "there 'must lieL sin: if there besin'anJ htll; there must i t be God; if there hesin 'and God, there must be hell; if there be sin and no hell, there is no God. This doctrine is woven Into the fabric of man's moral convictions.-. It is preached in every disorder that has ever afflicted creation. It is proclaimed, with all the dread array of place and time and circumstance, and pic tured with every dismal accessory of woo by the Divine Teacher Himself. It remains to the yet uncreated portion of the world, the source of truthful and saving fear, without which higher motives mo-tives of good have been proved powerless power-less to sustain passion and lead us to our end. Hell is a consoling doctrine, because truth is consoling; because justice is consoling. It is the truth that is vindicated vindi-cated in the everlasting separation of the unrepentant sinner from the source nf all truth. It is justice that it meted out at last, when the traitor to God and his fellow-man, carrying wih him his unexniated reason into a world where expiation is impossible, bringing with him into eternity an evil that never can be changed, plunges into a state of irredeemable, ir-redeemable, loss, that is, of irredeemable irredeem-able woe, for hell is the loss of God. I Add to that what torments imagination may conceive, and there is no increase to the unspeakable affliction. ' 1 l