It appears that a certain passage in Mr, Fryer's recent lecture on Pargatory gave rise to sume alight feeling of disquietude the part of a few of the audience, who, it is thought, may have misapprehended what he said upon the subject. We therefore accede to a suggestion which has reached us that we should print his remarks exactly ws they were read on that occassie We in this nineteenth century live in glass houses, and cannot afford to throw stones at the Chinam popular hell. Some most graphic descriptions and pictures of the torments carried on or hereafter to be carried on in our Christian hell are still in existence and we should not have to go far to find them.* They are devoutly believed in by a great among ourselves, although scarce y one whit behind those of the "Jade Register." Indeed, they go beyond them in one very essential feature, in being eternal and nou-remedial. Thi however such a delicate subject in mat people's minds that I will not enter upon it here; but merely express my conviction that the so-called "orthodox" Christian hell and the Chinese purgatory are both destined to an early doom, proportion as knowledge and morality, civilization and Christian charity, have advanced, hell has been among ourselves a fast dimi ishing ity. Teuchings formerly understood literal are now taken as figurative, so that he must be a daring and reckless preacher who would venture to preach the old-fashioned doctrine of hell. and damnation with fire and bemstoue accompaniments in all its entirety now-n-dose! Will not further progress in these particulars termin: in its utter extinction, paradise everywhere steadily encroaching og. Pictures at the Roman Catholic establishment at Fung-wang Shan, or "The Mills:" and writings of Faruiss, J. H. Newnan, George Bull, and Spurgeon fin his earlier years, on purgatory, until at last the whole universe of matter and spirit composes one unbroken heaven? A noteworthy writer on this subject from whom I have borrowed several of my ideas says, According to the nebular hypothesis the entire creation was once a measureless chaos—confuaion, conflict, collisions, explosions, making a universal hell of matter, But the discords and perturbations grew ever less and less, regularity and order more and more, as suns and planets and moons took form and wheeled in their] arning circles, till now the mazy web of worlds is weaving throughout space the perfect harmony of the Creator's design, May we not trust that the evolution of incarnate spiritual destinies, though infinitely more complex than the material, will yet be as complete as the evolution ut the astronomic motions already is;—and a Divine Empire of holy and happy' men be the goal of history But the doctrines of hell and purgatory whether in Europe or Asia have played #0 tremendous a part in the religions history of the world that they must be based on great truth, however travestied and over-Jaid that truth may be. This frightful envelope of sinpersiitions fictions carnot be without sume important and awful reality within, What than is that reality It is simply this;—Hell is @ state and not a place, It is a state of opposition to the will of God, and every sinner hag a different hell within him as original and idiosyncratic as his soul and its contents, While this opposition to the Divine will lusts, however long that may be, hell rei When it is removed, hell departs and heaven comes, Let the heart belong to Mongolian or Caucasian, and call the process conversion or regeneration or shat you will, the principle i the same, Hence nothing can save the masses of China from their abject propelling fears of the Buddhist or Taoist hell, that does not tend to enable them to understand, love, obey, and be in complete harmony with the Divine will or purpose. No amount of mere intellectual or acientifie tenching alone will effect this, although it is the chief means for preparing the way, Kaw Reports,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.