its cause is no punishment. According to True Theism, the best way of explaining the apparent injustice in this world and at the same time vindicating the Infinite Justice of God is to believe only this-that man is to live after death. If God is just, man must be immortal. Thus our idea of God's justice necessitates our faith in future life. Either God is all-just, or man mortal. If God is just and has eyes to see and love to feel, He must take up in His own hand the cause of righteousness. A just God cannot see thousands of His children butchered by demons in human shape. His Justice will compel Him to come down here and stem the current of such horrible injustice. None but an unjust God could delight to see such a painful spectacle of massacre. Even we who are blind and partial to ourselves are indignant at the iniquities of others. We may excuse our own shortcomings, but when we judge of others the inherent and instinctive sense of justice within us makes our blood boil, when we see them inflict any kind of oppression upon the weak. Can the Infinite Justice then tolerate such things? Think not, O thou fool, that death is the falling off of the last curtain. No! death removes no one from the judgment of God. Death is not the last scene-there is an eternal thread running after death, and you should therefore come to no conclusion till you

see all the scenes enacted. Wait therefore till you see the whole drama gone through. There is no escape from the punishment of sin. The idea of God's judgment is beautifully pictured

in the Bible.

If God is good, He must help the repentant and prayerful sinners. There is a dozen of Brahmos groping in the dark-in need of guidance and immediate help. The God of mercy draws near to them and assures them of His redeeming mercy. Suppose death suddenly takes off their bodies. And if He is true to His word, can these men cease to live or go away into the other world, weeping? If God is with them and they are conscious of it, they must go away rejoicing. A man would be considered inhuman and a heartless traitor, if he betrayed his trust or church. And know ye not that God is our responsible Father? If He is Father and we are His children, He is morally bound to protect us against destruction. His promise must be redeemed so long as moral purity, absolute goodness and infinite justice dwell in Him. If He can do otherwise and prove Himself a deceitful traitor, we must seek another God who will live with us not only here, but throughout eternity. Thus our idea of God's goodness also necessitates our faith in immortality. Here then in your intuitive sense of Divine goodness and justice is a scene

you

heavenly-which shows that you are made of some other stuff than of earthly elements. It is this which is shocked when we see those ferocious animals in human shape, who tyrannize over the poor and the weak. It makes you not only resent and recoil at the misdeeds of the wicked but makes feel yourself satisfied when you see them severely punished, not because you wish ill of them, but because you daily implore God's justice and mercy and pray for a paradise on earth. Therefore that little thing, the sense of justice, is a Divine principle in humanity, without which religion and our faith in God and immortality would be impossible. The history of the world shows that there has been rebellion in this sense against any kind of injustice committed by men. It has dethroned monarchs and brought down the despots. In God's Kingdom there is full sixteen annas justice, no half justice, no one-fourth justice, no fifteen and half annas justice. The Divine Justice must be satisfied fully in its every dealing with man.

Our

Man is because God is; hence is the proposition "In Him I live and move and have my being." The soul lives in the house of God, although the temporal appendages fall off. God is eternal, and, since death cannot separate the bond between Humanity and Divinity, I am also immortal.

W

Therefore to believe in yourself is to believe in God; to believe in God is to believe in an infinitely just God, and to believe in such a God is to believe in the retribution of our works in future life.

AG

FUTURE LIFE. III.

GAIN, if God is infinitely wise, He is bound to see the ultimate consummation of His perfect design in the creation of mankind. Granted that there is no next world: men and women come and die: that God creates them only for partial development; it would indicate not only God's intellectual weakness, but it would be a libel against His wisdom. For, an infinitely wise God cannot form schemes only to be half or partially accomplished. When we see that He has given us a nature to enjoy eternity, how can we believe that we have come into existence only to enjoy a short span of this life? Why did God give us spiritual and progressive constitution, if He knew that it was to perish with the body? "Eat, drink and be merry" is this your and my destiny? No! Our Father is wise and infinitely holy, and although nobody can enter into the

a

[Substance of an unpublished lecture, delivered by our Minister in the Brahmo School, 1, Mirzapore Street, on Saturday, 8th March, 1873.]