angels, reveres reverence, and lives with God. The less we have to do
with our sins, the better. No man can afford to waste his moments in
compunctions. "That is active duty," say the Hindoos, "which is not
for our bondage; that is knowledge, which is for our liberation; all
other duty is good only unto weariness."

Another dogma, growing out of this pernicious theologic limitation,
is this Inferno. Swedenborg has devils. Evil, according to old
philosophers, is good in the making. That pure malignity can exist,
is the extreme proposition of unbelief. It is not to be entertained
by a rational agent; it is atheism; it is the last profanation.
Euripides rightly said,--

"Goodness and being in the gods are one; He who imputes ill to them
makes them none."

To what a painful perversion had Gothic theology arrived, that
Swedenborg admitted no conversion for evil spirits! But the divine
effort is never relaxed; the carrion in the sun will convert itself
to grass and flowers; and man, though in brothels, or jails, or on
gibbets, is on his way to all that is good and true. Burns, with the
wild humor of his apostrophe to "poor old Nickie Ben,"

"O wad ye tak a thought, and mend!"

has the advantage of the vindictive theologian. Everything is
superficial, and perishes, but love and truth only. The largest is
always the truest sentiment, and we feel the more generous spirit of
the Indian Vishnu,-"I am the same to all mankind. There is not one who
is worthy of my love or hatred. They who serve me with adoration,--I