[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPEC/TAT0U:] Sin,—Pray allow me to
assure Mr. Greg that I never intended my little parable as "an argument enough to build a creed upon," but only as an argument for not thinking it meritorious on the part of Miss Martineau to be contented with the prospect of anni- hilation for other people, however satisfied she might be with her own "noble share" of existence. Agnostics (amongst whom Mr. Greg is certainly not to be connted) are perpetually taunting believers in God with the selfishness of their personal gratitude to Him, while so many of their fellows are miserable. This accusa- tion seems to me to be much more applicable to those who, because they have had enough good in this world to satisfy their very limited longings, are quite contented, and declare they have found "a spring in the desert," when they think they have closed the door of future hope on those millions of sufferers for whom every saint confidently expects an immortality, wherein their earthly woes shall be more than compensated, and God's good- ness to them, as well as to the happy, amply vindicated.
Mr. Greg will find the argument, which he beautifully states, drawn from God's love to good men as a proof of their immor- tality set forth in a very striking way in Mr. Newman's "Theism," p. 75. As Keshub Chunder Son once said to me, "Faith in God and in our eternal union with Him are not two articles of our
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