The words everlasting and forever are continually used in Scripture to indicate a long time,—not necessarily an eternity (see Cruden for many proofs). Moreover, if all hope of improvement ends with this life (a doctrine in which such extremes as Atheism and Calvinism strangely agree), what becomes of all the commonest forms of humanity, its intermediate failures, too bad for a heaven and too good for a hell; to say less of insane, idiotic, and other helpless creatures; and the millions of the untaught in Christendom, who never have had a chance, and billions of the Heathen brutalised through the ages by birth and evil custom? Yes; for all there must be in the near hereafter continuous new chances of improvement and hopes of better life.
There is one poem in the volume superadded to my Dramatics which I will introduce here, as it is quite a tour de force in its way of double rhyming throughout, and has, moreover, excellent moral uses: so I wish it read more widely.
Behind the Veil.
"Mysteries! crowding around us,
How ye perplex and confound us,—
Each our ignorance screening
Hidden in words without meaning!
"Who knoweth aught that is certain
Veil'd behind mystery's curtain?
Seeing the wisest of guesses
Foolishness only expresses.
"Ancestry? ruthlessly moulding
Bodies and souls in unfolding;
How such a mixture confuses
Judgment's indulgent excuses,—
"While the derivative nature,
Still a responsible creature,
Yields individual merits,
Biassed by what it inherits.
"Circumstance? mighty to fashion
Instant occasion for passion,
Gripping with clutch of a bandit
Weakness too weak to withstand it,—
"What? shall it mar me or make me?
Neither, till faith shall forsake me—
For, with good courage to nerve me,
Circumstance only can serve me!
"Destiny? doth it then seem so?
Or can the will we esteem so,
Change the decree at a bidding,
Us of that destiny ridding,—