Stripping our author’s views of the unusual phraseology in which they are disguised, they do, so far as regards the essential fact of man’s loss and redemption, coincide exactly with the orthodox teaching of the Church of England.  Man is by nature and sinfulness in a spiritual sense dead; dead now, and doomed to a worse death hereafter.  By believing in Christ he at once obtains some share of a better spiritual life, and the hope of a future life which shall be perfectly holy and happy.  Surely this is no new discovery.  It is the type of Christianity implied in the Liturgy of the Church, and weekly set out from her thousands of pulpits.  The startling novelties of Man and his Dwelling-Place are in matters of detail.  He holds that fearful thing, Damnation, which orthodox views push off into a future world, to be a present thing.  It is now men are damned.  It is now men are in hell.  Wicked men are now in a state of damnation:  they are now in hell.  The common error arises from our thinking damnation a state of suffering.  It is not.  It is a state of something worse than suffering, viz., of sin:—­

We find it hard to believe that damnation can he a thing men like.  But does not—­what every being likes depend on what it is?  Is corruption less corruption, in man’s view, because worms like it?  Is damnation less damnation, in God’s view, because men like it?  And God’s view is simply the truth.  Surely one object of a revelation must be to show us things from God’s view of them, that is. as they truly are.  Sin truly is damnation, though to us it is pleasure.  That sin is pleasure to us, surely is the evil part of our condition.

And indeed it is to be admitted that there is a great and much-forgotten truth implied here.  It is a very poor, and low, and inadequate idea of Christianity, to think of it merely as something which saves from suffering—­as something which saves us from hell, regarded merely as a place of misery.  The Christian salvation is mainly a deliverance from sin.  The deliverance is primarily from moral evil; and only secondarily from physical or moral pain.  ’Thou shalt call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins.’  No doubt this is very commonly forgotten.  No doubt the vulgar idea of salvation and perdition founds on the vulgar belief that pain is the worst of all things, and happiness the best of all things.  It is well that the coarse and selfish type of religion which founds on the mere desire to escape from burning and to lay hold of bliss, should be corrected by the diligent instilling of the belief, that sin is worse than sorrow.  The Saviour’s compassion, though ever ready to well out at the sight of suffering, went forth most warmly at the sight of sin.