wholly unlearn his nasty tricks of vice and crime, and become a model of sound morality, infusing an unwonted energy into the police department, and inflating public worship with an unprecedented pomp and magnificence. Otherwise I cannot understand how the Lord, with a full knowledge of the character and tendencies of Judas Iscariot, yet chose him into the number of the sacred twelve, and entrusted him with the provision of his and their material welfare. But the gentleman is infinitely short of the MAN; and however gentlemanly the devil will infallibly grow, there he will stop, and leave the sacred heights of manhood unattained."
Hell, even at its worst, exercises a vast use to men, a most important and direct aid in our regeneration. Our own evil loves, hereditary and acquired, connect us organically with its deepest recesses. We cannot be extricated from this spiritual abyss, unless we are made conscious of our being there; unless we see ourselves as interiorly evil and corrupt; and unless we are driven to the Lord and the Word by strong conviction of sin, a fearful sense of its overwhelming power over us, and of our own utter helplessness against its direful assaults. This is effected by the influx of hell into our interiors, when our secret evil and falsehood
