"LITERARY TRIFLERS."
[To THE ED/TOR OV TAN "SPROTATOR.1 Sru,—At the risk of seeming perhaps a little too sharp on the writer of a short and not unkind notice of my book on Con- ditional Immortality in last week's issue, may I beg leave to say (in view of those readers who may have taken his words quite seriously) that I certainly did not design to class the Spectator with those "literary triflers" on religious subjects for whom, . as I suppose, Christianity announces a fearful doom hereafter? The fact is that in this work I felt bound to consider not only what the New Testament teaches on the nature of future punish- ment, but also what it teaches on the further question, Who are the wicked I and having drawn out a catalogue of persons to whom hell is threatened by Christ and his Apostles, I have tried to direct the attention of the modern classes most like to them to the formidable inference which affects themselves. Among the analogues of the " Scribes" of Christ's time, I have certainly, in one place, mentioned "literary triflers" in this catalogue. In quite different places, I have also, in short notes, drawn attention, perhaps with too much edge, to what seem to me three favourite heresies of the Spectator, but assuredly the last thought occurring to me would have been to reckon the Spectator in the black category above referred to. One must have read your pages very carelessly for ten years not to recognise in them, even when differing in judgment on the sub- jects of dogs, free-churchmaaship, and the Second Advent (the three topics remarked on), perhaps the most seriously helpful of all our weekly aids to reflection on things both seen and un- seen. It is therefore not for your sake, but for my own, that I reluctantly ask admission for these few exculpatory lines.—I am,
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