church, and the memorizing of creeds; they have somehow taken it into their heads that the best service of the Creator consists in acts of beneficence to his creatures. Hence millions of men, who were excellent husbands and fathers; and millions of women, who were amiable wives and tender mothers; hence, too, millions of both sexes, who were intent through life on living usefully and beneficently for mankind, omitted to get religion, join a church, and save their immortal souls.

"Well, we prize highly in hell those virtues which heaven holds so cheap, and when we see a tithe of the good which results therefrom to the world effected by evangelical conversion, we shall prize that too; but at present-such is the dimness of our spiritual vision-we hold that same conversion about as cheaply as the saints hold the moral and social virtues-to be valued it must be spiritually discerned, no doubt.

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Well, thus it has happened, that myriads of the most brilliant and gifted of mortals have, by the deceptive light of philoso

phy, or the bewildering glare of genius, neglected to commit their creeds, and blundered down to the infernal pit. However, retaining still those social and moral virtues, (for there is no change after death,) they compose a most splendid and delectable society where they are, and the same goes far toward rendering hell a very tolerable place of abode."

A slight noise here called off the elder's attention for a moment, and on his resuming it Paddle was clean gone-not even a streak of mist was visible. "Can it be?" exclaimed the elder, in utter bewilderment. "Can my senses a second time have been deceiving me? Impossible; for I should never, of myself, have thought of matters so new, and startling. Heigh-o! Well, I must keep them to myself, or I shall be suspected of having talked these strange things to my own ear, and my orthodoxy will thus fall under suspicions." So concluding, the elder went in and took his seat near the kitchen fire by his spouse Dorothy Tub.

CHAPTER IV.

The elder experienceth a huge expansion of ideas in regard to the magnitude of the earth; whereupon Paddle-finding Mr. Tub's ideas in a growing state—greatly addeth to their enlargement by convincing him of the stupendous dimensions of the lower world, and the numerousness of its inhabitants.

On the third night of our narrative elder Tub would not trust himself out of doors, for although Paddle had proved a harmless. visitant in his former interviews, yet the elder felt an undefinable fear of him, and a mistrust as to the purpose of his visits; he therefore kept himself close in the chimney corner, and was employed through most of the evening in perusing a map of the globe. The great magnitude of the earth had never loomed so largely to his mental vision as it then did, and he was utterly amazed as his mind gradually expanded to a realization of it. Ever and anon he muttered his astonishment to Dorothy Tub, who occupied