Alpacas

THE ALPACAS.

The Expository Times for May [1901], in noticing a new book on "Salvation After Death," says: "A writer in the Nineteenth Century once said that he understood what would become of the sheep and what would become of the goats; it was the alpacas he was concerned about. [The author's] concern is about the alpacas also." I suppose that these two gentlemen knew that they are not sheep, and are unwilling to acknowledge themselves to be goats; so they have raised the question about alpacas. They are two of a great multitude who imagine that there will be some kind of gap between the sheep and the goats in the day of judgment, into which they can slip and glide through without being badly hurt. They are like a man of whom P. B. Wiles used to tell. He was asked if he was a member of the church. He replied, "I used to be, but the church which I belonged to split on politics." "Well, with which side did you go?" "I didn't go with either; I went with the split." The alpacas hope to go with the split, but what concerns them is that when they fall through the split, they don't know where they are to land(J. W. McGarvey, Short Essays in Biblical Criticism - 1910).