No human being has imagination enough to conceive of this infinite
horror.
All that the human race has suffered in war and want, in pestilence and
famine, in fire and flood,--all the pangs and pains of every disease
and every death--all this is as nothing compared with the agonies to be
endured by one lost soul.
This is the consolation of the Christian religion. This is the justice
of God--the mercy of Christ.
This frightful dogma, this infinite lie, made me the implacable enemy of
Christianity. The truth is that this belief in eternal pain has been
the real persecutor. It founded the Inquisition, forged the chains, and
furnished the fagots. It has darkened the lives of many millions. It
made the cradle as terrible as the coffin. It enslaved nations and shed
the blood of countless thousands. It sacrificed the wisest, the bravest
and the best. It subverted the idea of justice, drove mercy from the
heart, changed men to fiends and banished reason from the brain.
Like a venomous serpent it crawls and coils and hisses in every orthodox
creed.
It makes man an eternal victim and God an eternal fiend. It is the one
infinite horror. Every church in which it is taught is a public curse.
Every preacher who teaches it is an enemy of mankind. Below this
Christian dogma, savagery cannot go. It is the infinite of malice,
hatred, and revenge.
Nothing could add to the horror of hell, except the presence of its
creator, God.
While I have life, as long as I draw breath, I shall deny with all my
strength, and hate with every drop of my blood, this infinite lie.
Nothing gives me greater joy than to know that this belief in eternal
pain is growing weaker every day--that thousands of ministers are
ashamed of it. It gives me joy to know that Christians are
becoming merciful, so merciful that the fires of hell are burning
low--flickering, choked with ashes, destined in a few years to die out
forever.
For centuries Christendom was a madhouse. Popes, cardinals, bishops,
priests, monks and heretics were all insane.
Only a few--four or five in a century were sound in heart and brain.
Only a few, in spite of the roar and din, in spite of the savage cries,
heard reason's voice. Only a few in the wild rage of ignorance, fear and
zeal preserved the perfect calm that wisdom gives.
We have advanced. In a few years the Christians will become--let us
hope--humane and sensible enough to deny the dogma that fills the
endless years with pain. They ought to know now that this dogma is
utterly inconsistent with the wisdom, the justice, the goodness of their
God. They ought to know that their belief in hell, gives to the Holy
Ghost--the Dove--the beak of a vulture, and fills the mouth of the Lamb
of God with the fangs of a viper.