The little boy who asked his mother “if hell was worse than the
toothache?” imagined that the limits of suffering were reached in his
agony. Many of us have doubtless experienced pain that we thought marked
the utmost of endurance. In the Christian dream of future punishment man
is represented as burning eternally. Fire probably inflicts the intensest
pain that the human body has ever suffered. Hell is fitly represented by
fire.
Suffering takes various shapes. Pain comes in a thousand forms. But there
is a limit to the endurance of pain. Unconsciousness comes to the relief
of the mind when agony can no longer be borne. Hell, such as has been
taught by Christianity, is not a logical conclusion. All suffering that we
know anything about ends itself. The victim is released by exhaustion.
Hell is impossible.
The finer suffering which is called remorse, which follows wrong-doing,
gradually wears out. Its lash loses its sting. The sinner becomes callous
to his act or finds a balm for his regret in the lapse of years. The
finger of time erases the memory of every wrong, and soothes with its
touch every pang. We can escape the fate of wrong-doing by doing better.
Reform opens the door of every hell invented for man’s punishment. The man
who does right, wherever he is, will have the reward of right-doing, the
fate of right-doing.
It is this fact which makes the idea of endless pain for man’s deeds done
on earth illogical. Man can turn around on the road of evil as well as on
the road of good, and hence he can change his fate whenever he changes his
life. The measure of human suffering makes it impossible for man to endure
pain forever. He must either perish utterly as a sentient being or be
driven by his punishment to better behavior.
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No man ever yet tore down his altar and found a God behind it.
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Trying to find God is a good deal like looking for money one has lost in a
dream.
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We could believe in God if he shortened the road for the lame, led the
blind or fed the starving.
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We are told that “all things are possible with God,” and yet God cannot
boil an egg in cold water.