[1] If Scripture be certainly true, then the most terrible
passages in it are certainly true; nothing is more hardly
believed by men than that which will be most tormenting to
their minds, when it is believed that none shall be saved
but the regenerate and holy; and those that live not after
the flesh, but the Spirit, and love God in Christ above all
the world, even their own lives; and that, besides these
few, all the rest shall be tormented in hell for ever. This
is the doctrine that flesh and blood will hardly down with.
They say or think they will never believe that God will be
so unmerciful; as if God must needs be less merciful than
man, because He is more just and holy, and will not be so
indulgent to their flesh and sin as they are themselves,
and would have Him to be. And I have known even godly men,
through the remnant of their corruption and darkness in the
things of God, and the violence of temptation, much
troubled with their unbelief in this particular. But God
cannot lie the Scripture being true, and the Christian
religion certainly true, every part of it must needs be
true. But because sensual nature looks for sensible
demonstration or proof, let me ask the unbelievers this one
question--"Do you believe that which you see and feel, and
all the world feels as well as you?" You know that all
mankind liveth here a life of trouble and misery; we come
into the world in a very poor condition, and we pass
through it in daily labour and sorrow, and we pass out of
it through the dreadful pangs of death. What incessant
labour have the most of them, how much want and misery, how
much care and grief! Do you not see and feel how sicknesses
do torment us? When one pain is over, another is at hand.
Have you not seen some under such terrible fits of the
gout, or stone, or other diseases, that they thought no
torment could be greater; some with their legs rotting and
must be cut off; some with loathsome cancers and leprosies
on them many years together; some that have lost their
eyesight, have lost almost all the comfort of life; some
that never could see; some that never could hear or speak?
I have known some in such pain that they have cried out
they did not believe there was greater in hell; some are
mad, and some idiots: are not all these in a very miserable
case? Now I would ask you further if God may, without any
unmercifulness, do all this to men, and that as a
chastisement in the way to bring them to repentance; if He
may, without unmercifulness, make a David cry out in
misery, and wash his couch with his tears; and make a Job
to lie scraping his sores on a dunghill; why should you
think he cannot, without unmercifulness, torment incurable
sinners in hell? Further, I would ask you this question;
suppose you had lived in Adam's paradise, or some condition
of pleasure and rest, where you never had tasted of
sickness, or labour, or want, or feared death, if God's
Word had there told you, but that man shall endure so much
misery as I have mentioned and men daily suffer, and should
die at last for his sin, would you have said, "I will never
believe God would be so unmerciful?" You that say so now,
would likely have said so then in this case; for feeling
the pleasure yourselves, you would on the same ground have
said, "God is unmerciful if He should make man so
miserable;" and yet you see and feel that God doth it, and
we know that He is not unmerciful.--_Baxter,_ 1615-1691.
[2] Suffering comes to us through and from our whole nature. It
cannot be winked out of sight. It cannot be thrust into a
subordinate place in the picture of human life. It is the
chief burden of history. It is the solemn theme of one of
the highest departments of literature, the tragic drama. It
gives to fictions their deep interest: it wails through
much of our poetry. A large part of human vocations are
intended to shut up some of its avenues. It has left traces
on every human countenance over which years have passed. It
is not to a few the most vivid recollection of
life.--_W. Ellery Channing._
[3] God indeed tells us of Hell, but it is to persuade us to
flee to heaven; and as a skilful painter fills the
background of his picture with his darker colours, God
introduces the smoke of torment, and the black
thunderclouds of Sinai, to give brighter prominence to
Jesus, the Cross of Calvary, and His love to the chief of
sinners.
His voice of terror is like the scream of the mother-bird
when the hawk is in the sky. She alarms her brood, that
they may run and hide beneath her feathers; and as I
believe that God hath left that mother dumb unless He had
given her wings to cover them, I am sure that He, who is
very "pitiful," and has no pleasure in any creature's pain,
had never turned our eyes to the horrible gulf unless for
the voice that cries, "Deliver from going down to the pit,
for I have found a ransom."
We had never heard of sin had there been no Saviour. We had
never heard of hell had there been no heaven. "Sufficient
for the day is the evil thereof." And never had Bible light
flashed before the eyes of the sleeping felon, to wake him
from his happy dream, but that he might see the smiling
form of Mercy, and hear her as she says, with finger
pointing the way, "Behold I have set before thee an open
door."--_Guthrie._