SOME time ago a Clergyman was proving to me by arguments many and
strong that hell was right, necessary and just; that it brought glory
to God and good to man; that the holiness of God required it as a
preventive, and the justice of God exacted it as a penalty, of sin.
I listened quietly till all was over and silence fell on the reverend
denunciator; he ceased, satisfied with his arguments, triumphant in the
consciousness that they were crushing and unassailable. But my eyes were
fixed on the fair scene without the library window, on the sacrament
of earth, the visible sign of the invisible beauty, and the contrast
between God's works and the Church's speech came strongly upon me. And
all I found to say in answer came in a few words: "If I had not heard
you mention the name of God, I should have thought you were speaking of
the Devil." The words, dropped softly and meditatively, had a startling
effect. Horror at the blasphemy, indignation at the unexpected result of
laboured argument, struggled against a dawning feeling that there must
be something wrong in a conception which laid itself open to such
a blow; the short answer told more powerfully than half an hour's
reasoning.
The various classes of orthodox Christian doctrines should be attacked
in very different styles by the champions of the great army of
free-thinkers, who are at the present day besieging the venerable
superstitions of the past. Around the Deity of Jesus cluster many
hallowed memories and fond associations; the worship of centuries has
shed around his figure a halo of light, and he has been made into the
ideal of Humanity; the noblest conceptions of morality, the highest
flights of enlightened minds, have been enshrined in a human personality
and called by the name of Christ; the Christ-idea has risen and expanded
with every development of human progress, and the Christ of the highest
Christianity of the day is far other than the Christ of Augustine, of
Thomas a Kempis, of Luther, or Knox; the strivings after light, after
knowledge, after holiness, of the noblest sons of men have been
called by them a following of Jesus; Jesus is baptized in human tears,
crucified in human pains, glorified in human hopes. Because of all this,
because he is dear to human hearts and identified with human struggles,
therefore he should be gently spoken of by all who feel the bonds of
the brotherhood of man; the dogma of his Deity must be assailed, must be
overthrown, because it is false, because it destroys the unity of God,
because it veils from us the Eternal Spirit, the source of all things,
but he himself should be reverently spoken of, so far as truthfulness
permits, and this dogma, although persistently battled against, should
be attacked without anger and without scorn.
There are other doctrines which, while degrading in regard to man's
conception of God, and therefore deserving of reprobation, yet enshrine
great moral truths and have become bound up with ennobling lessons; such
is the doctrine of the Atonement, which enshrines the idea of selfless
love and of self-sacrifice for the good of humanity. There are others
again against which ridicule and indignation may rightly be brought to
bear, which are concessions to human infirmity, and which belong to the
childhood of the race; man may be laughed out of his sacraments and out
of his devils, and indignantly reminded that he insults God and degrades
himself by placing a priesthood or mediator between God and his own
soul. But there is one dogma of Orthodox Christianity which stands
alone in its atrocity, which is thoroughly and essentially bad, which is
without one redeeming feature, which is as blasphemous towards God as
it is injurious to man; on it therefore should be poured out unsparingly
the bitterest scorn and the sharpest indignation. There is no good human
emotion enlisted on the side of an Eternal Hell; it is not hallowed by
human love or human longings, it does not enshrine human aspirations,
nor is it the outcome of human hopes. In support of this no appeal
can be made to any feeling of the nobler side of our nature, nor does
eternal fire stimulate our higher faculties: it acts only on the lower,
baser, part of man; it excites fear, distrust of God, terror of his
presence; it may scare from evil occasionally, but can never teach good;
it sees God in the lightning-flash that slays, but not in the sunshine
which invigorates; in the avalanche which buries a village in its fall,
but not in the rich promise of the vineyard and the joyous beauty of
the summer day. Hell has driven thousands half-mad with terror, it
has driven monks to the solitary deserts, nuns to the sepulchre of the
nunnery, but has it ever caused one soul of man to rejoice in the Father
of all, and pant, "as the hart panteth after the water-springs, for the
presence of God"?
It is only just to state, in attacking this as a Christian doctrine,
that, though believed in by the vast majority of Christians, the most
enlightened of that very indefinite body repudiate it with one voice.
It is well known how the great Broad-Church leader, Frederick Denison
Maurice, endeavoured to harmonize, on this point, his Bible and his
strong moral sense, and failed in so doing, as all must fail who would
reconcile two contradictories. How he fought with that word "eternal,"
struggled to prove that whatever else it might mean it did _not_ mean
everlasting in our modern sense of the word: that "eternal death" being
the antithesis to "eternal life" must mean a state of ignorance of
the Eternal One, even as its opposite was the knowledge of God: that
therefore men could rise from eternal death, aye, did so rise every
day in this life, and might so rise in the life to come. Noble was
his protest against this awful doctrine, fettered as he was by undue
reverence for, and clinging to, the Bible. His appeal to the moral sense
in man as the arbiter of all doctrine has borne good fruit, and his
labours have opened a road to free thought greater than he expected or
even hoped. Many other clergymen have followed in his steps. The word
"eternal" has been wrangled over continually, but, however they arrive
there, all Broad Churchmen unite in the conclusion that it does not,
cannot, shall not, mean literally lasting for ever. This school of
thought has laid much stress on the fondness of Orientals for imagery;
they have pointed out that the Jewish word Gehenna is the same as Ge
Hinnom, or valley of Hinnom, and have seen in the state of that valley
the materials for "the worm that dieth not and the fire that is not
quenched:" they show how by a natural transition the place into which
were thrown the bodies of the worst criminals became the type of
punishment in the next world, and the valley where children were
sacrificed to Moloch gave its name to the infernal abode of devils. From
that valley Jesus drew his awful picture, suggested by the pale lurid
fires ever creeping there, mingling their ghastly flames with the
decaying bodies of the dishonoured dead. In all this there is probably
much truth, and many Broad Churchmen are content to accept this
explanation, and so retain their belief in the supernatural character
of the Bible, while satisfying their moral sense by rejecting its most
immoral dogma.
Among the evangelicals, only one voice, so far as I know, is heard
to protest against eternal torture; and all honour is due to the Rev.
Samuel Minton, for his rare courage in defying on this point the opinion
of his "world," and braving the censure which has been duly inflicted on
him. He seems to make "eternal" the equivalent of "irremediable" in some
cases and of "everlasting" in others. He believes that the wicked will
be literally destroyed, burnt up, consumed; the fact that the fire is
eternal by no means implies, he remarks, that that which is cast into
the fire should be likewise eternal, and that the fire is unquenchable
does not prove that the chaff is unconsumable. "Eternal destruction" he
explains as irreparable destruction, final and irreversible extinction.
This theory should have more to recommend it to all who believe in
the supernatural inspiration of the Bible, than the Broad Church
explanation; it uses far less violence towards the words of Scripture,
and, indeed, a very fair case may be made out for it from the Bible
itself.
It is scarcely necessary to add to this small list of dissentients from
orthodox Christianity, the Unitarian body; I do not suppose that there
is such a phenomenon in existence as a Unitarian Christian who believes
in an eternal hell.
With these small exceptions the mass of Christians hold this dogma, but
for the most part carelessly and uncomprehendingly. Many are ashamed of
it even while duteously confessing it, and gabble over the sentences in
their creed which acknowledge it in a very perfunctory manner. People
of this kind "do not like to talk about hell, it is better to think of
heaven." Some Christians, however, hold it strongly, and proclaim their
belief boldly; the members of the Evangelical Alliance actually make the
profession of it a condition of admittance into their body, while many
High Church divines think that a sharp declaration of their belief in
it is needed by loyalty towards God and "charity to the souls of men." I
wish I could believe that all who profess this dogma did not realize
it, and only accepted it because their fathers and mothers taught it to
them. But what can one say to such statements as the following, quoted
from Father Furniss by W. R. Greg in his splendid "Enigmas of Life:" I
take it as a specimen of Roman Catholic _authorized_ teaching. Children
are asked: "How will your body be when the devil has been striking it
every moment for a hundred million years without stopping?" A girl of
eighteen is described as dressed in fire; "she wears a bonnet of fire.
It is pressed down all over her head; it burns her head; it burns into
the skull; it scorches the bone of the skull and makes it smoke." A
boy is boiled: "Listen! there is a sound just like that of a kettle
boiling.... The blood is boiling in the scalded veins of that boy. The
brain is boiling and bubbling in his head. The marrow is boiling in his
bones." Nay, even the poor little babies are not exempt from torture:
one is in a red hot oven, "hear how it screams to come out; see how it
turns and twists about in the fire.... You can see on the face of this
little child"--the fair pure innocent baby-face--"what you see on the
faces of all in hell--despair, desperate and horrible." Surely this
man realized what he taught, but then he was that half-human being--a
priest.
Dr. Pusey, too, has a word to say about hell: "Gather in mind all that
is most loathsome, most revolting--the most treacherous, malicious,
coarse, brutal, inventive, fiendish cruelty, unsoftened by any remains
of human feeling, such as thou couldst not endure for a single hour....
hear those yells of blaspheming, concentrated hate as they echo along
the lurid vault of hell."
Protestantism chimes in, and Spurgeon speaks of hell: "Wilt thou think
it is easy to lie down in hell, with the breath of the Eternal fanning
the flames? Wilt thou delight thyself to think that God will invent
torments for thee, sinner?" "When the damned jingle the burning irons of
their torment, they shall say, 'for ever;' when they howl, echo cries,
'for ever.'"
I may allude, to conclude my quotations, to a description of hell which
I myself heard from an eminent prelate of the English Church, one who is
a scholar and a gentleman, a man of moderate views in Church matters,
by no means a zealot in an ordinary way. In preaching to a country
congregation composed mainly of young men and girls, he warned them
specially against sins of the flesh, and threatened them with the
consequent punishment in hell. Then, in language which I cannot
reproduce, for I should not dare to sully my pages by repeating what
I then listened to in horrified amazement, there ensued a description
drawn out in careful particulars of the state of the suffering body in
hell, so sickening in its details that it must suffice to say of it that
it was a description founded on the condition of a corpse flung out on
a dungheap and left there to putrefy, with the additional horror of
creeping, slowly-burning flames; and this state of things was to go
on, as he impressed on them with terrible energy, for ever and ever,
"decaying but ever renewing."
I should almost ask pardon of tender-hearted men and women for laying
before them language so abominable; but I urge on all who are offended
by it that this is the teaching given to our sons and daughters in the
present day. Father Furniss, Dr. Pusey, Mr. Spurgeon, an English Bishop,
surely these are honoured names, and in quoting them I quote from the
teaching of Christendom. Nor mine the fault if the language be unfit for
printing. I _quote_, because if we only assert, Christians are quick to
say, "you are misrepresenting our beliefs," and I quote from writers of
the present day only, that none may accuse me of hurling at Christians
reproaches for a doctrine they have outgrown or softened down. Still, I
own that it seems scarcely credible that a man should believe this and
remain sane; nay, should preach this, and walk calmly home from his
Church with God's sunshine smiling on the beautiful world, and after
preaching it should sit down to a comfortable dinner and very likely
a quiet pipe, as though hell did not exist, and its awful misery and
fierce despair.
It is said that there is no reason that we should not be contented in
heaven while others suffer in hell, since we know how much misery there
is in this world and yet enjoy ourselves in spite of the knowledge.
I say, deliberately, of every one who does realise the misery of this
world and remains indifferent to it, who enjoys his own share of the
good things of this life, without helping his brother, who does not
stretch out his hand to lift the fallen, or raise his voice on behalf of
the down-trodden and oppressed, that that man is living a life which is
the very antithesis of a Divine life--a life which has in it no beauty
and no nobility, but is selfish, despicable, and mean. And is this the
life which we are to regard as the model of heavenly beauty? Is the
power to lead this life for ever to be our reward for self-devotion
and self-sacrifice here on earth? Is a supreme selfishness to crown
unselfishness at last? But this is the life which is to be the lot of
the righteous in heaven. Snatched from a world in flames, caught up in
the air to meet their descending Lord, his saints are to return with him
to the heaven whence he came; there, crowned with golden crowns, they
are to spend eternity, hymning the Lamb who saved them to the music
of golden harps, harps whose melody is echoed by the curses and the
wailings of the lost; for below is a far different scene, for there the
sinners are "tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the
holy angels and the presence of the Lamb; and the smoke of their torment
ascendeth up for ever and ever, and they have no rest day nor night."
It is worth while to gaze for a moment at the scene of future felicity;
there is the throne of God and rejoicing crowds: "Rejoice over her, thou
heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets," so goes out the command, and
they rejoice because "God has avenged them on her," and again they
said "Alleluia, and her smoke rose up for ever and ever." Truly God
must harden the hearts of his saints in heaven as of old he hardened
Pharaoh's heart, if they are to rejoice over the anguished multitude
below, and to bear to live amid the lurid smoke ascending from the
burning bodies of the lost. To me the idea is so unutterably loathsome
that I marvel how Christians endure to retain such language in their
sacred books, for I would note that the awful picture drawn above is not
of my doing; it is not the scoffing caricature of an unbeliever, _it is
heaven as described by St. John the divine_. If this heaven is true I do
not hesitate to say that it is the duty of every human being to reject
it utterly and to refuse to enter it. We might even appeal to Christians
by the example of their own Jesus, who could not be content to remain in
heaven himself while men went to hell, but came down to redeem them from
endless suffering. Yet they, who ought to imitate him, who do, many
of them, lead beautiful lives of self-devotion and compassion, are
suddenly, on death, to lose all this which makes them "partakers of the
Divine Nature," and are to be content to win happiness for themselves,
careless that millions of their brethren are in woe unspeakable. They
are to reverse the aim of their past lives, they are to become selfish
instead of loving, hard instead of selfless, indifferent instead of
loving, hard instead of tender. Which is the better reproduction of the
"mind of Christ," the good Samaritan tending the wounded man, or the
stern Inquisitor gloating over the fire which consumes heretics to the
greater glory of God? Yet the latter is the ideal of heavenly virtue.
Never will they who truly love man be content to snatch at bliss for
themselves while others suffer, or endure to be crowned with glory while
they are crowned with thorns. Better, far better, to suffer in hell and
share the pains of the lost, than to have a heart so hard, a nature
so degraded, as to enjoy the bliss of heaven, rejoicing over, or even
disregarding, the woes of hell.
But there is worse than physical torture in the picture of hell; pain is
not its darkest aspect. Of all the thoughts with which the heart of man
has outraged the Eternal Righteousness, there is none so appalling, none
so blasphemous, as that which declares that even one soul, made by the
Supreme Good, shall remain during all eternity, under the power of
sin. Divines have wearied themselves in describing the horrors of the
Christian hell; but it is _not_ the furnace of flames, _not_ the undying
worm, _not_ the fire which never may be quenched, that revolt us most;
hideous as are these images, they are not the worst terror of hell. Who
does not know how St. Francis, believing himself ordained to be lost
everlastingly, fell on his knees and cried, "O my God, if I am indeed
doomed to hate thee during eternity, at least suffer me to love thee
while I live here." To the righteous heart the agony of hell is a far
worse one than physical torture could inflict: it is the existence of
men and women who might have been saints, shut out from hope of holiness
for evermore; God's children, the work of his hands, gnashing their
teeth at a Father who has cast them down for ever from the life he might
have given; it is Love everlastingly hated; good everlastingly trampled
under foot; God everlastingly baffled and defied; worst of all, it is
a room in the Father's house where his children may hunger and thirst
after righteousness, but never, never, can be filled.
"Depart, O sinner, to the chain!
Enter the eternal cell;
To all that's good and true and right,
To all that's fair and fond and bright,
To all of holiness and right,
Bid thou thy last farewell."
Would to God that Christian men and women would ponder it well and think
it out for themselves, and when they go into the worst parts of our
great cities and their hearts almost break with the misery there, then
let them remember how that misery is but a faint picture of the endless,
hopeless, misery, to which the vast majority of their fellow-men are
doomed.
Christian reader, do not be afraid to realise the future in which you
say you believe, and which the God of Love has prepared for the home of
some of his children. Imagine yourself, or any dear to you, plunged
into guilt from which there is no redeemer, and where the voice cannot
penetrate of him that speaks in righteousness, mighty to save. In the
well-weighed words of a champion of Christian orthodoxy, think there is
no reason to believe that hell is only a punishment for past offences;
in that dark world sin and misery reproduce each other in infinite
succession. "What if the sin perpetuates itself, if the prolonged misery
may be the offspring of the prolonged guilt?" Ponder it well, and, if
you find it true, then cast out from your creed the belief in a Jesus
who loved the lost; blot out from your Bible every verse that speaks of
a Father's heart; tear from your Prayer-books every page that prays to a
Father in heaven. If the lowest of God's creatures is to be left in the
foul embraces of sin for ever, God cannot be the Eternal Righteousness,
the unconquerable Love. For what sort of Righteousness is that which
rests idly contented in a heaven of bliss, while millions of souls
capable of righteousness are bound by it in helpless sin; what sort of
love is that which is satisfied to be repulsed, and is willing to be
hated? As long as God is righteous, as long as God is love, so long is
it impossible that men and women shall be left by him forever in a
state to which our worst dens of earth are a very paradise of beauty and
purity. Bible writers may have erred, but "Thou continuest holy, O Thou
worship of Israel!" There is one revelation that cannot err, and that
is written by God's finger on every human heart. What man recoils from
doing, even at his lowest, can never be done by his Creator, from whose
inspiration he draws every righteous thought. Is there one father,
however brutalized, who would deliberately keep his child in sin because
of a childish fault? one mother who would aimlessly torture her son,
keeping him alive but to torment? Yet this, nothing less,--nay, a
thousand times more, for it is this multiplied infinitely by infinite
power of torture,--this is what Christians ask us to believe about our
Father and our God, a glimmer from the radiance of whose throne falls on
to our earth, when men love their enemies and forgive freely those who
wrong them If this so-called orthodox belief is right, then is their
gospel of the Love of God to the world a delusion and a lie; if this is
true, the teaching of Jesus to publicans and harlots of the Fatherhood
of God is a cruel mockery of our divinest instincts; the tale of
the good Shepherd who could not rest while one sheep was lost is the
bitterest irony. But this awful dogma is not true, and the Love of God
cradles his creation; not one son of the Father's family shall be left
under the power of sin, to be an eternal blot on God's creation, an
endless reproach to his Maker's wisdom, an everlasting and irreparable
mistake.
No amount of argument, however powerful, should make us believe a
doctrine from which our hearts recoil with such shuddering horror as
they do from this doctrine of eternal torture and eternal sin. There is
a divine instinct in the human heart which may be trusted as an arbiter
between right and wrong; no supernatural revelation, no miracle, no
angel from heaven, should have power to make us accept as divine that
which our hearts proclaim as vile and devilish. It is not true faith
to crush down our moral sense beneath the hoof of credulity; true faith
believes in God only as a "Power which makes for _Righteousness_" and
recks little of threats or curses which would force her to accept that
which conscience disapproves. And what is more, if it were possible that
God were not what we dream, if he were not "righteous in all his ways
and holy in all his works," then were it craven cowardice to worship him
at all. It has been well said, "that to worship simple power, without
virtue, is nothing but devil-worship;" in that case it were nobler to
refuse to praise him and to take what he might send. Then indeed we
must say, with John Stuart Mill, in that burst of passion which reads so
strangely in the midst of his passionless logic, that if I am told that
this is justice and love, and that if I do not call it so, God will send
me to hell, then "to hell I'll go."
I have purposely put first my strong reprobation of eternal hell,
because of its own essential hideousness, and because, were it ever
so true, I should deem myself disgraced by acknowledging it as
either loving or good. But it is, however, a satisfaction to note the
feebleness of the arguments advanced in support of this dogma, and to
find that justice and holiness, as well as love, frown on the idea of an
eternal hell.
The first argument put forth is this: "God has made a law which
man breaks; man must therefore in justice suffer the penalty of his
transgression." This, like so many of the orthodox arguments, sounds
just and right, and at first we perfectly agree with it. The instinct
of justice in our own breasts confirms the statement, and looking abroad
into the world we see its truth proved by facts. Law is around us on
every side; man is placed in a realm of law; he may-strive against the
laws which encircle him, but he will only dash himself to pieces against
a rock; he is under a code which he breaks at his peril. Here is perfect
justice, a justice absolutely unwavering, deaf to cries, unseducible
by-flatteries, unalloyed by favouritism: a law exists, break it, and
you suffer the inevitable consequences. So far, then, the orthodox
argument is sound and strong, but now it takes a sudden leap. "The
penalty of the broken law is hell." Why? What common factor is there
between a lie, and the "lake of fire in which all liars shall have their
part?" Nature is absolutely against the orthodox corollary, because hell
as a punishment of sin is purely arbitrary, the punishment might quite
as well have been something else; but in nature the penalty of a broken
law is always strictly in character with the law itself, and is derived
from it. Men imagine the most extraordinary "judgment." A nation is
given to excessive drinking, and is punished with cattle-plague; or
shows leanings towards popery, and is chastised with cholera. It is as
reasonable to believe this as it would be to expect that if a child fell
down stairs he would be picked up covered with blisters from burning,
instead of his receiving his natural punishment of being bruised.
Why, because I lie and forget God, should I be punished with fire and
brimstone? Fire is not derivable from truth, nor is brimstone a stimulus
to memory. There is also a strange confusion in many minds about the
punishment of sin. A child is told not to put his hand into the fire,
he does so, and is burnt; the burning is a punishment, he is told; for
what? Not for disobedience to the parent, as is generally said, but for
disregarding the law of nature which says that fire burns. One often
hears it said: "God's punishments for sin are not equal: one man sins
once and suffers for it all his life, while another sins twenty times
and is not punished at all." By no means: the two men both break a moral
law, and suffer a moral degradation; one of them breaks in addition some
physical law, and suffers a physical injury. People see injustice where
none exists, because they will not take the trouble to distinguish
what laws are broken when material punishments follow. There is nothing
arbitrary in nature: cause and effect rule in her realm. Hell is then
unjust, in the first place, because physical torture has nothing in
common with moral guilt.
It is unjust, secondly, because it is excessive. Sin, say theologians,
is to be punished infinitely, because sin is an offence committed
against an infinite being. Of course, then, good must logically be
rewarded infinitely, because it is duty offered to an infinite being.
There is no man who has never done a single good act, so every man
deserves an infinite reward. There is no man who has never done a single
bad act, so every man deserves an infinite punishment. Therefore every
man deserves both an infinite reward and an infinite punishment,
"which," as Euclid says, "is absurd." And this is quite enough answer to
the proposition. But I must protest, in passing, against this notion of
"sin against God" as properly understood. If by this expression is only
meant that every sin committed is a sin against God, because every sin
is done against man's higher nature, which is God in man, then indeed
there is no objection to be made to it. But this is not what is
generally meant by the phrase. It usually means that we are able, as it
were, to injure God in some way, to dishonour him, to affront him, to
trouble him. By sin we make him "angry," we "provoke him to wrath;"
because of this feeling on his own part he punishes us, and demands
"satisfaction." Surely a moment's reflection must prove to any
reasonable being that sin against God in this sense is perfectly
impossible. What can the littleness of man do against the greatness of
the Eternal! Imagine a speck of dust troubling the depths of the
ocean, an aphis burdening an oak-tree with its weight: each is far
more probable than that a man could ruffle the perfect serenity of God.
Suppose I stand on a lawn watching an ant-heap, an ant twinkles his
feelers at me scornfully; do I fly into a passion and rush on the insect
to destroy it, or seize it and slowly torture it? Yet I am far less
above the level of the ant than God is above mine.
But I must add a word here to guard against the misapprehension that
in saying this I am depriving man of the strength he finds in believing
that he is personally known to God and an object of his care. Were I
the ant's creator familiar with all the workings of its mind, I
might regret, for its sake, the pride and scorn of its maker shown by
its-action, because it was not rising to the perfection of nature of
which it was capable. So, in that nature in which we live and move,
which is too great to regard anything as-little, which is around all and
in all, and which we believe to be conscious of all, there is--I cannot
but think--some feeling which, for want of a better term, we must call
a desire for the growth of his creatures (because in this growth lies
their own happiness), and a corresponding feeling of regret when they
injure themselves. But I say this in fear and reverence, knowing that
human language has no terms in which to describe the nature we adore,
and conscious that in the very act of putting ideas about him into
words, I degrade the ideas and they no longer fully answer to the
thought in my own mind. Silent adoration befits man best in the presence
of his maker, only it is right to protest against the more degrading
conceptions of him, although the higher conceptions are themselves far
below what he really is. Sin then, being done against oneself only,
cannot deserve an eternity of torture. Sin injures man already, why
should he be further injured by endless agony? The infliction of pain
is only justifiable when it is the means of conveying to the sufferer
himself a gain greater than the suffering inflicted; therefore
punishment is only righteous when reformatory. But _endless_ torture
cannot aim at reformation; it has no aim beyond itself, and can only
arise, therefore, from vengeance and vindictiveness, which we have
shown to be impossible with God. Hell is unjust, secondly, because its
punishment is excessive and aimless. It is also unjust, because to avoid
it needs an impossible perfection. It is no answer to this to say that
there is an escape offered to us through the Atonement made by Jesus
Christ. Why should I be called on to escape like a criminal from that
which I do not deserve? God makes man imperfect, frail, sinful,
utterly unable to keep perfectly a perfect law: he therefore fails,
and is--what? To be strengthened? by no means; he is to go to hell. The
statement of this suffices to show its injustice. We cavil not at the
wisdom which made us what we are, but we protest against the idea which
makes God so cruelly unjust as to torture babies because they are unable
to walk as steadily as full-grown men. Hell is unjust, in the third
place, because man does not deserve it.
To all this it will probably be retorted, "you are arguing as though
God's justice were the same as man's, and you were therefore capable
of judging it, an assumption which is unwarrantable, and is grossly
presumptuous." To which I reply: "If by God's justice you do not mean
justice at all, but refer to some Divine attribute of which we know
nothing, all my strictures on it fall to the ground; only, do not commit
the inconsistency of arguing that hell is _just_, when by 'just' you
mean some unknown quality, and then propping up your theories with
proofs drawn from human justice. It would perhaps tend to clearness in
argument if you gave this Divine attribute some other name, instead of
using for it an expression which has already a definite meaning."
The justice of hell disposed of, we turn to the love of God. I have
never heard it stated that hell is a proof of his great love to the
world, but I take the liberty myself of drawing attention to it in this
light. God, we are told, existed alone before ought was created; there
perfect in himself, in happiness, in glory, he might have remained,
say orthodox theologians. Then, we have a right to ask in the name of
charity, why did he, happy himself, create a race of beings of whom the
vast majority were to be endlessly and hopelessly miserable? Was this
love? "He created man to glorify him." But was it loving to create those
who would only suffer for his glory? Was it not rather a gigantic, an
inconceivable selfishness?
"Man may be saved if he will." That is not to the point; God foreknew
that some would be lost, and yet he made them. With all reverence I say
it, God had no right to create sentient beings, if of one of them it can
ever be truly said, "good were it for that man that he had never been
born." He who creates, imposes on himself, by the very act of creation,
duties towards his creatures. If God be self-conscious and moral, it
is an absolute certainty that the whole creation is moving towards
the final good of every creature in it. We did not ask to be made; we
suffered not when we existed not; God, who has laid existence on us
without our consent, is responsible for our final good, and is bound by
every tie of righteousness and justice, not to speak of love, to make
the existence he gave us, unasked, a blessing and not a curse to us.
Parents feel this responsibility towards the children they bring into
the world, and feel themselves bound to protect and to make happy those
who, without them, had not been born. But, if hell be true, then every
man and woman is bound not to fulfil the Divine command of multiplying
the race, since by so doing they are aiding to fill the dungeons of
hell, and they will, hereafter, have their sons and their daughters
cursing the day of their birth, and overwhelming their parents with
reproaches for having brought into the world a body, which God was thus
enabled to curse with the awful gift of an immortal soul.
We must notice also that God, who is said to love righteousness, can
never crush out righteousness in any-human soul. There is no one so
utterly degraded as to be without one sign of good. Among the lowest and
vilest of our population, we find beautiful instances of kindly feeling
and generous help. Can any woman be more degraded than she who only
values her womanhood as a means of gain, who drinks, fights, and steals?
Let those who have been among such women say if they have not been
cheered sometimes by a very ray of the light of God, when the most.
degraded has shown kindness to an equally degraded sister, and when the
very gains of sin have been purified by being; poured into the lap of a
suffering and dying companion. Shall love and devotion, however feeble,
unselfishness and sympathy, however transitory in their action, shall
these stars of heaven be quenched in the blackness of the pit of hell?
If it be so, then, verily, God is not the "righteous. Lord who loveth
righteousness."
But we cannot leave out of our impeachment of hell that it injures man,
as much as it degrades his conceptions of God. It cultivates selfishness
and fear, two of his basest passions. There has scarcely perhaps been
born into the world this century a purer and more loving soul than that
of the late John Keble, the author of the "Christian Year." Yet what a
terrible effect this belief had on him; he must cling to his belief in
hell, because otherwise he would have no certainty of heaven:
"But where is then the stay of contrite hearts?
Of old they leaned on Thy eternal word;
But with the sinner's fear their hope departs,
Fast linked as Thy great name to Thee, O Lord;
That Name by which Thy faithful hope is past,
That we should endless be, for joy or woe;--
And if the treasures of Thy wrath could waste,
Thy lovers must their promised heaven forego."
That is to say in plain English: "I cannot give up the certainty of
hell for others, because if I do I shall have no certainty of heaven for
myself; and I would rather know that millions of my brethren should
be tormented for ever, than remain doubtful about my own everlasting
enjoyment." Surely a loving heart would say, instead, "O God, let
us all die and remain unconscious for ever, rather than that one soul
should suffer everlastingly." The terrible selfishness of the Christian
belief degrades the noblest soul; the horror of hell makes men lose
their self-control, and think only of their personal safety, just as
we see men run wild sometimes at a shipwreck, when the gain of a minute
means life. The belief in hell fosters religious pride and hatred, for
all religious people think that they themselves at least are sure of
heaven. If then they are going to rejoice through all eternity over
the sufferings of the lost, why should they treat them with kindness or
consideration here? Thus hell, becomes the mother of persecution;
for the heretic, the enemy of the Lord, there is no mercy and no
forgiveness. Then the saints persuade themselves that true charity
obliges them to persecute, for suffering may either save the heretic
himself by forcing him to believe, or may at least scare others from
sharing his heresy, and so preserve them from eternal fire. And they
are right, if hell is true. Any means are justifiable which may save man
from that horrible doom; surely we should not hesitate to knock a man
down, if by so doing we preserved him from throwing himself over a
precipice.
Belief in hell takes all beauty from virtue; who cares for obedience
only rendered through fear? No true love of good is wrought in man by
the fear of hell, and outward respectability is of little worth when the
heart and the desires are unpurified. We may add that the fear of hell
is a very slight practical restraint; no man thinks himself really bad
enough for hell, and it is so far off that every one intends to repent
at the last and so escape it. Far more restraining is the proclamation
of the stern truth that, in the popular sense of the word, there is no
such thing as the "forgiveness of sins;" that as a man sows, so shall he
reap, and that broken laws avenge themselves without exception.
Belief in hell stifles all inquiry into truth by setting a premium
on one form of belief, and by forbidding another under frightful
penalties.. "If it be true, as it is true, that all who do not believe
this shall perish everlastingly, then, I ask, _is it not worth while to
believe?_" So says a clergyman of the Church of England. Thus he presses
his people to accept the dogma of the Deity of Jesus, not because it
is-true, but because it is dangerous to deny it. And this-difficulty
meets us every day. If we urge inquiry, we are told "it is dangerous;"
if we suggest a difficulty, we are told "it is safer to believe;" and
so this doctrine of hell chains down men's faculties and palsies their
intellects, and they dare not seek for truth at all, lest he who is
Truth should cast them into hell for it.
It may perhaps be said by many that I have attacked this dogma with
undue vehemence, and with excessive warmth. I attack it thus, because I
know the harm that it is doing, because it saddens the righteous heart
and clouds the face of God. Only those who have realised hell, and
realising it, have believed in it, know the awful shadow with which it
darkens the world. There are many who laugh at it, but they have not
felt its power, and they forget that a dogma which is only ludicrous
to them is weighing heavily on many a tender heart and sensitive brain.
Hell drives many mad: to others-it is a life-long horror. It pales the
sunlight with its lurid flames; it blackens the earth with the smoke of
its torment; it makes the Devil an actual presence; it transforms God
into an enemy, eternity into an awful doom. It takes the spring out of
all pleasures; it poisons all enjoyments; it spreads gloom over life,
and enshrouds the tomb in horror unspeakable. Only those who have
felt the anguish of this nightmare know what it is to wake up into the
sunlight, and find it is only a disordered dream of the darkness; they
only know the glorious liberty of heart and soul, with which they lift
up smiling faces to meet the smile of God, when they can say from the
depths of their glad hearts, "I believe that God is Light, and in Him is
no darkness at all; I believe that all mankind is safe, cradled in the
everlasting arms."