I WOULD not willingly quit this world without having said my say upon
the most terrible of all its superstitions, the doctrine of eternal
torments--which Archdeacon Farrar describes as the "hideous incubus of
atrocious conceptions"--and which, in my own experience, is the cause of
appalling apprehensions and even insanity in the minds of the sensitive
and weak-minded.
If there is a hell, that is the most important fact in the universe.
Compared with an eternity of torment, all that this little life has to
offer is but as nothing. If there is no hell, then, it seems to me,
the faith in Jesus is vain, for no such salvation as that offered by
orthodox Christianity is necessary. Not only is the doctrine of eternal
torments clearly taught in Scripture, but it is, as I shall show,
historically bound up with the creed of Christendom.
It may be said, why attack a superstition confessedly falling into
decay? Satan, that once excellent scapegoat for all misdeeds, is
superannuated. Hell is never mentioned to ears polite. Since Freethought
came into the world its temperature has considerably decreased. The
brimstone business threatens to become obsolete. It is none the less the
corner-stone of the whole system, and when it finally collapses it will
bring down other doctrines with it. The Salvationist, no less than the
Jesuit, knows its power. As the old beadle said, "A kirk without a hell
is'na worth a damn."
Upon the healthy-minded the doctrine of eternal torments will soon have
no more effect than water upon a duck's back. But mental health and
strength are not the inheritance of all. If the dogma was not taught
until minds were mature enough to examine it, it might safely be left;
but while it is continually taught to infancy, to seek to eradicate
it is the duty of those who regard it as a pernicious error. To me it
appears that the best way to do this is to show what the doctrine has
actually been in the days when Christianity was unquestioned. Christians
are becoming ashamed of their hell--which they rarely realise as
possibly the fate of themselves or their friends; that way madness lies.
They cannot get rid of the definite statements in the New Testament, but
they avoid dwelling on them, or attempt to construe them figuratively.
Hell was hot enough when religion was powerful. As it declines it is
discovered that hell is not so terrible after all.
Modern exegesis, striving to explain hell away, only steps in when
conscience and freethought have declared against it. It is taught in
the plainest terms. Take but the passage, Matt. xxv. 46, "These shall
go away into _everlasting_ punishment, but the righteous into life
_eternal_." It is said everlasting does not mean lasting for ever, and
in some cases this might be granted, but surely it is a different matter
when eternal punishment is, without any limitation, directly compared
with eternal life, and the same word is applied to both. Again, exactly
the same expression which is used to signify the eternity of God, that
of his being _for ever and ever_, as in Rev. iv. 9, v. 14, x. 6, and xv.
7, is used of the torments of those in hell in Rev. xiv. 11.
In the explanation of the parable of the tares, Jesus tells his prosaic
disciples: "The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the
end of the world; and the reapers are the angels. As therefore the tares
are gathered and burned in the fire; so shall it be in the end of
this world" (Matt. xiii. 39-40). There we see the simile is used to
illustrate hell; not hell used as a simile to illustrate something else.
The early Christians undoubtedly believed in a literal Devil, angels,
and end of the world, and with equal certainty in a literal hell and
material fire. Yet we are now asked to believe that when Jesus spoke of
hell, "where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched" (Mark ix.
46), since there is _no_ fire it cannot require quenching.
Jesus relates, in the most matter-of-fact way (Luke xvi.), that a
certain rich man died, and "in hell," "being in torments," he lifted up
his eyes and beheld Lazarus in Abraham's bosom. He cried for a drop of
water to cool his tongue, "for I am tormented in this flame." The man
had committed no other recorded offence than faring sumptuously, yet he
was met with the stern response, "between us and you there is a great
gulf fixed." He then asks that his brethren may be warned of his fate,
and this, too, is denied. The voice of humanity cried from hell, and
heaven answered with inhumanity. If this picture of heaven and hell is
true, God and his saints are monsters of infamy. If false, what other
"revealed" doctrine can be credited, since this is so devised for the
benefit of those who trade in terrorism? If hell is a metaphor, of which
there is no indication in the narrative, so also is heaven. Give up
material fire and brimstone, you must resign the bodily resurrection,
the visible coming of Christ, and the New Jerusalem. Allegorise hell,
you make heaven unreal. A figurative Devil suggests a figment God.
The Revelation of St. John expressly speaks of the worshippers of the
beast, or enemies of God, being "tormented with fire and brimstone in
the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb. And
the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever" (xiv. 10-11).
Nice enjoyment, this, for the elect. Fancy parents regarding the eternal
anguish of their children! Converted wives looking on while their
unbelieving husbands are tormented and "have no rest day nor night" in
"the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone"! Picture it, think of
it, Christian, and then offer praises to your God for having provided
this place of eternal torture for some other than yourself.
Who go to hell? According to the Bible and the creeds the immense
majority of mankind. "Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which
leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it" (Matt. vii. 14). Many
are called but few chosen; and there is no other name under heaven, save
that of Jesus, whereby men can be saved. The proportion of those
who lived before Christ must be, even according to Bible chronology,
immensely larger than all who have lived since, and of these now, after
eighteen centuries of the divine religion, not more than a third of the
world's inhabitants are even nominal Christians. When we consider
how few Christians are really believers, and how scarcely any of them
attempt to carry out the precepts of their Master, it must be allowed
that the population of hell is out of all proportion to that of heaven.
The doctrine of the church has been "He that believeth and is baptised
shall be saved, and he that believeth not shall be damned." The idea of
this text has probably done more harm to humanity than it has benefited
from the rest of the gospel, for it has countenanced all the
ill-will and persecution that has everywhere followed in the train of
Christianity. I know it will be said that this passage, indeed the whole
of the sixteenth of Mark from the ninth verse to the end, is wanting
in some of the ancient manuscripts; but while the Authorised version is
circulated as the word of God, it is properly cited. And indeed if this
doctrine is discarded there is much else that must go with it.
Freethought having discredited the doctrine of eternal torments
as absurd and dishonoring to God, stress is now laid upon passages
indicating a more hopeful doctrine. To one who looks at the general
tenor of Scripture, these are of no weight in opposition to the clear
and emphatic declarations I have cited. There is no express statement
that punishment hereafter will be terminable. On the contrary, the
evident teaching is that as the tree falls so it must lie. No hope is
extended to the rich man in hell.
That the current belief in the time of Jesus was in the eternity of
punishments, we have the testimony of Josephus, who declares this both
of the Pharisees and the Essenes.* We have also the testimony of the
Fathers. Clement, the apostolic father, said to be the "fellow laborer"
of Paul, mentioned in Philip iv. 3, says in his Second Epistle, chap.
viii., "Once cast into the furnace of fire there is no longer any help
for it. For after we have gone out of the world no further power of
confessing or repenting will belong to us." Polycarp, when threatened
with martyrdom, is said to have made answer (Ep. to Philippians, xi.),
"Thou threatenest me with fire which burneth for an hour, and after
a little is extinguished, but art ignorant of the fire of the coming
judgment and of eternal punishment reserved for the ungodly." Ignatius
too speaks of "the unquenchable fire" (Ep. to Ephesians, 16).
*Antiq. xviii. 1-3; Wars ii, 8, 11-14.
All the early Fathers considered the fire of hell as a real material
fire. Justin Martyr, who wrote before the collection of the Gospels,
said in his first Apology, chap. xxi., "We believe that those who
live wickedly and do not repent are punished in everlasting fire." In
numerous other passages he refers to punishment in eternal fire; and
says (First Apol., chap. hi), "then shall they repent, when it profits
them not." Athenagoras, too (chap. xxxvi.), declares that "the body
which has ministered to the irrational impulses of the soul, and to its
desires, will be punished along with it."
St. Irenæus, the first of the Fathers who definitely alludes to the four
Gospels, says, in his work against heresies (bk. ii., chap. 28, § 7),
"That eternal fire is prepared for sinners, both the Lord has plainly
declared, and the rest of the Scriptures demonstrate. And that God
foreknew that this would happen, the Scriptures do in like manner
demonstrate, since He prepared eternal fire from the beginning for those
who were afterwards to transgress His commandments." What a blessed
thing is Christianity to reveal such a nice loving Father as this!
So Bishop Hippolytus, in his _Refutation of all Heresies_, bk. x. chap.
30, speaks of "the boiling flood of hell's eternal lake of fire, and the
eye ever fixed in menacing glare of [wicked] angels chained in Tartarus
as punishment for their sins."
Tertullian, in his treatise on the Resurrection of the Flesh, chap.
xxxv., declares "The fire of hell is eternal--expressly announced as an
everlasting penalty," and he asks, "whence shall come the weeping and
gnashing of teeth if not from _eyes and teeth?_" In his treatise, _De
Anima_, chap. vii., he thus alludes to the story of Dives. "Do you
suppose that this end of the blessed poor man and the miserable rich man
is only imaginary? Then why the name of Lazarus in this narrative, if
the circumstance is not in [the category of] a real occurrence?" This
Christian Father absolutely gloats over the prospect of witnessing these
torments:--"Which sight gives me Joy? which rouses me to exultation?--as
I see so many illustrious monarchs, whose reception into the heavens was
publicly announced, groaning now in the lowest darkness with great Jove
himself, and those, too, who bore witness of their exaltation; governors
of provinces, too, who persecuted the Christian name, in fires more
fierce than those which in the days of their pride they raged against
the followers of Christ!" He exultingly continues: "I shall have a
better opportunity then of hearing the tragedians, louder-voiced in
their own calamity; of viewing the play-actors much more 'dissolute' in
the dissolving flame; of looking upon the charioteer, all glowing in his
chariot of fire; of witnessing the wrestlers, not in their gymnasia, but
tossing in the fiery billows."* An echo of this famous passage may
be traced in Cardinal Newman's sermon "On Neglect of Divine Calls and
Warnings."
St. Cyprian, in his address to Demetrianus, says: "We are rendered
patient by our security of a vindication to come. The innocent give
place to the guilty; the guileless acquiesce in their punishments and
tortures, certain and assured that anything we suffer will not remain
unavenged.... What joy for the believers, what sorrow for the faithless;
to have refused to believe here, and now be unable to return in order
that they may believe! Hell ever burning will consume the accursed, and
a devouring punishment of lively flames; nor will there be that from
whence their torments can ever receive either repose or end. Souls with
their bodies will be saved unto suffering in tortures infinite. There
that man will be seen by us for ever, who made us his spectacle here
for a season; what brief enjoyment those cruel eyes received from
the persecutions wrought upon us will be balanced against a spectacle
eternal." And the savage saint backs up his pleasant prospect with "Holy
Scripture."
* De Spectaculis, c. 30. I have quoted the rendering in the
orthodox Ante-Nicene Christian Library, vol. xi., pp. 34-35.
Gibbon's version is more forcible.
Lactantius, in his Divine Institutes, bk. vi., chap. 3, contrasts the
immortality promised to the righteous with "everlasting punishment
threatened to the unrighteous." In bk. vii. chap. 21, he says, "because
they have committed sins in their bodies, they will again be clothed
with flesh that they may make atonement in their bodies; and yet it
will not be that flesh with which God clothed man, like this our earthly
body, but indestructible and abiding for ever, that it may be able to
hold out against tortures and everlasting fire."
St. Chrysostom represents the torments of the damned in a variety of
horrid pictures. He says: "But if you are speaking against luxury, and
introduce discourse by the way concerning hell, the thing will cheer
you and beget much pleasure. Let us not then avoid discourses concerning
hell, that we may avoid hell. Let us not banish the remembrance of
punishment, that we may escape punishment. If the rich man had reflected
upon that fire, he would not have sinned; but because he never was
mindful of it, therefore he fell into it."*
* Homily on 2 Thess. i., 1-2.
In Homily on 2 Thess. i., 9-10, "It is not only not milder, but much
more terrible than is threatened." Hear the golden-mouthed Father
(Homily on Heb. i., 1-2): "Let us then consider how great a misery it
must be to be for ever burning, and to be in darkness, and to utter
unnumbered groanings, and to gnash the teeth and not even to be
heard.... Think what it is when we are burning with all the murderers of
the whole world neither seeing, nor being seen.... Wherefore I entreat
you," continues the saint, "to be _ever_ revolving these things with
yourselves, and to submit to the pain of the words, that we may not have
the things to undergo as our punishment." Again he says (Hom. Heb. xi.
37-38), "Why, what are ten thousand years to ages boundless and without
end? Not so much as one drop to the boundless ocean.... Were it not well
to be cut [by scourging] times out of number, to be slain, to be burned,
to undergo ten thousand deaths, to endure everything whatsoever that is
dreadful both in word and deed?"*
Origen, for considering that the punishment of the wicked consisted
in separation from God, was condemned as heretical by the Council of
Carthage, A.D. 398, and afterwards by other Councils.
St. Augustine (_City of God_, bk, xxi. chap. 17) censures Origen for his
merciful view, and says "the Church, not without reason, condemned
him for this and other errors." In the same book (chap. 23) this great
father declares that everlasting is used by Jesus (Matt. xxv. 41) as
meaning "for ever" and nothing else than "endless duration." He argues,
with ingenious varieties of reasoning, to show how the material bodies
of the damned may withstand annihilation in everlasting fire. He held
that hell was in the centre of the earth, and that God supplied the
central fire with earth by a miracle. Jerome and the other orthodox
Fathers no less held to a material hell.
In the middle ages Christian literature was mainly composed of the
legendary visions of saints, in which views across the gulf had a large
share.
The Devil was represented bound by red-hot chains, on a burning gridiron
in the centre of hell. The screams of his never-ending agony made its
rafters to resound; but his hands were free, and with these he seized
the lost souls, crushed them like grapes against his teeth, and then
drew them by his breath down the fiery cavern of his throat. Demons with
hooks of red-hot iron plunged souls alternately into fire and sea. Some
of the lost were hung up by their tongues, others were sawn asunder,
others gnawed by serpents, others beaten together on an anvil and welded
into a single mass, others boiled and then strained through a cloth,
others twined in the embrace of demons whose limbs were of flame.**
* Library of the Fathers, pp. 15-16.
* Lecky, History of European Morals, vol. ii., p. 222.
Is it strange that the ages when Christian barbarism overcame Pagan
civilisation were known as the Dark Ages? "George Eliot" well says that
"where the tremendous alternative of everlasting torments is believed
in--believed in so that it becomes a motive determining the life--not
only persecution, but every other form of severity and gloom are the
legitimate consequences."
Grandly horrible is the reflection in Dante's _Inferno_ of the doctrine
of hell, held in the palmiest days of Christianity. The gloom of that
poem is relieved by a few touches of compunction at the doom of noble
heathen and of tenderness for those who sinned through love; proving
the poet superior to his creed. Yet consider the punishment of heretics,
buried in burning sepulchres while from their furnace tombs rise endless
wails. Think of the terrible inscription, _Lasciate ogni speranza voi
ch'entrate_. Remember that Dante placed in this hell his political
opponents, and how he depicts himself as striking the faces and pulling
the hair of the tormented; then answer, is not this great poem a lasting
monument of Christian barbarity?
St. Thomas Aquinas, the angelic doctor, treats of the punishment of hell
under the title _Poena Damnatorum_,* and teaches (1) that the damned
will suffer other punishments besides that of fire; (2) that the
"undying worm" is remorse of conscience; (3) that the darkness of hell
is physical darkness, only so much light being admitted as will allow
the lost to see and apprehend the punishments of the place; (4) that
as both body and soul are punished, the fire of hell will be a material
fire, of the same nature as ordinary fire but with different properties;
and the place of punishment, though not certainly known, is probably
under the earth.
Hagenbach, in his _History of Doctrines_, 209, note cliv., says of the
blessed, "They witness the suffering of the damned without being seen by
the latter," and refers to Peter Lombard and Thomas Aquinas.