_I SEE SOME STRANGE SIGHTS IN HELL, AND AM FAVOURED WITH SOMETHING IN
THE NATURE OF A SERMON._
"They eat, and drink, and scheme, and plod,
They go to church on Sunday;
And many are afraid of God,
And more of Mrs. Grundy."
It is a long time ago since Religion first took to preaching at the
World, and now at last the World has grown wearied of it, and has
taken in her turn to preaching at Religion; and in this verse by Mr.
Locker-Lampson she has a text which is sternly, trenchantly, grimly
true in its satire. I know there are folk who affect to be scandalized
at what they consider an irreverence, but I for one can recall no
sermon in which the worldliness and the worthlessness of many so-called
Christians have received as terrible a rebuke as they have in these
lines by a writer of _vers de société_.
I will tell you why I have introduced this topic into my diary. When
I was in hell, I saw one there whom, save for his averted looks and
pitiable endeavours to escape my observation, I should probably have
passed unnoticed. He was one of those at whom the verse I have quoted
is directed. His pitfall in life had been nothing more vicious than
vanity. He was a coward who was so blind in his cowardice that he
feared God less than he feared Mrs. Grundy, and who, in order to
secure the approval of man, had not scrupled to do that which he knew
was hateful to his Maker. His life had been a living lie. Love of
approbation was so strong in him that he was never happy except in
perpetually posing and in endeavouring to pass himself off for that
which he knew he was not. And with what result? That he had spent his
days in preparing for himself his punishment. The one and only aim of
his existence had been to win the approval of others, and, lo! one
morning he awoke in Hades to find himself the despised of the despised
and the laughing stock of the very Devil. He had so pandered to his
love of approbation that it had grown at last into a disease, and I saw
few more pitiable sights in my wanderings than that of this wretched
creature, slinking shamefacedly through hell, and wincing, as from a
blow, at the glance of every passer.
Of all vices none is so vindictive to its wretched victim as vanity.
It is continually craving for the wherewithal to gratify its insatiate
appetite, whilst growing but the hungrier for a meal. The very
clamorousness of its demands not seldom defeats its own purpose, for
sooner or later it is sure to be discovered, and none of us honour
the man whom we suspect of "jumping" to gain our good opinion. Of the
power which vanity may acquire over a human soul I read lately an awful
instance. We are told that the last emotion visible on the face of
Pranzini, the French murderer, as he stood waiting to be despatched
into eternity, was a simper of gratified vanity (and what share vanity
had in bringing him to that scaffold only He who reads all hearts
can tell) at being the prominent object of interest to so large and
distinguished an assembly. And that as he was about to step with blood
upon his soul into the presence of the Great Avenger!
* * * * *
"Men create their God after their own image," says Mr. Stigand in his
"Life of Heine"; and it is a fact that the conception of God changes
with the manners and morals of a people. To our Puritan forefathers
He was a just but awful Judge, who, from His home in the vast abysses
of space, kept an unwinking watch upon us, His creatures, and, with
eyes of telescopic minuteness, noted every breach of His commandments,
in order that He might visit it with a fiery and fearful vengeance.
That man-created God is no more: He is dead, and another God reigns
in His stead; but in our natural reaction from the conception of the
vindictive God of past generations, we have come, in these days, to
lose sight of the fact that our God is a chastening one. Not only have
we turned a deaf ear to the thunders and the threats of old-fashioned
orthodoxy, with its talk of everlasting punishment and lakes of
brimstone, but many of us _pooh-pooh_ the thought of a hell at all,
and speak of God as though He were a good-natured and weakly-indulgent
parent, on whose leniency we might lightly presume, forgetting that
sin--unrepented sin--never can and never must go unpunished.
It was in this contemptuously indifferent way that one whom I knew
well on earth was accustomed to speak. He was a man of free and open
disposition, with a perfect genius for friendship, but his life would
not bear too close an inquiry. I remember his being warned in my
presence of the punishment which must await the course he was pursuing,
and his answering, as I had often heard him answer before, that even
if he _were_ on the road to hell (if, indeed, such a place existed,
which he was inclined to doubt), he had at least the consolation of
knowing that plenty of other "good fellows" were bound for the same
destination, and that he was quite sure that he should feel more at
home among the sinners in hell than he should among the saints in
heaven.
Well, when I was in hell, I saw a sight there which is worth recording
as an example of the ingenuity of the Devil in apportioning to each
person the punishment best fitted to his individual case. I say "of
the Devil," because I learned that he has a part (under certain
restrictions and by Divine permission) in the imposition of necessary
chastisement, and he is therefore an unwitting worker in the kingdom of
heaven. He has indeed been such a worker from the beginning, for in
spite of his serpent-like cunning and subtlety, he was the first fool,
and will be the last. The acknowledged and ancient enemy of God, he is
and has been playing into the hands of the Almighty for ages, and among
all fools none is so simple a fool as he.
The sight, then, to which I have referred was that of a desolate plain,
low-lying and unlighted, and in the centre of it there roamed one who
called out ever and anon, as if in search of a companion, but to whom
there came no answer save the distant echo of his own cry. A more
lonely and lifeless spot I have never seen. The silence which brooded
over the place seemed sometimes to oppress the forsaken wanderer like a
presence, for, with a half-affrighted and despairing cry, he set off at
a panic-stricken run, as if seeking to escape this silence by flight;
but, notwithstanding his haste, he made, I observed, no progress, for
he was but moving round and round in one continuous ring. Of this,
however, he seemed unaware; for once, when he passed near me, I heard
him cry out as if in despair, "Is there no living soul in all this void
and voiceless desert?" And, as he hurried by, and I caught a sight of
his face, I saw that it was the face of the man who had said that hell
would not be hell to him so long as he and his boon companions were
together.
* * * * *
Another former acquaintance that I met there interested me even more.
He was a man whom I had always regarded as deeply religious, and his
presence in hell (by which I mean as one who was undergoing punishment)
was to me the greater cause for surprise.
"What is it," I said to him, "that brings you here? not impurity,
surely? and I cannot think of any other reason."
"No," he answered, "it is not impurity, for that was never one of my
failings. To this day, I am unable to understand the relish with which
most young men (and occasionally, be it said with shame, those who
are not young) listen to the kind of conversation which is current
sometimes in the smoking-room. We hold our handkerchiefs to our noses
when we pass a place where there is an unpleasant odour, and turn
hastily away if we come upon a repulsive sight; and impure talk affects
me always as does a disgusting object or a nauseous smell.
"You are surprised at finding me here in hell, because you have always
believed me to be one who thought much and felt deeply on religious
subjects. But you forget that to have religious feeling, and to act
upon religious principle, are in many ways distinct. There are men who,
though they are naturally incapable of lofty thought, would scorn to
do anything immoral or mean; and, on the other hand, there are men who
feel intensely on all religious subjects, who pray fervently and often,
sing hymns with eyes streaming with tears of heartfelt earnestness,
and yet their actions are not seldom unworthy, and their lives will
not bear too close an inquiry. 'There is no self-delusion more fatal,'
as Mr. Lowell has said, 'than that which makes the conscience dreamy
with the anodyne of lofty sentiment, while the life is grovelling and
sensual.' It is a delusion which bids a man close his eyes lest he see
where he is going; it comes to him with its harlot-beauties daintily
draped in the robes of an angel of light, and sings hymns before the
very gates of hell. It is because I am one who so deluded, or who
tried so to delude himself, that you and I meet here to-day. We set
out together with the broad path and the narrow path before us. You,
by one fatal and irrevocable step, swerved to the broad path from
the narrow, and that single step plunged you headlong and hopeless
into this abyss. And I, well, I appeared to myself and to others to
be walking in the narrow way; and yet, by the making of continual
divergences, so trifling as to seem of but little or no account, I
find myself eventually in the same awful abyss that you are in, and
on a level fully as loathsome as your own. Though I have committed no
such crime as you have committed, I was, in the petty details of my
daily life, habitually untrue; and so the time came at last, in which,
with every desire to serve God faithfully and to follow the dictates
of conscience, I found that the power to make my will subservient to
my wishes had slipped unnoticed from me. Habit has the strength of a
giant, for good as well as for evil, and the will to do right on every
occasion is as much a matter of training as is mere physical strength.
The man who is habitually untrue in small things, cannot, even though
he wish it, do right in great ones, any more than the man of untrained
muscle can, by a mere exercise of volition, lift weights which would
try the practised athlete. The only way in which to become Christlike
is not to endeavour to feel so, not to seek to arouse sentiment or
emotion (as drunkards fly for strength to stimulants), but to make
Christliness the persistent and unconditional _habit_ of our lives. We
must learn day by day to resist the first rising of a desire to do,
or to say, or to think, that which we know diverges by the hundredth
part of an inch from the path which conscience would have us to walk;
and we must so school ourselves that we can, by sheer force of will,
rise above the mood of the moment, so that we act not by impulse or by
inclination, but by conscience."
He stopped, and, reading my thoughts, said, in reply to them: "Yes,
there is, indeed, something grimly humorous in my setting up to
preach to others; but it cost me my hope of heaven, and a lifetime,
to learn the lesson, and God knows I have it by heart at last! One
more illustration and I have done. Let us suppose that you and I are
standing on the deck of a ship which is steering straight for a certain
haven, and that you put your hand on the helm and shift her a fraction
of an inch from the line on which she is running. The angle at which
you have swerved from that line may be so utterly infinitesimal that it
might be measured by a hair's breadth, but let that angle be carried
out to its ultimate destination, and you will be borne miles and miles
away from the harbour for which you are bound.
"Remember, then, when next you are called upon to make choice, be
it in never so trifling a matter, between good and evil, between
obeying conscience or disobeying her, that you are choosing in that
moment between hell and between heaven, not for to-day, this week, or
to-morrow, but for eternity!"
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