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.NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
FREETHOUGIIT PITBLISHING COMPANY’S EDITION'.
BY
COL. R. G. INGERSOLL.
[tenth
thousand.]
LONDON:
FREETHOUGHT PUBLISHING COMPANY,
63, FLEET STREET E.C.
1 8 8 4.
PRICE
ONE
PENNY.
�LONDON :
PRINTED BT ANNIE BESAHT AND CHARLES BRADLAVGII,
63, FLEET STREET, E.C.
�DIVINE
VIVISECTION.
a bell was born of revenge and brutality on the one
side, and cowardice on the other. In my judgment the American
people are too brave, too charitable, too generous, too magnanimous, to believe in the infamous dogma of an eternal hell. I have
no respect for any human being who believes in it. I have no
respect for any man who preaches it. I have no respect for the
man who will pollute the imagination of childhood with that in
famous lie. I have no respect for the man who will add to the
sorrows of this world with that frightful dogma. I have no respect
for any man who endeavors to put that infinite cloud, that infinite
shadow, over the heart of humanity.
For a good many years the learned intellects of Christendom
j
into the religions of other countries in the
world, the religions of the thousands that have passed away. They
examined into the religion of Egypt, the religion of Greece, the
religion of home and of the Scandinavian countries. In the pre
sence of the ruins of those religions the learned men of Christen
dom insisted that those religions were baseless, that they were
fraudulent. But they have all passed away. While this was being
done the Christianity of our day applauded, and when the learned
^?en
brpugh with the religions of other countries they turned
bhen attention to our religion. By the same mode of reasoning,
by the same methods, by the same arguments that they used with
the old religions,. they are overturning the religion of our day.
Why Every religion in this world is the work of man. Every
t?k
bas been written by man. Men existed before the books.
It books had existed before man, I might admit there was such a
thing as a sacred volume. Man never had an idea, man will never
have an idea, except those supplied to him by his surroundings,
very idea m the world that man has, came to him by nature.
You can imagine an animal with the hoof of a bison, with the
pouch of the kangaroo, with the wings of an eagle, with the beak
of a bn’d, and with the tail of the lion; and yet every point of this
monster you borrow from nature. Every thing you can think of,
eveiy 'thing you can dream of, is borrowed from your surround
ings. And there is nothing on this earth coming from any other
sphere whatever. Man has produced every religion in the world.
And why Because each religion bodes forth the knowledge and
the belief of the people at the time it was made, and in no book is
there any knowledge found, except that of the people who wrote
it. In no book is there found any knowledge, except that of the
�20
firnn in which it was written. Barbarians have produced, and
always will produce, barbarian religions; barbarians have pro
duced, and always will produce, ideas in harmony with then- sur
roundings, and all the religions of the past were produced by
barbarians. We are making religions to-day. That is to say, we
are changing them, and the religion of to-day is not the religion
of one year ago. What changed it ? Science has done it edu
cation and the growing heart of man has done it. And just to the
extent that we become civilised ourselves, will we improve thereligion of our fathers. If the religion of one hundred years ago,
compared with the religion of to-day, is so low, what will it be nr
one thousand years ?
, .
,
3
-u- 1,
If we continue making the inroads upon orthodoxy which we
have been making during the last twenty-five years, what will it
be fifty years from to-night ? It will have to be remonetized by
that time, or else it will not be legal tender. In my judgment,
every religion that stands by appealing to miracles is dishonored.
Every religion in the world has denounced every other rehgion asa fraud. That proves to me that they all tell the truth aBout
others. Why, suppose Mr. Smith should tell Mr. Brown that he
—Smith—saw a corpse get out of the grave and that when he
first saw it, it was covered with the worms of death, and that in
his presence it was reclothed m healthy, beautiful flesh. Ai
then suppose Mr. Brown should tell Mr. Smith I
sa
thing myself. I was in a graveyard once, and I saw a dead man
rise.” Shippose then that Smith should say to Brown, You re a
liar” and Brown should reply to Smith, “And you re a bar
what would you think ? It would simply be because Smith, never
having seen it himself, did’nt believe Brown; and Brown, nevei
bavin* seen it, did’nt believe Smith had. Now, if Smith had
really°seen it, and Brown told him he had seen it too, then Smith
would regard it as a corroboration of his story, and he would legard Brown as one of his principal witnesses. But, on the con
trarv he says, “You never saw it.” So, when a man says, 1
was5 upon Mount Sinai, and there I met God, and he told me,
‘ Stand aside and let me drown these people ;
and anotJe1’
savsto him, “ I was up upon a mountain, and there 1 met tne
Supreme Brahma,” and Moses says, “That’s not true and con
tends that the other man never did see Brahma, and he conten
that Moses never did see God, that is in my judgment proof that
tkEver°y\X^onmthS,’ has charged every other religion with
havino-^been an unmitigated fraud ; and yet, if any man had evei
seen the miracle himself, his mind would be prepared to believe
that another man had seen the same thing. Whenever a man
appeals to a miracle he tells what is not true. Truth relies upon,
reason and the undeviating course of all the laws of nature.
Now, we have a religion—-that is, some people have.
ij
pretend to have religion myself. I Believe m
“ *
L t
—that’s my doctrine—to make everybody happy that y ou can.
�21
the future take care of itself, and if I ever touch the shores o£
another world, I will be just as ready and anxious to get into some
ramnn era,five employment as anybody else. Now, we have got in
this country a religion which men have preached for about eighteen
hundred years, and just in proportion as their belief in that religion
has grown great, men have grown mean and wicked; just in pro
portion as they have ceased to believe it, men have become just
and charitable. And if they believed it to-night as they once be
lieved it, I wouldn’t be allowed to speak in the city of New York.
It is from the coldness and infidelity of the churches that I get my
right to preach; and I say it to their credit. Now, we have a.
religion. What is it ? They say in the first place that all this
vast universe was created by a Deity. I don’t know whether it
was or not. They say, too, that had it not been for the first sin of
Adam there never would have been anyMdevil in this world, and if
there had been no devil there would have been no sin, and if there
had been no sin there never would have been any death. For my
part, I am glad there was death in this world, because that gave
me a chance. Somebody had to die to give me room, and when
my turn comes I’ll be willing to let somebody else take my place.
But whether there is another life or not, if there is any being who
gave me this, I shall thank him from the bottom of my heart, be
cause, upon the whole, my life has been a joy. Now they say,
because of this first sin all men .were consigned to eternal hell.
And this because Adam was our representative. Well, I always
had an idea that my representative ought to live somewhere about
the same time I do. I always had an idea that I should have some
voice in choosing my representative. And if I had a voice I never
should have voted for the old gentleman called Adam. Now, in
order to regain man from the frightful hell of eternity, Christ
himself came to this world and took upon himself flesh, and in
order that we might know the road to eternal salvation he gave us
:a book, and that book is called the Bible, and wherever that Bible
has been read men have immediately commenced cutting each
others’ throats. Wherever that Bible has been circulated, they
have invented inquisitions and instruments of torture, and have
commenced hating each other with all their hearts. But I am told
now, we are all told, that this Bible is the foundation of civilisa
tion ; I say that this Bible is the foundation of hell, and we never
shall get rid of the dogma of hell until we have got rid of the idea
that it is an inspired book.
Now, what does the Bible teach ? I am not going to talk about
what this minister or that ministei’ says it teaches ; the question
is: “ Ought a man to be sent to eternal hell for not believing this
Bible to be the work of a merciful Father ? ’ ’ and the only way to
find out is to read it; and as very few people do read it now, I will
read a few passages. This is the book to be read in the schools, in
•order to make our children charitable and good ; this is the book
that we must read in order that our children may have ideas of
mercy, charity, and justice.
�22
Does the Bible teach mercy ? Now be honest. I read : “ I will
make mine arrows drunk with blood; and my sword shall devour
flesh” (Deut. xxxii., 42). Pretty good start for a mercifjil God!
‘ ‘ That thy foot may be dipped in the blood of thine enemies, and
the tongue of thy dogs in the same” (Ps. lxviii., 23.) Again:
‘ ‘ And the Lord thy God will put out those nations before thee by
little and little; thou mayst not consume them at once, lest the
beasts of the field increase upon thee” (Deut. vii., 23).
Pead the glorious exploits of Joshua, chosen captain of theLord, and note how, having coveted the fertile land of Goshen, he
smote the people, houghed their horses, despoiled their cities, and
put all that breathed to the edge of the sword, as the moral God
had commanded. Moreover, he came against them suddenly, not
a solitary trumpet blast from the celestial orchestra was therecalling upon the people to yield, or to move out of their country,
bag and baggage. No; instantaneous fire and butchery. Ob
serve, too, the charming naivete of the statement: ‘ ‘ There was
not a city that made peace with the children of Israel, save the
Hivites.” Why ? Because the Lord “ hardened their hearts, that
they should come against Israel in battle that he might destroy
them utterly.”
Do you wish further examples of a God of mercy ? Pead in
Exodus how the Lord ordered the harrying of cities and thewholesale slaughter of the inhabitants. ‘ ‘ Thou shalt save alive
nothing that breatheth; but thou shalt utterly destroy them.”
The old men and the maidens, and the sweet-dimpled babe smiling
upon the lap of its mother.
Pecollect, these instructions were given to an army of invasion,
and the people who were fighting were guilty of the crime of
fighting for their homes. The Old Testament is full of curses,
vengeance, jealousy, and hatred; of barbarity and brutality..
Now, do not for one moment believe that these words were written
by the most merciful God. Don’t pluck from the heart the sweet
flowers of piety and crush them by superstition. Do not believe
that God ever ordered the murder of innocent women and helpless
babes. Do not let this supposition turn your hearts into stone.
When anything is said to have been written by the most merciful
God, and the thing is not merciful, then I deny it, and say he
never wrote it. I will live by the standard of reason, and if'
thinking in accordance with reason takes me to perdition, then I
will go to hell with my reason rather than to heaven without it.
Now, does this Bible teach political freedom, or does it teach
political tyranny ? Does it teach a man to resist oppression ? Does ■
it teach a man to tear from the throne of tyranny the crowned
thing and robber caUed a king ? Let us see. “ Let every soul be
subject to the higher powers ; for there is no power but of God:
the powers that be are ordained of God ” (Pom. xiii., 1). All the
kings and princes, and governors, and thieves, and robbers that
happened to be in authority were placed there by the infinite fatherof all! “Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the
�23
ordinance of God.” And when George Washington resisted the
power of George the Third, he resisted the power of God. And
when our fathers said “resistance to tyrants is obedience to God,”
they falsified the Bible itself. “ For he is the minister of God to
thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for,he
beareth not the sword in vain ; for he is the minister of God, the
revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil. Wherefore
ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for con
science’s sake ” (Eom. xiii., 4, 5).
I deny this wretched doctrine. Wherever the sword of rebellion
is drawn to protect the rights of man, I am a rebel. Wherever the
sword of rebellion is drawn to give man liberty, to clothe him in
all his just rights, I am on the side of that rebellion. I deny that
rulers are crowned by the Most High; the rulers are the people,
and the presidents and others are but the servants of the people.
All authority comes from the people, and not from the aristocracy
of the air. Upon these texts of Scripture which I have just read
rest the thrones of Europe, and these are the voices that are re
peated from age to age by brainless kings and heartless kings.
Does the Bible give woman her rights ? Is this Bible humane ?
Does it treat woman as she ought to be treated, or is it barbarian ?
Let us see. “Let woman learn in silence with all subjection” (1
Timothy ii., 11). If a woman would know anything let her ask
her husband. Imagine the ignorance of a lady who had only that
source of information. “But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor
to usurp authority over a man, but to be in silence.” Observe the
magnificent reason. “ For Adam was first formed, then Eve.. And
Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived, was in the
transgression.” Splendid! “But I would have you know that
the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is of
the man ; and the head of Christ is God.” That is to say, there is
as much difference between the woman and man as there is between
Christ and man. There is the liberty of woman. “For the man
is not of the woman, but the woman is of the man. Neither was
the man created for the woman.” Well, who was he created for ?
“ But the woman was created for the man.” “Wives, submit your
selves unto your husbands, as unto the Lord.” There’s libe-ty 1
‘ ‘ For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is, the
head of the church; and he is the savior of the body. Therefore,
as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own
husbands in everything.” Even the Savior didn’t put man and.
woman upon any equality. The man could divorce the wife, but
the 'wife could not divorce the husband, and according to the Old
Testament, the mother had to ask forgiveness for being the mother
of babes. Splendid!
Here is something from the Old Testament: “ When thou goest
forth' to war against thine enemies, and the Lord thy God hath
delivered them into thine hands, and thou hast taken them captive.
And seest among the captives a beautiful woman, and hast a desire
unto her, that thou wouldst have her to thy wife. Then thou shalt
�24
bring lier home to thine house ; and she shall shave her head, and
pare her nails” (Deut. xxi., 10, 11, 12). That is in self-defence, I
suppose!
This sacred book, this foundation of human liberty, of morality,
does it teach concubinage and polygamy ? Read the thirty-first
chapter of Numbers, read the twenty-first chapter of Deuteronomy,
read the blessed lives of Abraham, of David, or of Solomon, and
then tell me that the sacred scripture does not teach polygamy and
concubinage ! All the language of the world is not sufficient to
express the infamy of polygamy ; it makes a man a beast and
a woman a stone. It destroys the fireside and makes virtue an out
cast. And yet it is the doctrine of the Bible. The doctrine
defended by Luther and Melancthon ! It takes from our language
those sweetest words—father, husband, wife, and mother, and
takes us back to barbarism and fills our hearts with the crawling,
slimy serpents of loathsome lust.
Does the Bible teach the existence of devils? Of course it
does. Yes, it teaches not only the existence of a good Being, but
a bad being. This good Being had to have a home ; that home
was heaven. This bad being had to have a home j and that home
was hell. This hell is supposed to be nearer to earth than I would
care to have it, and to be peopled with spirits, hobgoblins, and all
the fiery shapes with which the imagination of ignorance and fear
could people that horrible place ; and the Bible teaches, the ^existence of hell and this big devil and all these little devils. The
Bible teaches the doctrine of witchcraft, and makes us behove that
there are sorcerers and witches, and that the dead could be raised
by the power of sorcery. Read the account of the spiritual séance
at which Saul and the Witch of Endor assisted, and which resulted
in the calling up of Samuel. Does anyone believe that now t
In another place it is declared that ‘witchcraft is an abomination
unto the Lord. He wanted no rivals in this business. Now what
does the New Testament teach ? Turn to the story of Jesus being
led into the wilderness for the devil to experiment upon him. He
was starved forty days and nights, and then asked to work a
miracle ! After that the devil placed him on a pinnacle of the temple,
ami endeavored to persuade him to cast himself down to prove that
he was the Son of God. Is it possible that anyone can believe that
the devil absolutely took God Almighty, and put him on the pin
nacle of the temple and endeavored to persuade him to jump down/
» Again the devil taketh him into an exceeding high mountain,
and showeth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of
them ; and saith unto him, All these things will I give thee,, it thou
wilt fall down and worship me. Then saith Jesus unto him. Get
thee hence, Satan, for it is written, Thou shalt worship the
thy God, and him only shalt thou serve ” (Matt, iv., 8—11). ^9^’
the devil must have known at that time that he was God, and God.
at that time must have known that the other was the devil.. How
Could the latter be conceived to have the impudence to promise God
a world in which. he did not have a tax-title to an inch of land ♦
�25
Then there is that pig story. When, the “boss devil had left
Jesus and angels had ministered unto him, and he had taken a
short sea voyage, there came out to meet him a man possessed of a
number of minor devils, and a man whom no one could tame, nor
bind, no not with chains, and who dwelt among the tombs. A nice
puict citizen truly ! And after some parley the devils beseech Jesus,
saying:—“Send us into the swine that we may enter into them.
And forthwith Jesus gave them leave. And the unclean spirits
went out, and entered into the swine ; and the herd ran violently
down a steep place into the sea (there were about two thousand)
and were choked in the sea.” No doubt a good riddance; hut what
the owner of the swine thought of the transaction, or whether he
was indemnified for the loss of his porkers deponent cannot say.
Are we reasonable men in the nineteenth century in the United
States of America and believe this ? I deny it. These fables of
devils have covered the world with blood; they have Tilled the
world with fear, and I am going to do what I can to free the
world of these insatiate monsters. Small and great, they aavG
-filler! the world with monsters, they have made the world a
synonym of bar and ferocity.
_
And it is this book that ought to be read in all the schools this book that teaches man to enslave his brother. If it is larceny
to steal the result of labor, how much more is it larceny to steal
the laborer himself ? ‘ ‘ Moreover, of the children of the strangers
that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye ouy, and of their
-Families that are with you, which they begat in your- land ; and
they shall be your possession. And ye shall take them as an in
heritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a posses
sion; they shall be your bondmen for ever; but over your brethren
the children of Israel, ye shall not rule one over another with
rigor ” (Lev. xxv., 45, 46). Why i Because they are not as good
as you will buy of the heathen roundabout.
These are edifying texts. Consult also Exod. xxi., where you
will find a complete slave code. No detail is wanting. . Ender cer
tain conditions the master is to bring his servants to the judges, then
he is to lug him to the doorpost and bore his ear through with an
awl—“And he shall serve him for ever.” This is the doctrine which
has ever lent itself to the chains of slavery, and makes a man im
prison himself rather than desert wife and children. I hate it!
What does this same book with its glad tidings of great joy for
all people say of the rights of children ? Let us see how they are
treated by the “ most merciful God.” “ If a man hath a stubborn
and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father,, or
the voice of his mother, and that when they have chastened him,
will not hearken unto them. Then shall his father and his mother
lay hold of him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and
unto the gate of his place. And they shall say unto the elders of
his city : This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey
our voice, he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his
city shall stone him with stones, that he die; so shalt thou put evil
�26
away from among you; and all Israel shall hear and fear ” ("Dout.
xxi., 18).
Abraham was commanded to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice,
and he intended to obey. The boy was not consulted.
Did you ever hear the story of Jcpthah’s daughter ? Is there in
the history of the world a sadder story than that ? Can a God who
would accept such a sacrifice be worthy of the worship of civilised
men ? I believe in the rights of children. I plead for the republic
of home, for the democracy of the fireside, and for this I am culled
a heathen and a devil by those who believe in the cheerful and
comforting doctrine of eternal damnation. Dead the book of Job I
God met the devil and asked him where he had been, and he said:
“Walking up and down the country,” and the Lord said to him :
c ‘ Have you noticed my man Job over here, how good he is ? ” And
the devil said : “Of course he’s good, you give him everything he
wants. Just take away his property and he’ll curse you. Youjust
try it.” And he did try it, and took away his goods, but Job still
remained good. The devil laughed and said that he had not been
tried enough. Then the Lord touched his flesh, but he was still
true.. Then he took away his children, but he remained faithfid,
and in the end, to show how much Job made by his fidelity, his
property was all doubled, and he had more children than ever. If
you have a child, and you love it, would you be satisfied with a
God who would destroy it, and endeavor to make it up by giving
you another that was better looking ? Mo, you want that one ;
you want no other, and yet this is the idea of the love of children
taught in the Bible.
Does the Bible teach you freedom of religion ? To-day we say
that every man has a right to worship God or not, to worship him
as he pleases. Is it the doctrine of the Bible ? Bead Deut. xii., 6.
If a brother, or son, or daughter or wife proposes to serve any god
but your own, or that of your fathers, thou shalt not pity, nor
spare, nor conceal. “ Thou shalt surely kill him ; thine hand shall
be the first upon him to put him to death, and thou shalt stone
him with stones that he die.”
. And do you know, according to that, if you had lived in Pales
tine, and your wife that you love as your own soul had said to
you: ‘ ‘ Let us worship the sun whose golden beams clothe the
world in glory; let us bow to that great luminary; I love the sun
because it gave me your face; because it gave me the features of
my babe ; let us worship the sun ; ” it was then your duty to lay
your hands upon her, your eye must not pity her, but it was your
duty to cast the first stone against that tender and loving breast!
I hate such doctrine' I hate such books ! I hate gods that will
•write such books ! I tell you that it is infamous! That is the
religious liberty of the Bible—that’s it. And this God taught that
doctrine to the Jews, and said to them, “Anyone that teaches a
different religion, kill him ! ” Now, let me ask, and I want to do
it reverently:
If, as is contended, God gave these frightful laws to the Jews,
�and afterwards this same God took upon himself flesh, and came
among the Jews, and taught a different religion, and these Jews,
in accordance with the laws which this same God gave them, cruci
fied hire, did he not reap what he had sown. ? The mercy of all
this comes in what is called “the plan of salvation.” What is
that plan? According to this great plan the innocent suffer "for
the guilty to satisfy a law.
What sort of a law must it be that would be satisfied with the
suffering of innocence ? According to this plan, the salvation of
the whole world depends upon the bigotry of the Jews and the
treachery of Judas. According to the same plan, there would have
been no death in the world if there had been no sin, and if there
had been no deaths you and I would not have been called into ex
istence, and if we did not exist we could not have been saved, so
we owe our salvation to the bigotry of the Jews and the treachery
of Judas, and we are indebted to the devil for our existence. I
speak this reverently. It strikes me that what they call the atone
ment is a kind of moral bankruptcy. Under its merciful provisions
man is allowed the privilege of sinning credit, and whenever he is
guilty of a mean action, he says : “Charge it.” In my judgment,
this kind of bookkeeping breeds extravagance in sin.
Suppose we had a law in New York that every merchant should
give credit to every man who asked it, under pain and penitentiary,
and that every man should take the benefit of the bankruptcy sta
tute any Saturday night ? Doesn’t the credit system in morals
breed extravagance in sin ? That’s the question. Who’s afraid of
punishment which is so far away ? Whom does the doctrine of
hell stop ? The great, the rich, the powerful ? No ; the poor, the
weak, the despised, the mean. Did you ever hear of a man going
to hell who died in New York worth a million of dollars, or ■with
an income of twenty-five thousand a year ? Did you ever hear of
a man going to hell who rode in a carriage ? Never. They are the
gentlemen who talk about their assets, and who say: “ Hell is not
for me, it is for the poor. I have all the luxuries I want, give that
to the poor.” Who go to hell ? Tramps !
Let me tell you a story. There was once a frightful rain, and all
the animals held a convention to see whose fault it was, and the fox
nominated the bon for chairman. The -wolf seconded the motion,
and the hyena said, that suits. When the convention was called to
order, the fox was called upon to confess his sins. He stated, how
ever, that it would be much more appropriate for the bon to com
mence first. Thereupon the lion said: “I am not conscious of
having committed evil. It is true I have devoured a few men, but
for what other purpose were men made ? ” And they all cheered,
and were satisfied. The fox gave his views upon the goose ques
tion, and the wolf admitted that he had devoured sheep, and occa
sionally had killed a shepherd, but “ ab acquainted with the history
of my family wib bear me out when I say that shepherds have been
the enemies of my family from the beginning of the world.” Then
away in the rear there arose a simple donkey, with a kind of Abra-
�28
hamic countenance. He said: “I expect it’s, I. I had eaten nothing
for three days except three thistles. I was passing a monastery;
the monks were at mass. The gates were open leading to a yard
full of sweet clover. I knew it was wrong, but I did slip in and I
took a mouthful, but my conscience smote me, and I went out.”
Then all the animals shouted, “He’s the fellow! ” and in two
minutes they had his hide on the fence. That’s the kind of people
that go to hell.
Now, this doctrine of hell, that has been such a comfort to my
race, which so many ministers are pleading for, has been defended
for ages by the fathers of the Church. Your preachers say that the
sovereignty of God implies that he has an absolute, unlimited, and
independent right to dispose of his creatures as he will, because he
made them. Has he ? Suppose I take this book and change it
immediately into a sentient human being. Would I have a right
to torture it because I made it ? No ; on the contrary. I would
say: Having brought you into existence, it is my duty to do the
best for you I can. They say God has a right to damn me because
he made me. I deny it.
Another one says: God is not obliged to save even those who
believe in Christ, and that he can either bestow salvation upon his
children or retain it without any diminution of his glory. Another
one says : God may save any sinner whatsoever, consistently with
his justice. Let a natural person—and I claim to be one—moral or
immoral, wise or unwise, let him be as just as he can, no matter
what his prayers may be, what pains he may have taken to bo saved,
or whatever circumstances he may be in, God, according to this
writer, can deny him salvation, without the least disparagement of
his glory. His glories will not be in the least obscured; there is
no natural man, be his character what it may, but God . may cast
him down to hell, without being charged with unfair dealing in any
respect with regard to that man. Theologians tell us that God’s
design in the creation was simply to glorify himself. Magnificent
object! “ The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of .God,
which is poured out • without mixture into the cup of his indigna
tion ; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the
presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb
(Rev. i., 10).
Do you know nobody would have had an idea of hell in this
world if it hadn’t been for volcanoes ? They were looked upon as
the chimneys of hell. The idea of eternal fire never, would have
polluted the imagination of man but for them. An eminent theolo
gian, describing hell, says : ‘ ‘ There is no recounting up the million
of ages the damned shall suffer. All arithmetic ends here ” and
all sense, too .' “ They shall have nothing to do in passing away
this eternity but to conflict with torments. God shall have no other
use or employment for them.” These words were said by gentle
men who died Christians and who are now in the harp business in
the world to come. Another declares there is nothing to keep any
man or Christian out of hell except the mere pleasure of God, and
�29
their pains never grow any easier by their becoming accustomed to
them P It is also declared that the devil goes about like a hon, ready
to devour the wicked. Did it never occur to you what a con
tradiction it is to say that the devil will persecute his own friends
He wants all the recruits he can get; why then should he PerS0cute
his friends ? In my judgment he should give them the best hell
It is in the very nature of things that torments inflicted have no
tendency to bring a wicked man to repentance. Then why tor
ment him if it will not do him good ? It is simply unadulterated
revenge. All the punishment in the world will not reform a man
unless he knows that he who inflicts it upon him does it for the
sake of reformation, and really and truly loves him and has his
¡rood at heart. Punishment inflicted for gratifying the appetite
makes man afraid, but debases him. Various, reasons are given
for punishing the wicked; first that God will vindicate his ^jured
majesty. Well, I am afraid of that 1 Second, He will glorify his
justice-think of that. Third, He will show and glorify his grace
Every time the saved shall look upon the damned in hell it will
cause in them a lively and admiring sense of the grace of God.
Every look upon the damned will double the ardor and the joy of
the saints in heaven.' Can the believing husband in heaven look
down upon the torments of the unbelieving wife in hell and then
feel a thrill of joy ? That’s the old doctrine—that if you saw your
wife in hell—the wife you love, who, in your last sickness, nursed
you, that perhaps supported you by her needle when you were ill ;
the wife who watched by your couch mght and day, and held youi
corpse in her loving arms when you were dead—the sight would
give you great joy. That doctrine is not preached to-day. Ihey
do not preach that the sight would give you joy; but they do
preach that it will not diminish your happiness. That is the doc
trine of every orthodox minister in New York, and I repeat that
I have no respect for men who preach such, doctrines, lne signt
of the torments of the damned in hell will increase the ecstasy of
the saints for ever ! On this principle a man never enjoys a good.
dinner so much as when a fellow-creature is dying of famine before
his eyes, or he never enjoys the cheerful warmth of his own fiiesi e
so greatly as when a poor and abandoned wretch is dying on the
door-step. The saints enjoy the ecstasy, and the groans of the
tormented are music to them. I say here to-night that you cannot
commit a sin against an infinite being. I can sm against my
brother or my neighbor, because I can injure them. There can be
no sin where there is no injury. Neither can a finite being commit
infinite sin.
......
r
n.
An old saint believed that hell was in the interior of the earth,
and that the rotation of the earth was caused by the souls trying
to get away from the fire. The old church at Stratford-on-Avon,
Shakspere’s home, is adorned with pictures of hell and the like.
One of the pictures represents resurrection-morning. People are
getting out of their graves, and devils are catching hold oi tneir
�30
heels. In one place there is a huge brass monster, and devils are
driving scores of lost souls into his mouth. Over hot fires hang
chaldrons with fifty or sixty people in each, and devils are poking
the fires. People are hung up on hooks by their tongues, and
devils are lashing them. Up in the right-hand corner are some of
the saved, with grins on their faces stretching from ear to ear.
They seem to say: “Aha, what did I tell you ? ”
Some of the saints—gentlemen who died in the odor of sanctity,
and arc now in glory—insisted that heaven and hell would be
plainly in view of each other. Only a few years ago, Eev. J.
Furniss (an appropriate name) published a little • pamphlet called
“ A Sight of Hell.” I remember when I first read that. My little
child, seven years old, was ill and in bed. I thought she would
not hear me, and I read some of it aloud. She arose and asked :
“Who says that?” I answered: “That’s what they preach in
some of the churches.” “ I never will enter- a church as long as I
live ' ” she said, and she never has.
The doctrine of orthodox Christianity is that the damned shall
suffer torment for ever and for ever. And if you were a wanderer,
footsore, weary, with parched tongue, dying for a drop of water,
and you met one who divided his poor portion with you, and died
as he saw you reviving—if he was an -unbeliever and you a believer,
and he called you from hell for a draught of water, it would be
your duty to laugh at him.
Eev. C. Spurgeon says that everywhere in hell will be written
the words “for ever.” They-will be branded on every wave of
flame, they will be forged in every link of every chain, they will
be seen in every lurid flash of brimstone—everywhere will be the
words ‘ ‘ for ever.” Everybody will be yelling and screaming them.
Just think of that picture of the mercy and justice of the eternal
Father of us aU. If these words are necessary why are they not
written now everywhere in the world, on every tree, and every
field, and on every blade of grass ? I say I am entitled to have it
so. I say that it is God’s duty to furnish me with the evidence.
In old times they had to find a place for hell, and they found a
hundred places for it. One said that it was under Lake Avernus,
but the Christians thought differently. One divine tells us that
it must be below the earth because Christ descended into hell.
Another gives it as his opinion that hell is the sun, and he tells us
that nobody, without an express revelation from God, can prove
that it is not there. Most likely. Well, he had the idea at aU
events of utilising the damned as fuel to warm the earth. Another
divine preached a sermon no further back than 1876, in which he
said that the damned will grow worse, and the same divine says
that the devil was the first Universalist. Then I am on the side
cf the devil.
The fact is, that you have got not merely to believe the Bible ;
but you must also believe in a certain interpretation of it, and,
mind you, you must also believe in the doctrine of the Trinity.
If you don’t understand it, it is your own fault. You must believe
�31
in it all the same. If you do not all the orthodox churches agree
in condemning you to everlasting flames. We have got to burn
through all our lives simply with the view of making them happy.
We are taught to love our enemies, to pray for those that perse
cute us, to forgive. Should not the merciful God practise what he
preaches ? I say that reverently. Why should he say ‘ ‘ Fosgive
your enemies ” if he will not himself forgive ? Why should he say
‘ ‘ Pray for those that despise and persecute you, but if they refuse
to believe my doctrine I will burn them for ever?” I cannot
believe it. Here is a little child, residing in the purlieus of the
■city—some little boy who is taught that it is his duty to steal by
his mother, who applauds his success, and pats him on the head
.and calls him a good boy—would it be just to condemn him to an
eternity of torture ? Suppose there is a God; let us bring to this
■question some common sense.
I care nothing about the doctrines of religions or creeds of the
past. Let us come to the bar of the nineteenth century and judge
the matter by what we know, by what we think, by what we love.
But they say to us : “If you throw away the Bible what are we to
depend on then ? ” But no two persons in the world agree as to
what the Bible is, what they are to believe, or what they are not to
believe. It is like a guide-post that has been thrown down in
some time of disaster, and has been put up the wrong way. No
body can accept its guidance, for nobody knows where it would
direct him. I say, “ Tear- down the useless guide-post,” but they
.answer : “ Oh, do not do that or we will not have nothing to go
by.” I would say: “ Old Church, you take that road, and I will
take this.” Another minister has said that the Bible is the great
town clock, at which we all may set our watches. But I have said
to a friend of that minister: ‘ ‘ Suppose we all should set our
watches by that town clock, there would be many persons to tell
you that in old times the long hand was the hour hand, and be
sides, the clock hasn’t been wound up for a long time.” I say, let
us wait till the sun rises and set our watches by nature. For my
part I am willing to give up heaven to get rid of hell. I had
rather there should be no heaven, than that any solitary soul
should be condemned to suffer for ever and ever. But they tell
me that the Bible is the book of hope. Now, in the Old Testa
ment there is not, in my judgment, a single reference to another
life. Is there a burial service mentioned in it, in which a word of
hope is spoken at the grave of the dead ? The idea of eternal
life was not born of any book. The wave of hope and joy ebbs
and flows, and will continue to ebb and flow as long as love kisses
the lips of death.
Let me tell you a tale of the Persian religion—of a man who,
having done good for long years of his life, presented himself at
the gates of Paradise, but the gates remained closed against him.
He went back and followed up his good works for seven years
longer, and the gates of Paradise still remaining shut against him,
he toiled in works of charity until at last they were opened unto
�32
him. Think of that, and send out your missionaries among those
people. There is no religion but goodness, but justice, but charity.
Religion is not theory—it is life. It is not intellectual conviction
■—it is divine humanity, and nothing else. There is another tale
from the Hindu of a man who refused to enter Paradise without a
faithful dog, urging that ingratitude was the blackest of all sins.
“And the god,” he said, “ admitted him, dog and all.” Compare
that religion with the orthodox tenets of the city of New York.
There is a prayer which every Brahmin prays, in which he de
clares that he will never enter into a final state of bliss alone, but
that everywhere he will strive for universal redemption,' that
never will he leave the world of sin and sorrow, but remain suffer
ing and striving and sorrowing after universal salvation. Comparethat with the orthodox idea, and send out your missionaries to the
benighted Hindus.
The doctiine of hell is infamous beyond all power to express. I
wish there were words mean enough to express my feelings of
loathing on this subject. What harm has it not done? What
waste places has it not made ? It has planted misery and wretched
ness in this world; it has filled the future with selfish joys and.
lurid abysses of eternal flame. But we are getting marc sense
every day. We begin to despise those monstrous doctrines. If
you want to better men and women, change their conditions here.
Don’t promise them something somewhere else. One biscuit will do
more good than all the tracts that were ever peddled in the world.
Give them more whitewash, more light, more air. You have to
change men physically before you change them intellectually. I
believe the time will come when every criminal will be treated as
we now treat the diseased and sick, when every penitentiary will
become a reformatory; and that if criminals go to them with
hatred in their bosoms, they will leave them without feelings of
revenge. Let me tell you the story of Orpheus and Eurydice.
Eurydice had been carried away by the god of hell, and Orpheus,
her lover, went in quest of her. He took with him his. lyre, and
played such exquisite music that all hell was amazed. Ixion forgot
his labors at the wheel, the daughters of Danaus ceased from their
hopeless task, Tantalus forgot his thirst, oven Pluto smiled, and,
for the first time in the history of hell, the eyes of the Furies were
wet with tears. As it was -with the lyre of Orpheus, so it is to-day
with the great harmonies of science, which are rescuing from theprisons of superstition the torn and bleeding heart of man.
�
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Divine vivisection
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Edition: 2nd ed.
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Collation: [19]-32 p. ; 18 cm.
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Hell
Christianity
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Devil-Christianity
Hell
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697
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
vóilscroj TkirmaS^
• I
I
EVERLASTING PUNISHMENT
A LETTER
a
O
C)
TO
THOMAS
SCOTT.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS
II THE TERRACE,
SCOTT,
FARQUHAR ROAD, UPPER NORWOOD,
LONDON, S.E.
1873.
Price Sixpence.
�On religion, in particular, the time appears to me to have come, when
it is the duty of all who, being qualified in point of knowledge, have on
mature consideration satisfied themselves that the current opinions are
not only false, but hurtful, to make their dissent known : at least, if
they are among those whose station or reputation gives their opinion a
chance of being attended to. Such an avowal would put an end, at
once and for ever, to the vulgar prejudice, that what is called, very
improperly, unbelief, is connected with any bad qualities either of mindt
or heart. The world would be astonished if it knew how great a pro
portion of its brightest ornaments—of those most distinguished even
in popular estimation for wisdom and virtue—are complete sceptics in
religion; many of them refraining from avowal, less from personal
considerations, than from a conscientious, though now, in my opinion
a most mistaken apprehension, lest by speaking out what would tend
to weaken existing beliefs, and by consequence (as they suppose) exist
ing restraints, they should do harm instead of good.
Autobiography by John Stuart Mill.
�EVERLASTING PUNISHMENT.
■>
DEAR FRIEND,—
ULD that the topic were more genial or
humane, to say nothing of divine, for,
assuredly, the odour of such a sulphurous thesis is
the reverse of that of “sanctity.” Yet I will decline
no subject on which you think that what I may have
to say can possibly serve the cause we both have at
heart,—for I am persuaded that the cause pleaded by
yourself and your distinguished coadjutors is mainly
the same as that to which my poor thoughts and
aspirations have been long directed. Many of us, I
have no doubt, see several of the questions at issue
from various points of view and through different
media, with glasses not adjusted to the same focus;
but we are all of the Human-Catholic Church, seeking
to realise a religion reasonable no less than aspira
tional, satisfying, that is, the sentimental or emotional
requirements of the spirit, no less than the logical
and intellectual demands of the understanding.
Ignoring neither, our endeavour is to conciliate and
unite the two, in common allegiance and devotion to
rhe one Power from which they both spring. Our
Faith is faith in “ Principles,” and that I believe is
true Christian Faith, as contradistinguished from
shallow assent and consent to opinions and conjec
tures of a quasi-historical or traditional sort, often
assuming the name of a sacred grace to which it is in
no degree entitled. “Faith ” is an inward confiding
temper of the soul Godward, and has nothing reli-
�4
Everlasting Punishment.
giously in common with acceptance or rejection of
lo, here ! or lo, there! assertions of circumstantial
import, which have to be judged solely by laws of
evidence or antecedent probability—whether too cre
dulously received or too incredulously denied, affect
ing only the intelligence, and by no means the spiritual
depth or breadth of our being. Surely those who put
their trust, through calm and storm, in the abiding
principles of Faith, Hope, and Love are true mem
bers of the one indivisible and universal Church of
which Christ is the Spiritual High Priest. He came
to proclaim peace and goodwill among men—a gospel
only to be realised by unity of principle, but never
attainable by any attempt at an impossible and un
desirable uniformity of opinion. If community of
Churchmanship is to depend upon multitudes of free
and true men agreeing to numerous propositions,
physical and metaphysical, alike incapable of proof,
but each of which has adherents whose pertinacity is
usually in the inverse ratio of their knowledge, then
may we postpone such Christian fellowship to the
Greek Kalends or the Apocalyptic Millennium.
Thus much of preface as to a probable divergence
of views which, when truthfully and charitably enter
tained, I take to be more conducive to edification and
mutual esteem than any conformity of a stereotyped
sort. Why should not all be content to travel in the
same direction by different paths and at different
speeds ? Dean Swift used to say it mattered little
whether we journeyed Heavenward in a carriage-andfour or a donkey-cart, provided we did but get there ;
and the Emperor Constantine told a favourite bishop
of peculiarly pedantic orthodoxy, that he must climb
to Heaven on his own proper ladder, for nobody else
would mount it with him.
But now to our theme,—time was when I could
have written on the dismal dogma with more interest
and earnestness than it at present inspires me with.
�Everlasting Punishment.
$
Not that I hold it, in its gross and literal accepta
tion, a whit less subversive of all religious and reason
able principles than I did years ago, when taking its
matter more au serieux and occasionally feeling its
dyspeptic incubus weighing upon my own faith and
trust in the goodness and mercy of God, the “Mercy
that is over all His Works,” and the “ Mercy that
endureth for ever ! ” Is it a real “ Article of Belief”
that we have to deal with ? Does it exist in men’s
minds and make them miserable and make them mad,
as it assuredly must, supremely miserable and despe
rately mad, if it exist at all as an earnest conviction
in their spirit or understanding ? My full persua
sion is that no man of sound mind in sound body is
nowadays ever seriously disquieted by the grisly phan
tom begotten of theologic hatred and conceived of
theologic fear, the fear that indeed “ has torment,”
the fear which Paith casts out as gibbering frantic
blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, by imputing hate
to the Supreme Spirit whose Being is Love, and endless
vengeance to the God whose nature and property is
ever to forgive. It is here, if anywhere, when turning
backto this mediaeval abortion of the odiumtlieologicum,
that one is reminded of Plutarch and Bacon in their
identical relative estimates of “ Superstition ” and
“ Atheism.” Who does not remember the manly and
honest simplicity with which the noble old Boeotian
tells us he would rather people said there was no
Plutarch, than that Plutarch was fickle, passionate,
and vindictive ! How many folios of so-called Chris
tian theology would kick the beam when weighed in
divine scales against that little treatise of a dozen
pages (vrepi Aeio-iSatpor/as) by a benighted heathen !
And then our Chancellor !—“ Better to have no opin
ion of God at all, than such an opinion as is unworthy
of Him; for the one is unbelief, the other is con
tumely ! ” Surely those two essays might be read
in Churches as lessons approved by apostles who
�6
Everlasting Punishment.
denounce the beggarly elements of fanaticism, and
proclaim faith without charity as nothing worth !—•
approved by evangelists and prophets who preach
acceptable religion as “doingjustice,loving mercy,and
walking humbly with our God.” Well may our great
British regenerator of human thought talk of super
stition being to religion as a monkey is to a Man, for
never could any travesty by genus “Simia” exceed
the parody that superstition has put upon religion,
when trumpeting endless vindictive punishment for
punishment’s sake in the name of the Deity who has
proclaimed Himself as chastening whom He loveth,
and loving whom He chasteneth !
You will remind me, perhaps, that this is emphatic
language, and that I began by disclaiming any deep
feeling on the subject; and I am quite sensible of the
apparent inconsistency. The fact is, that one is prone
to oscillate on such a topic between extreme indig
nation and very thorough contempt. A healthy mind
will, no doubt, easily and at once shake itself free
from morbid and lurid imaginations, that would
deform and deface God’s beautiful universe by per
petuating misery and deifying evil as coequal and
coterminate with good. And while under the bracing
influence of such health and healthy surroundings,
one is apt to be ashamed of fighting as one that
beateth the air, with no adversary but the unwhole
some illusion of feverish weakness or designing
wickedness. The “hell-fire” of superstition is to
Religion and Reason but an ignis fatuus, flickering
among the dead bones and mouldering1 remains of
ages darker than our own ; and wise neighbours call
no. engines, and fill no buckets to put it out. From
this point of view we can look at such “ fire ” calmly
and talk about it composedly. But when again one
remembers that mental health and strength are bv
no means the inheritance of us all, and that for hypo"chondria, dyspepsia, and hysteria, the spectral finger
�Everlasting Punishment.
n
that points to hell in another world, usually points
down the road to madness in this—why, then, indig
nation once more is likely to get the upper hand of
indifference. But even a less hideous and more
frequent consummation than absolute insanity in
trudes itself inevitably on attention, and is, to a
religious and reverential estimate, totally incom
patible with philosophic apathy. The doctrine, even
when not earnestly believed in, but only languidly
tolerated, as tending towards checking and alarming
gross and ignorant vice by false but portentously
horrible representations of distant penalties incurred
—this doctrine, I maintain, is still fraught with irre
ligious and immoral mischief — as, indeed, in a
universe under the ultimate sovereignty of Supreme
Truth, uZZ false teaching must be irreligiously and
immorally mischievous. Let us go into the heated
and feverish atmosphere that surrounds “ popular
preachers,” proclaiming, in the name of an Almighty,
Allwise, and Allgood Godhead, the final and per
petual plunging into the fiery lake of the devil and
his angels, with all the myriads of human sinners,
heretics, infidels, and others, that cannot present an
orthodox passport at heaven’s gate. Let us look round
upon the excited and excitable crowd that feels a
sensational thrill, almost allied to horrid pleasure, in
the stupendous, infernal drama depicted for their edifi
cation, and then let us inquire for a moment into the
nature of such edification. It assuredly is seldom of
that highest sort which prompted Moses and Paul to
reject their individual salvation unless that of their
brethren could be simultaneously secured : “ Blot me
also out of thy book !” and “ I could wish myself also
accursed for my Brethren’s sake !” It is hardly a
breach of charity to conclude that this is not quite
the feeling that actuates the anxious benches of
11 Tabernacles ” and “ Ebenezers,” as they listen to
fulminations of “ hell-fire” reserved for all but the
�8
Everlasting Punishment.
elect few, to join whose exceptional ii glory” they are
naturally inclined to make a rush, under an impulse
and watchword not absolutely identical with that of
“ loving their neighbour as themselves.” Yet, with
out rising to the level of a Moses or a Paul, how often
do we find simple sailors and soldiers, who, in the
service of an earthly master, will scorn to hurry first
into the boats that can save but a fraction of their
company! How cheerfully will the noble fellows
hold back till at least the women and children are
made room for! But, it may be said, their threaten
ing danger is only of natural death; while the
religionists are in frantic terror of supernatural tor
ments, &c., &c. Strange, at any rate, that a religious
doctrine, preached in the name of Christ, should tend
towards so low a pitch of selfishness as to be satisfied
to be supremely happy with the knowledge of the
supreme contemporary misery of theirfellow-creatures!
How does such doctrine look, when tried by the
divine test of “ knowing them by their fruits ? ” Or
is this an exceptional case, in which the heavenly
vine produces such very earthly thorns ?
Turning from the human ethics consequent on the
dogma that lends such point and zest to the oratory
of popular pulpits, let us see how it stands with the
system of celestial government in accordance -with,
such theory. Those gentlemen who proclaim it would
no doubt be much surprised to hear that their gospel
of ultimate and infinite suffering is altogether incom
patible with their worship of one God, Almighty an cl
Allgood,—and that they are bound in logic and con
sistency to announce themselves henceforth as recog
nising two eternal principles, one of Good and the
other of Evil, like Persians of old, or later disciples
of the Heresiarch Manes. They are very possibly of
opinion that, having done such poetical justice upon
all fallen sinners, whether angelic or human, as cast
ing them into the perpetual lake of burning brimstone,
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nothing further can be required towards the vindica
tion of sole and supreme Good throughout the universe.
But surely this position cannot stand scrutiny. How
can supreme good reign triumphant in a universe
degraded and dishonoured by the infinite evil of end
less unrepenting and unamending angelic and human
misery ? Were the agonies announced as of a limited
or purgatorial kind, the case would of course be differ
ent, but it certainly does excite fair astonishment
that the advocates of eternal vindictive, non-curative,
and non-purifying punishments should not see that
they are thereby maintaining a coequal sovereignty
of evil with good, always, everywhere, and for ever.
The seeming ignorance of, or indifference to, this
inevitable sequitur, no doubt arises from such persons
using the metaphysical words “infinite,” “eternal,”
&c.,’in quite a limited and physical acceptation. But
it is time, in the present stage of mental cultivation
and era of exact science, that they should recast their
nomenclature. They must learn to see and acknow
ledge that no evil can be greater than that of the
endless sinful existence of spiritual beings, created in
the image of God—multitudinous beings of such high
origin, for ever unrepenting and unamending, of neces
sity cursing both the Creator that created them and
tlie Creation that their endless sinful suffering darkens,
deforms, and disgraces, to no purpose but that of
inflicting pain and perpetuating cruelty !
I ought now, perhaps, in reference to my signature
as a commissioned officer of our Established Church,
to say a word or two as to the Biblical and Litur
gical bearings of the dogma that I venture to condemn
as not only anti-Christian but absolutely inhuman,
and implying “contumely” to the God of Goodness.
I have no difficulty or scruple whatever in asserting
that, to the best of my judgment, the Bible not only
ignores, but would absolutely anathematise, such doc
trine as that which endeavours to brand Creation
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Everlasting Punishment.
with indelible failure and deformity, while dethron
ing the one God and Lord of all, in favour of a
dualistic scheme of Ormuzd and Ahriman, projecting
through the universe the distorted semblance of a
“house divided against itself.” It ought not to be
required that we should descend to the examination
of mere Hebrew and Greek vocables to establish a
truth, the miscarriage of which would be fatal to all
claims of divine inspiration in the providential books
that have been so venerated for decades of centuries
by Jew and Gentile, Greek and Barbarian. Enough,
surely, that we can appeal to the “ Spirit ” of these
Scriptures that always quickens, without haggling
over . the “ letter ” that occasionally “kills.” Not
that in this case, as I apprehend, there can be any
difficulty in securing the witness of the “ letter ” as
well as that of the “ Spirit” to the honour and glory
of God. Yet who needs it who is already familiar
with the Scriptural attributes ascribed to Deity, as
ever culminating in goodness, and in mercy enduring
for ever, and enfolding all his works in the “ everlast
ing arms ” that are spread beneath them ? Why
should we be tasked to gild refined gold and paint
the lily white, by trying to strengthen, through itera
tion and variety of texts, such pandects of supreme
truth and holiness as are expressed in passages of
Old and New Testament, which every real lover of their
lore will bind as signs upon his hands and frontlets
between his eyes ?
Let us appeal at once to the fountain-head of our
Biblical allegiance, to the Teacher who has taught us
to approach our God as our Father which is in heaven,
ever ready to forgive us our trespasses as even we to
forgive them that trespass against us! Think we,
perchance, that any human malignity could ever reach
the pitch of relentless and endless unforgiveness to
its offspring, in whose behalf even a Roman dra
matist would write Propeccato magnopaululum supplicii
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satis est Patri. “ If ye, then,” says the Christ, “ being
evil, know how to give good gifts to your children,
how much more shall your Heavenly Father give to
them that ask Him.” Dare men, while worshipping
such a God through such a Mediator, still venture to
assert that He for bread gives us a stone, for fish a
serpent, for an egg a scorpion ! But away with
figures of serpents and scorpions — mere maudlin
metaphors to veil the ineffable monstrum liorrendum
informe, ingens cui lumen ademptum—“ monstrous,
hideous, blind, horrible, and huge,” which would
impute “ hell fire ” as the divine rejoinder to our poor
human prayers to the “Lord of all power and might,
declaring His Almighty rule most chiefly in mercy
and in pity.” Has the “contumely” of superstition,
our Baconian “Monkeyism of Manhood,” ever gone
further or descended lower in travesty and caricature
of a Godhead created in its own image ?
Really Samson’s riddle was easy reading compared
with the theologic enigma that, instead of weakness
out of strength, brings hatred out of love, and relent
less vengeance out of infinite mercy and compassion!
Many fantastic tricks have we sons of Adam played
before High Heaven to make the angels weep; but
here is surely a trick of Angry-Apism that would
petrify angelic tears in blank amazement, to say
nothing of classic philosophy, whether of the school
that laughs or the school that weeps at the aberrations
of our eccentric nature. We read of James and John
asking their Lord’s sanction for a mere momentary
flash of earthly fire to consume his enemies, and
how sternly does that Lord rebuke the spirit that
suggested the wish, as emphatically no spirit of his !
Yet there are those among us, neither few nor
always of the dullest, who would confidently, - in
the name of the same Master, invoke flames of
preternatural fire, to agonise perpetually, without
consuming, the disputants who vex the pragmatic
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Everlasting Punishment.
zeal that found such, small countenance from him
in whose cause it bestirred itself. When one remem
bers, moreover, that Christ most unmistakably
endorses the really divine law of commensurate and
inevitable penalties of an instructive and chastening
sort, as awaiting all transgressions of the moral or
physical code of light and life, one feels that it is but
taking pains to little purpose to argue against fore
gone conclusions.
Would any advocate of “ infinite ” penalties await
ing the very “ finite ” difference, moral or spiritual,
between Messrs A and B, do us the favour to give
their note and commentary on the text of “ many
stripes ” due to the one, and “ few stripes ” due to
the other ? I would not willingly adopt a light tone in
reference to so dismal a theory, but it is a law of our
nature, that the “ sublime ” of unreason should stand
in close contiguity to its corresponding extreme.
Pardon me, then, for looking round on the counte
nances of the first dozen fellow travellers from Charing
Cross to St Paul’s, to conjecture, on available data,
their future destiny as eternal heavenly angels or
cooeval infernal dsemons ! 0 for the Egyptian sphynx
or Athenian owl, to cast the horoscope of Mr Br—gs !
Who does not at once recoil from conclusions too
grossly preposterous to abide for a moment, when
confronted with the barest sufficiency of sense and
soberness that distinguishes us from idiots ! The
dogma, as already said, is a psychological phenome
non that sets aside all religion and all reason; and
one cannot easily bring religious or reasonable
argument to bear upon that which can only exist by
strict denial of every elementary postulate of one or
the other. If it really had any root in the hearts or
heads of people outside an asylum, we should be in
imminent danger of a collapse in any human society
of which they were members. It would remove all
our moral landmarks and confound all our moral
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weights and measures, to a degree utterly incom
patible with any healthy and honest intercourse with
our kind; for what faith or hope could we have in
fair dealing on earth, while stupendous false scales
were hung up to our view in Heaven, in the name of
that Lord to whom Religion and Reason have hitherto
made them an abomination !
When the divine Head of Christendom dramatises
the great “ Judgment according to Works,” surely He
distinguishes the ethics of the gospel plainly enough
from the false reckoning that would allot an infinite
interval to the infi/nitessimal unknown X that repre
sents the surplus of A’s doings over those of his
brother B. Put the “ finite ” into one dish of the
balance and the “ infinite ” into the other, and we
have an inconceivably small fraction of a grain
weighed against a sum-total of tons, compared with
which a rule of arithmetic digits reaching from
London to Edinburgh would be as nothing ! One
has to talk in this way with the forlorn hope of fixing
the attention of the volubility that trifles so com
placently with words that stand for ideas unrealisable
by the human brain. Is it not, after all, this utter
unintelligibility of the questions mooted that can
alone account for the phenomenon of intense irri
tability proverbial as odium theologicum, appro
priating exclusively to itself the tprm “ polemics ” as
satirically characterising the temper of disputing
devotees, whose common principle and badge of
recognition was to be their “ Love of one another.”
Why do devotees of exact sciences indulge in no
such venomous polemics ? How hard it seems to our
human pretention to acknowledge that we cannot see
through the thick veil that it has pleased Providence
to let fall between things earthly and things unearthly.
How little we like to appropriate the lesson, “ What
is that to thee, follow thou me.” “ Do justice,” that
is, “ and love mercy,” leaving reverentially to God
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Everlasting Punishment.
the things that are God’s, and as yet God’s only.
What should we say to monkeys bent on mathematics,
with infinite nuts pending on the issue, and tearing
one another to pieces over definitions and axioms of
Euclid. Rage unspeakable and irrepressible between
two sects, to one of which a triangle is assuredly
three right angles, and to the other as positively four !
(Itisum teneatis ! ” Fabula ta/men de nobis nct/rrcbtur—
the case is pretty much our own.
_ Enough, however, for the moment as to broad
views connected with the changeless principles of
religion and reason. Let us now turn for an instant
to that sort of argument that seeks, in the written
“ letter” of our sacred books, for ways and means of
invalidating its divine “spirit.” Do we not read
repeatedly of “ hell ” and “ everlasting fire ” in the
Old Testament and the New ? and dare we doubt or
reject such words on such pages ? To the latter
question the reply of Christ and his apostles is to
try all such words, representing what ideas they may,
and to hold fast to those alone of them that are good—
trying, that is, the inky words on paper by the living
words traced by the “ finger of God upon the tablets
of our heart ” or conscience. No mistake about the
revelations written there, and those that are wilting
to know them shall know of the doctrines whether
they be of God (Ear ns Qe\rj ■ynvuerai). True faith
in such revelations, “ saving us by the answer of a
good conscience,” would bravely and loyally renounce
both Old Testament and New, though they had fallen,
ready printed and bound, from heaven to earth,
rather than for a moment sin against the Holy Ghost
by imputing to it on their authority that which we
know by its inspiration to be of the nature of evil.
But here, happily, our faith is exposed to no such
trial, for neither does the Old Testament nor the New
say a word, to the best of iny knowledge, which,
fairly interpreted, can reduce us to choose between
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“ Bibliolatry ” on the one hand, and that “ liberty ”
of conscience on the other which always exists where
the spirit of the Lord is. The least learned English
reader can easily convince himself that the “ hell ” of
the Old Testament is simply the word
meaning a
“ hollow place,” and habitually used as equivalent to
11 grave ” or “ tomb.” Why our translators sometimes
render it as “ grave ” and sometimes as “ hell ” is by
no means clear. We should be surprised, for
example, to read of the patriarch’s “grey hairs being
brought down with sorrow unto hell,” or of Jacob
“ going down into hell unto his son mourning yet it
is precisely the same word which, in the Psalms, is
given as, “ Thou shalt not leave my soul in hell,”
where it evidently means “ grave,” no less than in
the other passages. When Jonah is represented as
“crying out of the belly of hell,” meaning the belly
of the fish, every one knows that he refers to his
living “tomb.” But there is an unjustifiable laxity in
substituting the one word for the other where
popular misapprehension is so likely to follow. So
much for the “hell” of the Old Testament, thus
reduced from its mythological and monstrous accepta
tion to one with which we are all familiarly
acquainted.
Next let us see how far the metaphysical idea of
endless duration of time, or Eternity, is represented
by the in i in of the Hebrew F It may be rightfully
maintained that in the early epochs of Jewish litera
ture, the idea of such transcendent duration had not
yet dawned upon human intelligence, and, therefore
that the words m and nift could never have repre
sented a thought not yet extant in its bewildering
vagueness. For many centuries the calculations of
mankind were pretty much limited to the sum total of
the digits at the extremities of hands and feet, and we
all know that the prophets take refuge in sacred and
indefinite numbers, seven, forty, seventy, &c., where
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Everlasting Punishment.
precision might be embarrassing or needless. Certain
it is that no confidence can be placed in our modern
renderings of high numbers in the Pentateuch, and
equally sure that we have no right to attach our notion
of “ everlasting,” &c., to words which we find applied
to the hills of Judea and the possession of the pro
mised land, to the lives of kings, and so on. When
Juda so beautifully pleads with Israel for leave to take
Benjamin with him, and winds up with “ If I bring
him not back, let me bear the blame for ever,” who
is embarrassed with the cmvrbn that we translate as
“ for ever,” quietly accepting it, as every one does,
for “ all the days of my life.” Turning to the pages
of the New Testament on the same quest, what word
do we find for this theological representation of end
less fire, agonising irreclaimable sinners for duration
of time mathematically endless ? Simply the Syriac
term “Gehenna,” a corruption of “Valley of Hinnom,” where, outside the walls of Jerusalem, the offal
of the city and bones of malefactors were consumed ;
that is, “ Gehenna ” is a metaphorical expression for
the disgrace, desolation, and destruction awaiting
excommunicated sin and sinners, cast into outer lurid
darkness, where weeping and gnashing of teeth are in
full harmony with their surroundings.
When we read of Christ, that he pronounces cause
less anger worthy of judgment (magisterial), and
foul-mouthed abuse (para) liable to a higher court,
but “thou fool” (juwpe), that is, deliberate contempt
and scorn of arrogance, versus humility, liable to
“ heli-fire,”—can any disciple of Justice tempered by
Mercy suppose this “ Gehenna of Fire ” to mean what
popular superstition is taught to attach to the term,
instead of forming the natural climax, as it probably
does, to intramural penalties, culminating in being
cast out to the dreary and unclean valley of burning
bones F If Christ rebuked with such withering sar
casm the zeal of James and John, desiring fire to
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'
consume the adversaries of his preaching, what
cohesion or congruity can we find in a lesson that
would inculcate eierwaZ fire for the folly of inflated
self-conceit depreciating its neighbours ?
It is true, however, that this “ Hinnom-Valley ” is
not the only equivalent for our expression “ Hell
fire ” in the New Testament. There is another term,
the classical “ Hades,” meaning the invisible abode of
departed spirits, but no more resembling our theologic
Hell than a Greek statue is like a scare-crow. When
the “gates of Hell” (ivvXai a&ov) are said to be power
less against the Church, this has no reference what
ever to the “ Gehenna ” outside Jerusalem, but is the
expressive Syriac-Greek metaphor for powers of dark
ignorance, as opposed to the light, and life, and love
of truth, which constitute the real “ orthodoxy ” of
the Human Catholic Church. In the parable of
Dives and Lazarus there is certainly mention of fire
tormenting the rich man in Hades, but it must be a
very prosaic spirit indeed that attaches the notion of
material fire to the language of Allegory depicting
remorse burning into memory the reproachful regret
of gifts and opportunities wasted or abused.
All this may sound as minute and elementary cri
ticism to those acquainted with the ancient languages
of our two Testaments, but it cannot be quite super
fluous as long as the doctrine we are considering even
nominally defaces and defames the Gracious Gospel
of Faith, Hope, and Love; of which the last is alone
eternal, as being in itself the soul of the Godhead.
Let us look again for the Greek word which we make
to bear the weight of such portentous meaning (or
rather no meaning), and we find a comparatively
harmless aittvios and els tov aiiiva, signifying only
duration of a limited sort, equivalent to “ ages ” or
“ centuries ” with us. When the fig-tree is to bear
no more fruit “ for ever,” what has that to do with
endless time, when the life of the tree itself is but for
B
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Everlasting Punishment.
a few years ? No doubt these words are used for
indefinite or infinite duration, when the intention is
to convey the highest possible idea of such duration,
as of the word, or wisdom, or goodness of God ; but
they are equally used for temporary existence, and that
carries with it all the weight of argument we require.
When Jonah says, “The earth with her laws was
about him for ever,” he uses the Hebrew obv, just as
the New Testament uses e<s rov ativra for the duration
of the “ house of Jacob
as the prophets speak of
“ everlasting mountains,” &c. The only important
point is to save the credit of Scriptures otherwise
responsible for a doctrine fatal to their claims to
“ infallibility.” Enough that their language will bear
a good meaning, to make it incumbent on us not to
assign to it a bad one.
If the requirements of language had insisted on an
acceptation of “ everlasting,” &c., incompatible with
any limitation, we might have sought refuge perhaps
in the ingenious bit of sophistry which maintains
that all punishment is of necessity eternal; inasmuch
as it is an everlasting deduction from the sum total of
enjoyment. A magistrate, for example, fines us five
shillings, and we are for ever poorer by said five shil
lings, than we should have been without such penalty ;
so also with imprisonment and bodily suffering, so
much for ever substracted from our normal stock of
liberty and absence from pain. But we are not
driven to such casuistry, though of a sort justifiable
enough in self-defence against the unjustifiable
despotism of dominant stupidity.
It might also be a question to moot, were it wanted,
whether we can entertain any logical idea of an
“eternity” limited at one end; whether, that is,
any thing can be conceived as endless which has a
beginning. My own impression is that it cannot,
though I may be inadvertently running into “ heresy ”
by saying so.
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Between ourselves, as you are not going to turn
Grand Inquisitor, I could confess to something like
an Article of Belief, in the eternity of every thing that
IS, allowing for “ circulation,” with permutations,
combinations, and the like. Was there ever a time
when “matter” did not exist, or “time” either?
“ When Bishop Berkeley said there was no matter,
’twas no matter what he said,” &c., &c. Excuse my
trifling, to relieve for a moment the very heavy dis
quisition you have lured me into.
If I am right in saying that the literal Hell dogma
is not in the Bible, it would of course follow from
our Vlth Article, that it is in no degree incumbent
upon any one signing the XXXIX, maugre even
the “ Athanasian ” Creed, which our Parliament in
its wisdom still thinks fit to ratify and maintain.
Apropos to which Anglican symbol, I cannot say that
I, in my individual insignificance, have ever found it
the pre-eminent stumbling block that it seems to
many. In the first place, if I read it at all, it is in
obedience to Parliamentary Law in our Parliamentary
Church—and I consider myself free not to read it,
provided I am ready to submit to the Parliamentary
penalty for neglecting the rubric. Secondly, if I
individually demur to its logical meaning, I can avail
myself of the fact io which my attention was once
called by an excellent and distinguished Spiritual
Peer, viz., that the symbol is appointed to be either
‘ said or sung.'' Now, as “singing” was never yet
intended to be subjected to laws of strict reasoning,
it would be like seeking difficulties to apply rules of
dry logic to triumphant outbursts of “ orthodox ”
rhythm, hymning victorious pagans of JSomoousion vic
tory over discomfited partisans of JSomoiousion schism
in the hot areha of Byzantian polemics ! The argument
as to the meaning of words applies, moreover, as well
to the “ Creed,” whether prose or poetry, as to the
Bible, and the “ everlasting fire ” seems threatened
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Everlasting Punishment.
rather to “ doing evil ” than to involuntarily believing
correctly or incorrectly, which is at any rate some
comfort to common sense. There can be no harm,
however, in an obscure Presbyter echoing the wish of
a bygone Primate touching “ Quicunque yult,” to the
effect that “ we were well rid of it.”
The remark may not be worth much, but it is a
remark many of us have, perhaps, made in reference
to “ Athanasian Creeds ” and similar phenomena,
that the “ people,” so called, find little or no diffi
culty, and make little or no objection, to them. In
village congregations the “ Quicunque vult,” with its
magnificent rhythm, much more effective than
“ Reason,” is heard with great edification, and with
very little of the scrupulosity about “ damnatory
clauses ” that is apt to disturb more delicate and
refined constitutions. The fact seems to be that
dense and pachydermatous natures only experience
agreeable sensations under a currycomb that would
flay the skin of more susceptible subjects. The most
popular pulpits are known to be those which fulmi
nate the fiercest and loudest,—well illustrating Lord
Bacon’s apothegm, that the “ People is the master of
superstition, in which wise men follow fools, with
arguments fitted to facts in reversed order.” Arch
bishops and Bishops, and Presbyters, would be ready
to be rid of a personified Devil and his doings on
much easier terms than rustics would approve, and I
well remember the story as told by the wisest and
truest of living prophets and humourists, how the
little lassie came weeping back from a discourse where
“ the gentleman said there was na’ deil.”
If there is one Scriptural book more peculiarly pic
turesque in imagery of fiery-lake scenery than another
it is the Apocalypse, and that, as every one knows who
knows country cottages, is beyond comparison the
favourite village reading. Simple and uncritical, an
agricultural population will revel in the gorgeous
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21
imagery and stupendous machinery of visions of
Patmos, impervious to doubts and difficulties which
could make such a divine as South exclaim, more
pointedly than decorously, that they “ either found a
man cracked or left him so.” The strongest imagin
ary appeals have little effect upon natures rendered
rugged and unimpressionable by constant contact with
hard and rough realities, but exemplify your figura
tive “ everlasting punishment” by showing such per
sons an old-fashioned “ cat-o’-nine-tail ” infliction,
and then ask them what they would think of a doctrine
teaching that such suffering was to be inflicted for
ever by heavenly power upon human sinners : not for
their amendment, but only for their punishment; not
for the sake of saving discipline, but only for per
petuating sin and unrepenting maledictions.
Those who, knowing better, would countenance
such horrid phantasmagoria, under the impression of
frightening people from crime, are as wrong practically
as they are morally and religiously. Practically such
threats have no effect at all beyond lending vigour to
the popular blasphemy that borrows their infernal
vocabulary. If, indeed, such terrors could avail prac
tically, we ought consistently to bring back the rack
and the wheel to supplement the prison and the gibbet.
We should be justified, for the general good, in pour
ing melted lead and boiling oil, as in good old times
they did upon the body and limbs of a Ravaillac or a
Damiens, approaching by human ingenuity, for an
hour or so, to the agonies reserved by Theologic
“ Divinity” for the majority of mankind “ for ever”
and a day!
But in this, as in every attempt to change divine
laws and improve them by human device, we inevita
bly go wrong. It will never answer to do evil that
good may come, and the course of truth can never be
forwarded by untruth. The Laws of Life are God’s
laws, and provide inevitable corresponding penalties
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Everlasting Punishment.
for all infraction of such laws, however they he dis
tinguished as physical or moral. The “Pama claudo
pede ” doctrine, teaching that the penalty is as insep
arable from the offence of commission or omission
as the shadow from its substance, is the only true
and effective penal code ; and till national education
teaches that, it is no religious education, least of all
a Christian, i.e., of Judgment according to works or
fruits. Every jurisconsult knows that the fear of
punishment is in the ratio of its certainty and propin
quity, and by no means in that of its enormity and
uncertainty. No man in his senses thinks himself
bad enough for the “ Hell-fire ” with which he occa
sionally may hear himself menaced in a very indefinite
way as to time, place, and circumstance. The worst
criminal, moreover, shrinks religiously from the per
sonification of Deity painted as infinite strength
wreaking insatiable vengeance upon infinite weakness.
It would be an apotheosis or consecration of iniquity,
like that of Lucifer’s “ Evil be thou my Good ! ”
Teach, only teach, in God’s name, that as surely as
fire, if we defy it, will burn us, and water drown us,
so surely will the defiance of any other law bring
inevitable and terrible penalty in its train, and that is
education for time and for eternity. Teach that poison
is poison, whether it poisons the body or the soul,
with the only difference that the moral poison of
untruth or injustice poisons our human, the other only
our animal constitution. Away with the unworthy
dream of God’s inflicting mere vindictive punishments,
as tormenting without instructing or improving.
Teach that His laws for body and soul are only in so
far inexorable as they are unchangeable, and that no
folly can equal that which flatters itself with hope of
escape from the inevitable. What should we say of
one who pitched himself from a precipice with the
hope of escaping or defying the “ law of gravitation ?”
JSx uno omnia discamus. What bird is that that buries
its head in the sand to escape observation ?
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23
I had no notion of writing so much upon a subject
for which a dozen words might seem exhausting, and
must hasten to a full stop. I began by saying that
the “ Monstrum Horrendum,” we have been talking
about, was begotten of Theologic hatred out of
Theologic terror, but happily, by divine Providence
was, as it could only be, an “ abortion ” from the first.
I have not been attempting so much to argue against
belief in the hideous phantom, as against the more or
less prevalent disposition to “make believe” as
believing it. I do not suppose that any sane indi
vidual believes it, or can believe it, and remain sane;
but here, as elsewhere, the canker-worm of “ Sham ”
is eating, by Parliamentary sanction, into our National
entrails, and till Nationally, both in Church and State,
we speak truth, and think truth, we are but a weak
People, though we case our ships in iron a yard thick,
and hurl ton-weight shot across our Channel. If we
believe in God we must trust in truth and shame
the Devil, or ignore him, as either may tend to greater
edification.
We have no time to inquire as to the precise where
and when of the first apparition of the grim imagina
tion conjured up by human malice and fear to con
found all faith and hope,. as well as all sense and
soberness. Its latitude and longitude we, of course,
know to be Byzantine, and the date of its full
development in the wilderness of Scholastic-Theology
to have been that of the Nicene Synod about year
325 of our sera. Of that Council, so pregnant of
results theologic rather than evangelic, but little in
the way of circumstantial detail has been handed
down. We read that what most impressed the nearly
contemporary heathen historian Ammianus, was the
wonderful ferocity of party spirit that marked the
controversies of Hornoousions and Eomoiowsions—
Athanasians, that is, and Arians—tearing one another
to pieces for dialectic and philologic niceties that had
�24
Everlasting Punishment.
centuries before harmlessly puzzled the sublime brain
of a Plato in the cool groves of the Athenian
Academy,now, alas! destined to rouse inextinguishable
wrath and hatred in the hot arena of Byzantine
faction. Such faction, we must remember, was now
no longer mere speculative theorising on the Platonic,
Johannic, or Alexandrian Aoyos, but involving prac
tical _ results, carrying with them no less than the
distribution and possession of all the new and vast
Ecclesiastical patronage of the Roman Empire. We
may in some measure then, at least, comprehend the
breadth and. depth of the passions invoked among
crowds of ignorant burly monks, on either side,
assembled to back their leaders in debate on questions
which they understood, as peasants may be supposed
to have . understood Plato, but on the decision of
which hinged, as they might readily be persuaded,
their chances of preferment in this world and the
next. When such a head as that of Athanasius
reeled, by his own confession, over thoughts and
theorems the longer studied the less mastered, we
may imagine the effect they would work on the dull
brains of hundreds of coarse and ignorant partisans
summoned to the vote in numbers that the Historian
describes as fatal to the post-horses of the Imperial ser
vice. The Council of Nice is said to have been attended
by some 2,000 orthodox and heterodox zealots, whose
zeal was apparently not less furious and not less
sanguinary than that which afterwards, on more
worldly pretexts, deluged the new Roman capital with
frantic slaughter. Old Rome had seen the blood of
gladiators and wild beasts shed in torrents for the
pleasure of a brutal populace, but the walls of the
Coliseum had never witnessed our human nature so
demoniacally maddened as in the City of Constantine,
in behalf of a Cause whose badge and test is that we
“Love one another.”Nullce tarn infestoe hominibus bestice
guam sunt sibi ferales plengue Christianorum, is the
�Everlasting Punishment.
2$ '
commentary of a contemporary annalist. Gregory
Nazianzus, Arcljoishop of Constantinople, withdrew
from its fury to the Cappadocian desert, declaring
that the “ Kingdom of Heaven ” had been turned into
Hell and Chaos.
Such hell and chaos was the cradle of the “ Credo ”
that would still enthrone hell and chaos on the site
of the Church of Christ, against which it stands
recorded that the gates of hell shall not prevail.
Surely the cradle was worthy of the nursling. Is it
fair to charge the anathemas of the anonymous
Athanasian Creed to the credit of the Nicene which
contains no anathemas in its present form ?
Once deduct the “ clauses ” from the Athanasian
symbol, and even the most ardent votaries of popular
“fire and brimstone ” might be puzzled to find Bibli
cal or canonical footing for their favourite doctrine.
When Wesley held on strictly to “Witchcraft,”
because Witchcraft is Biblical, he was at least logi
cally true to his “ Bibliolatry,” though it unavoidably
led to a good man and able scholar linking himself to
an obsolete absurdity. Yet was the moral and reli
gious mischief of his superstition infinitesimal com
pared with that which results from ascribing perpetual
and infinite evil to the one omnipotent source of
supreme good. What disturbances in the divine
scheme of the universe consequent on the stupid
torturing of helpless and harmless old women, could
compare with that emanating from endless and useless
vindictive torment inflicted on the majority of our
race at the fiat of a power whom we are taught to
praise for mercy over all His works, or at worst, with
“ wrath enduring but as the twinkling of an eye ?”
The partisans of this “contumely ” cannot plead the
Biblical sanction that Wesley fairly urged for his
puerility. Oriental imagery picturing the worm never
dead, and the fire never quenched, neither would nor
could suggest the theologic “ Hell ” to any sane under-
�26
Everlasting Punishment.
standing, while studying words of Christian life and
truth, culminating in the charity tlmt thinketh no
evil.
Not in our Hebrew or Greek scriptures, whose
spirit is always ultimately that of doing justice and
loving mercy, but in hot fermentations of hate and
fear, seething in that Nicene Basilica, is to be found
the birth of the most portentous phantasm that ever
darkened mythology, whether of Jew or Gentile,
Greek or Barbarian. Yet if, as seems certain, this
dogma of divine vengeance (infinite power torment
ing infinite weakness) be by no means Biblical, how
comes it in any sort to be “ Anglican,” or why should
such a question in these later days be forced intru
sively on sensible and sober consideration ? This
deponent ventures the inquiry but not the answer,
unless by respectful glance, “ quousque tandem,"
towards Lords and Commons at Westminster. Suum
cuique; iw'iA them it rests that such “ things be so
ordered and settled by their endeavours upon the
best and surest foundations, that peace and happiness,
truth and justice. . . .” We can all complete the
quotation.
Depend upon it, as 11 witchcraft ” has so lately
found its way to limbo, it cannot be long before the
grimmer superstition follows in its wake, leaving no
trace but that of contrite amazement at the “ con
tumely ” that Christendom so long connived at. I
venture to maintain that the Bible has never sanc
tioned it, but it were only a halting allegiance to
truth to shirk the avowal that, had the Bible sanc
tioned it, in every book from Genesis to Apocalypse,
it would not be less the duty of every religious and
reasonable man to reject it with all his strength of
spirit and understanding as “ contumely ” to the
honour and glory of God. We must choose in such
case between tablets of pen and ink and those of our
own heart traced indelibly by the divine hand. It is
�Everlasting Punishment.
27
the refusal to do this that still constitutes our diffi
culty and our “.idolatry.” It is this idolising a book,
as a palladium fallen down from Jupiter, that still
shows us trammelled in the bonds of Feticliism. It
matters not how good the book, itsworship is not the use
but the degrading abuse of its goodness, and never
was stronger example of corruptio optimi pessima.
It is this “ Bibliolatry ” that is the bane and paralysis
of Protestantism, riveting on our necks a dead yoke
of “stereotype” more slavish and grievous than that
living yoke of a Roman hierarchy which the great
mental move of the 16th century lifted for a while
from our wrung withers. We must get rid of this
incubus, or our Protestantism will protest to little
purpose against the logic-disciplined legions of Rome
on the one hand, or the anarchic rabble of Babel
on the other. If “ Protestantism ” be less than a
protest against all authoritative unreason, it is but a
lame thing travelling neither on two legs nor
four. If we would hold our own we must read our
Providential book on its own terms, trying its con
clusions, whether of “letter ” or “spirit,” before the
tribunal of our own conscience and intelligence—a
defective tribunal, no doubt, but the only one we can
appeal to, and by God’s grace sufficient for the
nonce. We must typify Biblical wisdom by that of
the serpent sloughing skin after skin and scale after
scale to reappear again and again in renewed or
regenerate splendour. As it has sloughed . away
“witchcraft,” “Mosaic cosmogony,” and the like, so
assuredly will it slough away a local “ hell, a per
sonal “ devil,” and sundry other dead scales that dim.
and deform its vital and integral beauty. Our slavish
allegiance to the “ letter ” of a literature, however
sacred and providential, is as powerful a weapon in
the armoury of Antichrist as that of the “ scholasti
cism ” that dates its reign from the Council of
Nice, and to which, among other boons, we are
�28
Everlasting Punishment.
indebted for the minatory hell-fire still extant by
sanction of Church and State. , There is, no
doubt, a respectable halo of antiquity about such
Byzantine polemics that lends them a prestige
not intrinsically their own; but if we must lean
upon “ Councils ” of ancient date, why not go back
300 years further to another Council, where an
Ambassador of a Gospel other than Athanasian
reasoned also before Royalty, not indeed on meta
physical OUSION or OISION,but upon lowlier topics
of “ righteousness and temperance,” and judgment to
come (Acts xxiv. 25). This argument is addressed to
Felix. That at which King Agrippa was present is
subsequent (ch. 26), and before Festus, almost per
suading King Agrippa to be a Christian ! Would it
be very rash to conjecture the Athanasian clamour
of wrath and unreason, almost persuading the shrewd
Imperial Constantine, again to be a Pagan !
But let me conclude a much longer lucubration than
intended or needed, by “summing up ” to the effect
that the popular dogma of “Everlasting Hell-fire”
is a chaotic imagination totally subversive of all reli
gious and moral principle. So far is the doctrine
from being endorsed by Biblical authority, that it is
absolutely and diametrically opposed to the Pandects
of divine justice and mercy gradually unfolded in its
pages, till finding their climax in our Evangelic
“ Sonship ” to a Father which is in heaven. What
is not “Biblical” cannot (by Article VI.) be part or
parcel of Church-of-England doctrine, as legalised by
Parliament. Neither, independently of such Article,
is there anything in its liturgical or canonical teach
ing that, fairly interpreted, would countenance such
perversion of the gracious message of goodwill to man
as published by Christ. The ascription to “ paternal
deity ” of gratuitous and endless punishment inflicted
on His offspring is, moreover, while removing all our
landmarks of morality, most dangerously calculated to
�Everlasting Punishment.
29
distract our attention from the true, benevolent, and
instructive code that inevitably visits with inexorable
but reclaiming chastisement every violation of divine
law, whether material or mental. And so, my dear
Scott, having fulfilled an old promise, perhaps more
fully than you expected or desired, by vindicating a
plain truth with a lengthy development of “ truisms,”
Believe me,
With Faith in the Love that casts out Fear,
Yours truly,
Foreign Chaplain.
POSTSCRIPT.
Since the above was written, the following admi
rable “ Appeal to the Orthodox ” has appeared in
The Manchester Friend of Oct. 15, 1873. The writer
is so much in harmony with my friend the “ Foreign
Chaplain,” that I cannot resist the temptation of
giving to his article all the publicity in my power.
Thomas Scott..
“ APPEAL TO THE ORTHODOX.”
If there be a place of torment to which sinners are
consigned at the day of judgment, the existence of
such a place is by infinite degrees the most important
fact in the Universe. Compared with so vivid a
reality, the material world is an unsubstantial dream,
and Heaven itself a colourless abstraction. The one
surpassing object, which is alone worthy of our
anxious care, is the means of escape from so horrible
a destiny. And as God is a just and righteous
Being, who would not entrap His creatures blindfold
�30
Everlasting Punishment.
into so piteous a doom, He would not leave one of
those creatures in a state of doubt as to its reality.
If there fee a Hell, therefore, and if there be, as we
reverently trust, a righteous Ruler of the universe,
the existence of that hell must be a patent and
conspicuous fact, attested by a species and a mass of
evidence which no sane intellect could think of ques
tioning. And if no such evidence be producible, we
are bound by common sense, as well as fealty to our
Creator, to reject the fable of its existence as an
outrage on His righteous character.
Now, we do not complain that there are difficulties
connected with the doctrine of an everlasting hell, nor
yet that its evidences fall short of what we deem
desirable; our contention is that there is no sub
stantial warrant of any kind for its existence. During
the thousands of years throughout which, according
to the popular notion, men have been falling by
myriads into this place of torment, and that under
the ever-watchful eye of our Heavenly Parent, there
is not an authentic instance of any person who has
come back to forewarn his friends of the fate which
he is now realising, and which is supposed to await
every unconverted sinner. If there were any truth
in this ghastly superstition, and if it were the will of
God that we should believe in it, He has only to
throw open the prison-doors for one brief interval,
and millions of our forefathers, like Dives in the
parable, would rush back to earth to give us warning
of our danger. Or, if it were matter of vital moment
that we should believe in it, He has only to expand
our spiritual vision, and the mysteries of the unseen
world would be as plain to us as the material universe
now is to our bodily perceptions. There can be no
lack of means to Omnipotence ; if this doctrine were
not a figment of man’s invention, He would reveal it
to us in ways which would leave no room to suspect
its verity.
�Everlasting Punishment.
31
But if we have no Divine warrant for the truth of
this dogma, we have metaphysical sophistry which is
tendered us in lieu of it. In the first place it is
asserted that sin against an Infinite God must partake
of the infinite nature of the Being whose law it
violates ; that it is an infinite sin, in short, and must
receive an infinite punishment. That this is nothing
but a play upon words is evident from two considera
tions. If a sin committed against an Infinite Being
be infinite, a sin committed ly a finite being is finite;
and, therefore, sin is at the same time infinite and
finite, venial and unpardonable. And, again, if an
offence against an Infinite Being deserve an infinite
punishment, obedience to an Infinite Being will
deserve an infinite reward; and, therefore, every
sinner who complies with any of the Divine enact
ments is at once entitled both to everlasting torment
and to everlasting blessedness. All such reasoning
is the merest verbal sophistication; such terms as
“ infinite ” have no practical significance when applied
to human actions. They only amount to the very
obvious truism that the consequences of our deeds,
whether good or evil, are incalculable : in an abstract
sense they may be said to endure for ever; but
for the most part their effect is incalculably small,
and counts for nothing in the mighty play of con
flicting forces.
There is another argument which is intended to
supply the place of evidence upon this subject. We
are told that our conscience teaches us that sin merits
everlasting chastisement, and that our conscience is
the voice of God in this matter. This argument is
doubly delusive ; its assumed data are untrue, and its
conclusion does not follow from the premises. Our
conscience is the voice of God in this sense only : it
is the highest authority that He has given us for our
individual guidance : in no case can it be assumed as
the absolute expression of His will. And, as a
�32
Everlasting Punishment.
matter of fact, the teaching of our conscience varies
with each individual, and varies very much in accord
ance with the training which we have received. It
is not true that the conscience of mankind has pro
nounced in favour of eternal punishment. There
may be a few men of disordered minds, like the un
happy Cowper, who really believe that they deserve
an infinite measure of Divine wrath, and there are
millions of Christians who verbally assent to the
doctrine on the authority of others ; but this belief is
not shared by the most enlightened section of man
kind. Where the voice of conscience is not over
powered by some external authority, its teaching is
very different. When we knowingly sacrifice our
bodies through intemperance, it may suggest to us
that we deserve to lose our health, if not our life, in
consequence ; when we wilfully wrong our neighbour,
it will probably warn us that we deserve not only to
forfeit the goodwill of our fellow-men, but likewise
to suffer all such punishment as the loss of that good
will may carry in its train ; and so long as we refuse
to bow our heads in submission to our chastisement,
we shall probably experience a sense of alienation
from the Author of that chastisement; but of penalties
protracted through the cycles of eternity it gives us
no intimation. So little does the average conscience
speak about the heinousness of sin, that the majority
of mankind would seem to hold that there is scarcely
any offence for which some trifling penance will not
make atonement; and many excellent Christians are
of opinion that an instantaneous act of faith in the
sacrifice of Christ will blot out a life-time of iniquity.
‘‘ Believe in the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved,”
is the accepted formula.
In truth, however, this sort of reasoning would
satisfy no one who was not already convinced upon
other grounds. It is the supposed authority of Jesus
which has persuaded Christendom of the reality of an
�Everlasting Punishment.
33
everlasting Hell. Now, while I have no wish to
detract from the sublime character of Jesus, in some
respects unique in human history, I am constrained
to observe that on such a subject his authority has no
validity for us. There is no proof that he possessed
omniscience. Assuming the truth of the record,
there is, on the contrary, ample evidence that his
knowledge was limited in extent. If we may so far
credit the Evangelists, he was a believer in all the
current legends of his time. The stories of the
Noachian Deluge, and the miraculous destruction of
Sodom and Gomorrah, and even the grotesque legend
of Jonah and the whale, were received without mis
giving as to their historic truth. He was impressed
with an intense conviction of the approaching ruin
of the world. “ This generation shall not pass till
all these things be fulfilled.” His belief in diabolical
possession was simple and unquestioning. . One of
the Evangelists expressly intimates that he increased
in wisdom; ” that is to say, his knowledge was sub
ject to the universal law of growth in accordance
with experience; and another represents him as
acknowledging his ignorance of the exact period at
which the world should be destroyed. In none of
the Gospels will the attentive reader discover the
least indication that upon any subject, scientific,
literary, or historical, he possessed greater knowledge
than his contemporaries. Indeed it is plain to any
critical insight that he was much less well informed
than the Apostle Paul, for example. There is no use
in shrinking from this admission; it is the truth, and
we cannot alter it. God is not honoured by the sup
pression of such facts.
But even in theological matters his language
shows that he had no definite knowledge beyond that
shared by his fellow-countrymen. “I beheld Satan as
lightning fall from Heaven is a vague declaration,
to which almost any meaning might be assigned.
�34
Everlasting Punishment,
“More than twelve legions of angels” is another
loose expression, which will not admit of rigid defini
tion. “ Where the worm dieth not, and the fire is
not quenched,” is figurative language, and cannot be
construed literally. “ These shall go away into
everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life
eternal,” evinces no perception of the important truth
that the great majority of mankind are neither
“ righteous ” nor “ wicked,” but more or less imper
fect strugglers after righteousness. Nearly all his
reported utterances upon this subject are hasty
generalisations which are incompatible with exact
knowledge, and have no validity for conscientious
thinkers in this nineteenth century.
Nor is it at all demonstrable that he was the
author of any of these utterances. Many of them, in
all probability, have been rightly ascribed to him; but
this is the most that can be affirmed respecting them.
It is tolerably certain that he left no written exposi
tion of his doctrine, and that none of our canonical
Gospels was committed to manuscript for years after
his crucifixion ; not until a mass of legendary matter
had time to grow up around his real biography.
None of these brief and inadequate sketches can be
traced directly to his disciples ; indeed there is not
one which is authenticated by any writer who had
personal knowledge of its author. In the second
century, and by such men as Papias and Ireneeus, they
were ascribed to our four reputed Evangelists; but
this is all that can be positively affirmed. I need
hardly remark that if hell were the greatest of
realities, affecting the everlasting welfare of a large
proportion of mankind, a just and righteous Father
would not leave us to extract our knowledge of it
from the opinions of Papias and Irenaeus, nor yet from
the legendary narratives of our four Evangelists.
When they are construed with a due regard for
the limitations of human knowledge, these reported
�Everlasting Punishment.
35
sayings of Jesus are invaluable proclamations of the
truth that sin is an enormous evil, and has momentous
consequences; a truth which all experience verifies;
but how far those consequences may extend into the
unseen world, God has not revealed, nor are we at
liberty to dogmatise. From our general experience
of His government, however, we may righteously
believe that in whatever sense our punishment pursues
us beyond the grave, that punishment will be remedial
in its object, and will result in our final restoration to
purity and peace.
Rationalist.
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Everlasting punishment : a letter to Thomas Scott
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Wilson, John [b.1811]
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Notes: Published anonymously. Author identified by earlier cataloguer as Thomas Wilson, b.1811, and in publisher's list as Foreign Chaplain. Signed at end of text (p.35): Rationalist. Index to (list of) Thomas Scott's publications at end (6 p.). Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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Future Punishment
Hell
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Text
AND
-- •-—BY—
CHARLES WATTS
Author of " Secularism : Constructive and Destructive,”
“ The Superstition of the Christian Sunday.”
1,1 Glory of Unbelief,” Ac., Ac.
"
TORONTO:
Printed at “ Secular Thought ” Office.
Price Ten Cents.
■
��AND
_______________
— BY----
CHARLES WATTS
Author of “ Secularism : Constructive and Destructive,”
“ The Superstition of the Christian Sunday,”
“Glory of Unbelief,” Ac., Ac.
——
TORONTO:
Printed
at
“ Secular Thought ” Office.
Price Ten Cents.
��HAPPINESS IN HELL
---- AND----
MISERY IN HEAVEN.
n/’b'W'b'b'hl'b'bl’b’U/b
“ HAPPINESS IN HELL.”
Under the above title there appears a remarkable article in the
December number of The Nineteenth Century, written by St.
George Mivart, who is one of the ablest exponents of Roman
Catl io icism at the present day. His new theory has produced
quite a sensation in orthodox circles, in consequence of his rever
sing the hitherto supposed nature and conditions of the abode of
his Satanic Majesty. Whatever views we may personally enter
tain in reference to Christianity, we always welcome any effort
made to improve upon its harsh and cruel features. We sincerely
hope, therefore, that this declaration that there is “ happiness in
hell ” will have the effect of rendering future Christian pic
tures of everlasting torments less horrifying than those ghastly
spectacles that in the past too frequently accompanied the pub
lications of such orthodox teachings. It will appear a novel idea
to most minds that hell is a place of agreeable associations and
of pleasurable sensations; but to be assured that “ happiness ” is
to be found there is indeed startling, and will no doubt astonish
and bewilder members of the Christian community who have
always regarded that institution as being the abode of extreme
and unutterable misery. Besides, apart from the followers of
Swedenborg, few persons profess to have any conception of differ
ent degrees of happiness hereafter. Such, evidently, was not
Christ’s idea if it is true, as stated in the New Testament, that at
“ the last judgment ” “ before him shall be gathered all nations :
�4
HAPPINESS IN HELL
and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: and he shall set the sheep on his
right hand, but the goats on the left.” From this we learn that
mankind are to be divided into two classes only—the blessed and
the cursed.
Mr. Mivart says that he deals with his subject in all serious
ness, and he avows his pity for intellectually good men who are
staggered at the monstrosity of hell. He asks two questions : “ Is
the doctrine (of eternal hell) really one essential to Christianitv ?
and if so, can it be a belief reconcilable with right reason, the
highest morality and the greatest benevolence ? ” For ourselves
we answer the first query in the affirmative, and the second in
the negative, as they appear to us to be two very different ques
tions.
It is rather strange that Mr. Mivart should announce
that he offers his suggestions to believers only. Surely Free
thinkers are as competent as his church, his councils or himself to
judge what is reasonable or moral. We especially press this
point because he professes not to blink any difficulty, and to be
impartial and candid. The belief in Theism is not necessary to
enable a person to decide whether it was just or otherwise to
establish an “ eternal hell ” for those who cannot accept
the Christian God as a reality; neither is the belief in
immortality indispensable to the formation of an opinion that it
is inhuman and unreasonable to “ torture for ever ” those who
reject the Roman Catholic doctrine of a future life. In fact,
persons are in a better position to judge fairly and accurately
the points at issue, whose minds are free from prejudice and
whose reason is unfettered by priestly-enforced dogmas.
It is worthy of note that Mr. Mivart does not deny the exis
tence of hell: neither does he contend that the Scriptures do not
mean what they say upon the subject, or that they have been
wrongly translated. On the contrary, he ascribes to God the
preparation of the institution which, in Mr. Mivart’s opinion,
exists sure enough ; but the material used and the mode adop
ted in carrying out its punishments are changed. Instead of
�AND MISERY IN HE.AVEN,
5
fire and brimstone for all its inhabitants, a section of the “ lost
souls ” are only to suffer through banishment from heaven and
deprivation of the “ beatific vision of God.” While agreeing
with Jesus that hell is to be eternal, Mr. Mivart differs from his
Master by allotting to the tenants different degrees of punish
ment according to their merits and demerits. Banishment from
God is to be the only fate for some, while others are to suffer the
poena sensus, which he says is “ the equivalent of hell fire.” This
is to us a very important point, for we are told that the recipi
ents of “the equivalent of hell fire” are to be the “ Unbelievers”
—those who do not accept the doctrines of the Church. In his
defence of hell-fire torments Mr. Mivart is supported by the
writers of the New Testament (see Matt. 5 : 22, 29, 30; 10 : 28 ;
23: 15-32; 25: 41, 46; Mark 3: 29; 4: 42-47; Luke 10:
15, 16, 23; Rev. 14: 16; and 16: 8), and also by the Cate
chism of the Eastern Catholic Church, which distinctly says
“ they will be given over to everlasting death; that is, to ever
lasting fire, to everlasting torments with the devils.” This is a
doctrine which Mr. Mivart informs us his church never con
demned, and he frankly admits that the reality of a terrible and
scorching hell has been enforced by the eloquence of the pulpit,
the brush of the painter, the skill of the sculptor, and the art of
the engraver. This may be all too true, but it shows the brutal
nature of theology and its inhuman influence upon its believers
nevertheless.
It would indeed be useless to appeal to Freethinkers, and we
trust it would to all men and women whose minds have not been
perverted by a cruel and relentless faith, to believe that the ex
istence of such an institution could be defended by “reason and
the highest morality.” We urge most emphatically that to de
prive anyone of rights and privileges, either in this or in any
other world simply on account of differences of opinion, would
be a violation of the principles of justice, and in opposition to
the teachings of all true ethics. As to the “ benevolence ” of
putting those who honestly reject a particular faith in the worst
position among the alleged new conditions of hell, that requires
�6
HAPPINESS IN HELL
special faculties, which we do not possess, to enable us to appre
ciate it.
But Mr. Mivart observes there is “ another side ” to Catholic
doctrine which teaches that tne “ happiness of hell ” will be the
lot of “ unbaptized infants,” and it may even be extended to
“ adults in heathen nations.” If this be so, baptism becomes an
unfortunate ceremony, for it is by no means certain to be accom
panied or followed by conversion, and if it is not, even according
to his new theory baptism destroys the possibility of happiness
in the next world. Upon the same principle missionaries are
simply agents for introducing damnation among the nations
they visit. If the poor heathens die without having heard the
gospel, happiness, we are told, awaits them hereafter, but if the
{ glad tidings ” are preached to them and they cannot or do not
believe, hell-fire is their portion “for ever and ever.”
Mr. Mivarb considers that a process of evolution is going on in
hell; but he also says the occupants are not allowed to escape
from the “ prison house” however much they may develepe in
goodness. Where, then, is the utility of such development if
emancipation from imperfect surroundings is not to be the re
sult ? It is a kind of progress similar to that made by the horse
at the mill. Mr. Mivart does not interpret the law of evolution
thus when he applies it to animals on earth. His argument
in dealing with man is that the process of evolution raises him
higher and higher both in body and in mind. This is a clear
contradiction to his idea of evolution in hell.
Mr. Mivart considers that Atheism is preferable to the belief
“ that God could punish men however slightly, still less could
damn them for all eternity, for anything which they had not full
power to avoid.” But this is precisely what the Christian’s God
js represented as doing. According to the popular orthodox be
lief, which is based on certain portions of the New Testament,
and is sanctioned by the articles and catechisms of the churches,
it is only the elect that are to be saved, while the vast majority
of the human race are to be punished “ for all eternity.” The
Bible states that the non-elect are powerless to secure their own
�AND MISERY IN HEAVEN.
7
salvation, for it alleges that of ourselves we can do nothing; it
is God that worketh within us, and that some unfortunate vic
tims were ordained to condemnation before they were born (see
Romans 8: 29, 30 9 : 21, 22; 2 Cor. 3:5; Eph. 2:8; Phil.
2 : 13 ; 2 Thess. 2 : 11, 12 ; Jude 8:4).
Mr. Mivart says : “Any unnecessary or useless suffering can
not, of course, exist with a good God.” Just so, then the fact is
that either God does not exist or the orthodox doctrine of hell is
a delusion. If there is any suffering at all in hell we allege that
it is both unnecessary and useless. Such suffering, be it remem
bered, is not regarded as being merely a consequence,it is a penalty
inflicted as a punishment upon those who believe not the “ Gospel
of Christ.” Apart entirely from the monstrous injustice of this
suffering, where is its utility ? The true object of punishment
• should be to reform those who are punished and to deter others
from doing wrong. The threatened punishment of orthodoxy
achieves neither of these results, inasmuch as it affords no oppor
tunity for repentance and offers no facility for improvement, for
when the victim is once in hell there he must remain for ever.
Neither can it be truthfully said that the sufferings in the
“ bottomless pit” would exercise a beneficial influence upon those
on earth. That the belief in hell torrm-nts is not a deterrent
from crime the history of criminality clearly proves. Nearly
all our worst criminals have been taught this doctrine. The
terror of the policeman has evidently been.more efficacious in
the prevention of crime than all the hell-fire that ever was or
ever could be manufactured. Besides, if it were possible for the
“ tortures of the damned ” to be witnessed, would such a sight
inspire the spectators with obedience to a God who caused such
barbarous cruelty ? Here the rejected of heaven are represented
as enduring tortures the extent of •which no humane mind can
fully conceive and no pen can adequately portray. The end of
perhaps a happy life is to be the beginning of everlasting misery.
The joy and sunshine of a mundane existence are to be followed
by clouds of wretchedness and the endurance of perpetual agony.
Amidst the eruption of burning mountains, flashing of light-
�8
H APPINESS IN HELL
ning and the roar of thunder; while the stars are descending,
the sun darkening and the moon being converted into blood, the
majority of mankind are to be exposed to the severest cruelties
it is possible for the most barbarous nature and the most fiendish
disposition to inflict.
Mr. Mivart makes the astounding statement that “nothing, in
fact, has been defined by the church on the subject of hell which
does not accord with right reason, the highest morality, and the
greatest benevolence.” Is this true ? God has been defined by
the church as the creator of all things; he must therefore have
created the devil. God, we are told, is all-wise ; he must, there
fore, have known the nature of the being he was creating, and
the havoc his handiwork would make among the sons and daugh
ters of men. God, it is said, is all-good ; then how could he
have been the cause of so much evil of which it is supposed the •
devil is the principal agent ? God is alleged -to be all-powerful;
why, then, did he not destroy the devil when he was defeated in
heaven instead of turning him upon the earth to play his devil
ish pranks among mankind ? God is defined as a being of love;
how is it, then, that he planned a scheme by which most of the
human race are doomed to an eternity of heart-rending suffering,
“ where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched?”
Does it accord with reason to believe that our “ heavenly Father ”
would do what an earthly parent would recoil from doing ? Is
it moral to inflict infinite punishment for a finite act, even if
that act is intentionally performed ? Is it benevolent to burn
men and women “ forever,” some of whom have been guilty of
no other “crime ” than their inability to recognize the orthodox
notion of ■“ truth as it is in Jesus ? ” This may be the theologi
cal view of what is right and useful, but it is a conception of
justice at which unperverted humanity stands aghast.
Mr. Mivart contends that God has granted a revelation whereby
hell may be avoided. “ But,” says he, “justice certainly does
not demand that this revelation should be made clear to all men.”
This is orthodox reasoning and consistency with a vengeance 1
How can that be a revelation which is not clear ? And, further-
�AND MISERY IN HEAVEN.
9
more, of what service can a revelation possibly be to us if it is
not understood ? How can we act upon that, the meaning of
which is hidden from us ? If a knowledge of this special reve
lation is necessary to enable us to avoid misery and to secure
happiness, then justice does demand that the author of the reve
lation should, if he has the power, make it clear to all his
children. If he does not do so he is partial in the treatment
of his children, and, therefore, not, in this instance, a good
Father.
But the real question is, why did God make a hell for us to
avoid ? We are told that the devil was “ a fallen angel,” that
he was once in heaven, where he fell from his original state. It
would be interesting to learn that, if heaven is sinless, whence
came the evil influence that caused the angel to fall ? Angelic
materials cannot be of the best kind, and if war and sin once
reigned in heaven, what guarantee have we that they may not
again disturb the harmony of the “ celestial city ?”
If there be a hell, how does Mr. Mivart know that there will
be happiness there ? We presume that he has not visited that
habitation. St. Frances says that she was permitted to look into
hell, and she found it had three divisions. In the upper hell the
inhabitants were tolerably miserable, in the middle one intoler
ably so, but in the lower the torments were beyond ail under
standing. When she had looked into this terrible place her
blood was frozen with fright. “ The Confession of Faith tells
us that the inmates of hell suffer “most grievous torments in
body and soul, without intermission, in hell-fire forever ” The
Wesleyan Catechism affirms that “ hell is full of fire and brim
stone where the bodies are tormented for ever and ever , and
finally the New Testament alleges that “ the wicked shall be tor
mented . . . and the smoke of their torments ascendethup
for ever and ever, and they have no rest day nor night. Jf 0W
here are four authorities quite as trustworthy upon, this
as Mr. Mivart (that, we grant, is not saying much), and i£fc^at
they assert be correct, happiness cannot exist in such a pWe.
If, on the other band, the scriptures and the Christian writers
�10
HAPPINESS IN HELL
are in error, then the whole doctrine of hell is a delusion, which
we decidedly think is the case.
But let us turn from these revolting figments of a barbarous
faith to the inculcation of Secular teachings. In these we have
no threatened hell in another world to appal, no fire to burn or
devil to torture. Our injunction is, endeavor to avoid making a
hell upon earth, which is often done by fostering dogmas as
cruel as they are pernicious in their influence upon the peace of
the human mind. We have faith in the power of love, not in
the dread of fear. Therefore
While here live out a noble life
And ever follow right because ’tis right;
Not because ye shall be crowned with light,
And if in grander worlds ye go to dwell
It shall not there be counted to your scorning
That you your best have done,
But you shall still progress to everlasting morning.
MISERY IN HEAVEN.
Mr. St. George Mivart informs us that that there is an eter
nity of happiness in hell, and that “ the loss of heaven is an in
finite loss.” He does not, however, define what he means by
happiness, although he asserts that it differs in degree, and that
some persons “ no more desire the supernatural state than fishes
can desire to become birds or oysters sigh because they are not
butterflies.” If hell exist, and it is such a place as orthodox
Christians generally describe it, we fail to understand how it is
possible for any degree of happiness to be found there. But
what of heaven ? Let us endeavor to ascertain the nature and
state of affairs “ in another place,” as they say in the House of
Commons. If the information given in the Bible concerning
heaven be reliable, misery, not happiness, is its chief character
istic. Those, therefore, who prepared themselves for “ above,’”
�AND MISERY IN HEAVEN.
11
expecting to find comfort and enjoyment, took the wrong road;
they should have gone “ below,” where they would have a warm
reception, and a brilliant and prolonged entertainment prepared
for them.
Happiness is understood in this world as being associated with
agreeable sensations. It is not a thing, but a state in which our
wants are supplied ; a condition of the mind that is in posses
sion of what it desires. Felicity expresses great happiness, and
bliss is its highest form. Happiness furthermore implies an
absence of conflicting influences. It depends on conditions,
which of course vary with individuals. A clown and a philo
sopher may be both equally satisfied, but they cannot be equally
happy when surrounded by the same conditions. Happiness,
great or small, can be secured only by experiences congenial to
the tastes of individuals, and which meet the requirements of
their varied capacities for enjoyment. An “ eternity ” of happi
ness can only mean a continuous state of joy. The common
conception of eternity, “ swallowing up time,” or “ when time
shall be no more,” is only symbolical. Applying eternity to a
future state is like speaking of a rope with one end cut off.
Eternity is neither future nor past. It cannot begin after the
one or before the other; hence entering on an eternal future is
inconceivable to the human mind.
Now do heaven and its arrangements, as depicted and recorded
in the Bible, comply with the requirements necessary to happi
ness ? In the first place, it seems paradoxical to speak, as some
theologians do, of the happiness of heaven, and at the same time
to assert that the senses through which all sensations enter are
not present. They speak of immaterial souls enjoying bliss,
which is as unphilosophical as it would be to talk of dissolving
moonlight or carving a shadow. Attributing agreeable sensa
tions to a soul without senses is as grotesque as ascribing the
darkness of the Middle Ages to the result of the Pope’s uncork
ing bottles of Egyptian darkness. To experience any sort of
happiness necessitates our possessing senses that enable us to
feel, see, and understand. Immaterial souls can enjoy only im-
�12
HAPPINESS IN HELL
material happiness, and it is quite immaterial to us whether we
experience such enjoyment or not, for it could make no material
difference to such souls as we are now supposed to possess.
Jesus, in speaking of children, said, “ Of such is the kingdom
of heaven.” We cannot, however, imagine a child being happy
without his toys or even with always having the same. Fancy a boy
without his top or a girl without her doll—where would be their
happiness ? Is it not also a fact that children begin to wonder
why they do not continue to admire their old sources of enjoy
ment when they have acquired tastes for new ones ? It is
similar with children of larger growth, whose happiness consists
greatly in the change of scenes and occupation. Literature is
the heaven of some minds ; but the most devout student looks
out for new books. To be compelled to read the same for
ever would not be the happiest occupation. Everything is
mutable, changes are interminable through all nature, absolute
quietude is unknown, and without constant change life itself
would cease to be. These essentials to the happiness of exist
ence are not to be found in heaven, and therefore to intellectual
persons it would be a place of misery.
We are not now dealing with the questions whether there is
a heaven or not, or if there is where it is located. These are no
doubt important points, but our present object is to ascertain
whether the Christian’s heaven, as described in the Bible, is an
abode of happiness or of misery. It may be urged that the
language of the Scriptures upon the question of heaven is figur
ative, which we do not deny ; but what is it figurative of ?
Language should make the subjects to which it refers clear to
the reader, and not obscure their meaning. Christ on several
occasions refers to the kingdom of heaven in parables, but from
these we obtain very little information as to its real nature.
This is not at all surprising when we are told that he spoke
in parables, so that those who heard him should not understand
(Mark 4: 11, 12.) It is true that on another occasion, Jesus
located heaven by saying the kingdom of heaven was “ within
you,” but this is as difficult to understand as the parables are,
�AND MISERY IN HEAVEN
13
since he also states : “ In my Father’s house are many mansions
.... I go to prepare a place for you.” For persons to get these
mansions within them would be a greater performance than that
of the whale swallowing Jonah ! There is, however, one parable
about heaven (Luke 16: 19,31) which tells us of “a certain
beggar” and of “a certain rich man;” the one was in heaven
and the other within hell, and 1 oth were in hearing, seeing, and
speaking distance of each other. From heaven the rich man is
seen being tormented in hell. Now to think that anyone could
be happy while contemplating such suffering would be an out
rage against our common humanity. Such a horrible heavenly
spectacle would be worse than a Spanish bull-fight, or than
bishops warming their hands before the fires that consumed the
martyrs of old. Brutal as those scenes were, they lasted only for a
time, whereas this heavenly scene consists of ever-lasting torture
where all help to lessen the cruelty is denied. If any person
with a spark of humanity in his or her nature should get into
such a heaven, it is to be hoped that blinds will be there that
may be drawn, for such sights are only fit for monsters who die
on the gallows, and whose exit from earth was a blessing to
those left behind. The Christian’s heaven, as here described,
must be a place of misery indeed for every loving heart.
One great source of our happiness on earth is the liberty to
select our companions, to refrain from attending exhibitions of
torture, and to be permitted to relieve the victims of injustice and
cruelty. To be shut up, therefore, in heaven with those who
can look on others being tortured in flames of fire and who will
not or cannot relieve them must be a source of indescribable
misery. This parable receives confirmation from St. John, who
states (Rev. 14: 10) that a certain person “ shall drink of the
wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture
into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with
fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the
presence of the Lamb.” And this is the Christian’s idea of ulti
mate happiness. When a wish is expressed to be with Jesus and
the angels, as it frequently is by orthodox believers, they can-
�14
HAPPINESS IN HELL
not understand the sights and experiences that are in store for
them. Let us hope it is true that “ Eye hath not seen nor ear heard
. . . the things which God hath prepared for them that love
him.” Milton says, “ It’s better to reign in hell, than to serve
in heaven;” but in our opinion it would be still better to do
neither. Both institutions deserve to be lost in total oblivion
for the belief in their existence is no factor in the progress and
elevation of mankind. Humanity would have two evils the less
to overcome if hell were to cease from troubling, and if the
preachers about heaven were to be at rest.
We will now glance at what may be termed the Throne Room
of heaven as it is described by St. John, who is alleged to have
been an eye-witness. He certainly had very peculiar ideas both
of artistic beauty and of pictorial theology. He says that God
was like a jasper and a sardine stone; the rainbow about him
was the color of an emerald. This sparkling Deity was sur
rounded by four-and-twenty elders, their heads being adorned
with crowns of gold. Before the throne was a sea of crystal,
near which there were seven lamps, which were the seven spirits
of God. It is said that St. John was “ in the spirit.” This may
be so, or perhaps the spirit was in him; for no man in his nor
mal mental condition, either waking or sleeping, could conceive
such a jumble of nonsensical impossibilities as those recorded in
the book of Revelation. Some profane persons have compared
their alleged author to Tam O’Shanter, who also is said to have
had some strange visions.
St. John, we are told, found the door of heaven open, and
there he stood in front of a great white throne, with a frontage
of a crystal sea, but, “ whether (he was) in the body or out of
the body, I cannot tell.” He does not say that he felt alarmed
at the “ lightnings and thunderings of voices,” which “ proceeded
out of the throne.” People as a rule do not feel supremely happy
in a thunderstorm. But in addition to the war of the elements
there were four most remarkable beasts in the midst of and
round the throne, the like of which, so far as we know, no
naturalist has ever seen in this or any other country. The
�AND MISERY IN HEAVEN.
15
beasts are represented as having resemblance to a lion, a calf, a
man, and an eagle, and they possessed six wings each and “ eyes
before and behind,” besides being “ full of eyes within.” They
must have been wideawake animals indeed, and to have found
the blind side of them would have been exceedingly difficult.
But, stranger still, they were musical beasts, and could all sing,
and evidently did so to some tune, for “ they rest not day
and night, saying Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty.” Then
we have what may be called a chorus, in which the beasts are
joined by the elders and by “ ten thousand times times ten
thousand, and thousands of thousands ” of angels. A pleasant
place this, truly, for a studious man or a nervous woman to be
doomed to “ forever.” Of course it may be a matter of taste,
but, speaking personally, if ever we find ourselves among such a
motley crew, we shall be inclined, if all other means of escape
fail, to test the efficacy of prayer, and to exclaim, from this place
“ Good Lord deliver us.”
According to St. John, the acoustic properties of heaven must
be unique, for he says that he heard every living thing both
there and on the earth, under the earth, and on the sea, say
something to him that sat on the throne, to which the four
beasts (one of them having a voice of thunder) said Amen 1
Such an exhibition of heavenly music would be to us no
pleasure, but a tremendous nuisance. We might, perhaps, under
pressure, be able to sit out the performance for a brief time; but
to have to endure it day and night for ever would be enough to
drive one stark staring mad. A succession of the same sounds
and sights, even when of a pleasant kind, would be one of the
most monotonous experiences on earth ; but to be compelled to
listen perpetually to the uproar of St. John’s heaven, and to
behold its horrible sights without any intermission, would be
the quintessence of misery. Putting aside their hideous thund
ering shouts amidsi lightning and hail, it makes one’s flesh
creep to think of those strange beasts constantly crawling all
over the place. There would be no rest for us even in the
presence of all the saints and the Lamb. St. John incidentally
�16
HAPPINESS IN HELL
remarks that a good deal of bookkeeping goes on in heaven. If
this be so, accuracy, we should think, could not be guaranteed
under such conditions of noise and confusion. In all probability
many names will be omitted or wrongly inserted, unless the re
cording angel is deaf and dumb and receives his instructions
through the medium of “ divine inspiration.” As to him who
was sitting on the throne, he must have been a peculiar indivi
dual, for it is said that from his face “ the earth and heaven fled
away,” but whence we are not informed.
There were other wonders in heaven, one of which was a wo
man clothed with the sun, the moon under her feet, and twelve
stars on her head. Evidently she must have been the centre of
light, and had no necessity to grope about in the dark. She
was not, however, to be compared with the marvellous angel
giant, who was clothed with a cloud, bad a rainbow on his head?
a face like the sun, a voice like a lion, and his feet like pillars of
fire. The length given of his legs is most remarkable ; he set
his right foot on the sea, and his left on the earth. There is
one thing mentioned which must have given inexpressible joy to
some of the unfortunate inhabitants. “There was silence in
heaven for the space of about one hour.” This must have been
indeed a relief, even though it was only for a brief interval.
Crusty old bachelors have thought that if there were silence in
heaven it was evident that there were not many women there.
Upon this point we give no opinion, except that, if there were
more than one there, they must have been delighted that the
chorus of the beasts was stopped even for an hour, so that a
little cheerful feminine conversation could be indulged in. Most
women are painted as angels, at least before they are married ;
let us hope, therefore, that if there were any in heaven, they had
wings with which, at the re-commencement of the native music,
they could fly away and be at rest. This description of heaven
and its angelic inhabitants is what the Americans would call
“ fine and large but we ask, where does the happiness come
in ? Gaping at monstrosities and wonders like St. John wit
nessed, is not our idea of a blissful state. It is said in the New
�AND MISERY IN HEAVEN.
17
Testament that Jesus was going to prepare a place for us. If,
however, St. John’s account of the “place” is correct, we have
no wish to congratulate Christ upon the success of his under
taking.
One thing, perhaps, we ought to be thankful for, and that
is, that the path to heaven is so narrow that only a few can
find it. If ever it is our misfortune to be located in the orthodox
heaven, we shall be inclined to burst into song and say :
“ Heaven’s a cheat, and all things show it;
We thought so once, but now we know it.”
We are sometimes told that if heaven does not really exist, it
is a pleasing illusion which people ought not to be ruthlessly
deprived of; and that they should not have doubts concerning
its existence infused into their contented minds. Our answer
to this is, when absurd errors are taught as truths, it is necessary
that the fact should be made clear, in order that their injurious
influences may be avoided. Now St.John says his account is
accurate, and that anyone making alterations or additions will
be subject to unspeakable penalties. But we repeat that it is
not the existence of heaven that we here question, neither do we
desire to deprive anyone of the hope of happiness hereafter. We
have simply shown that the Christian’s heaven as depicted in
the Scriptures does not offer grounds for a pleasing illusion, and
that it is not a home of happiness, but an abode of the most
wretched misery that it is possible for the human mind to con
ceive.
A heaven to be desirable should be a place where suffering
is unknown; where the true and the noble of the earth can
dwell in peace and harmony, undisturbed by personal pain, or a
knowledge of the gloom and sadness of others. To us the Chris
tian’s heaven appears destitute of every redeeming feature, and
it would be no pain to us to see it occupied by Abraham, Isaac
and Jacob, and ourselves shut out. If there is such a heaven as
that described by St. John, we know of no people to whom it
would be a more appropriate abode than to the inmates of a
lunatic asylum. The fact is, the popular notion of heaven and
�18
HAPPINESS IN HELL AND MISERY IN HEAVEN.
hell, which the churches profess to entertain to-day, is based on
superstition of which Pope said:—
She taught the weak to bend, the proud to pray,
To Powers unseen, and mightier far away ;
She, from the rending earth and burning skies,
Saw gods descend and fiends infernal rise ;
Here fixed the dreadful, there the blest abodes ;
Fear made her devils, and weak hope her gods :
Gods partial, changeful, passionate, unjust,
Whose attributes were rage, revenge, or lust,
Such as the souls of cowards might conceive,
And formed like tyrants, tyrants would believe.
Zeal then, not charity, became the guide,
And hell was built on spite, and heaven on pride.
�����
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Happiness in hell and misery in heaven
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Watts, Charles, 1836-1906
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Hell
Secularism
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Heaven
Hell
Secularism
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HEAVEN & HELL: WHERE SITUATED?
A. SEABCH AFTEIi THE OBJECTS OP
MAN’S FERVENT HOPE & ABIDING TERROR.
BY AUSTIN HOLYOAKE.
Heaven ia the hope of the Christian —Hell is his dread, his fear, his
abiding terror. What would Christianity be—that is, the modern faith
of Europe—without these two ideas, or sentiments, or beliefs, or whatever
they may be called? Simply a mild kind of superstition. The hope of an
eternal reward for doing right, appeals with much force, there can be no
doubt, to the selfish; and the fear of eternal, never-ending torments, will
keep many a wretch in awe. But all who are swayed by such motives
must be inferior morally to those who do good because it is right to do so,
and because it will benefit men individually, and society generally, regard
less of all consideration as to whether the doers of good will receive
advantage themselves. Man’s clear duty is to do right, to speak the truth,
not only without reward, but even at his own cost if need be.
I say at the outset, that I do not believe in the Christian’s Heaven. It
involves too many difficultiss and contradictions for me to comprehend, or
for anyone to explain. To disturb the Christian’s greatest hope, to destroy
his fondest illusion, to rob him of his sole consolation, without giving him
an equivalent in return, is denounced from every pulpit and every religious
tract, as a deadly sin. But if the Christian is trusting to a delusion, if
he is self-deceived, who is to blame? Surely not he who points out the
error—the blame lies rather with those who have deceived him, or, it may
be, with himself, for not having examined more closely the foundations of
his belief. Ministers every day in the year preach about and promise to
their devotees a heaven of bliss, when they have not the minutest particle
of evidence upon the subject to justify their promises. Thus is the world
deluded; and out of the delusion thousands thrive and fatten, while the
bulk of the nation are taxed to uphold the deception.
For many centuries, and in many countries, the idea of a future state,
or world beyond the grave, has existed. How this idea first arose, we have
no clear conception. That it has varied in different countries, according
to the amount of intelligence or civilisation possessed by each, is certain.
The poor savage, whose untutored mind
Sees God in clouds, and hears him in the wind,
has pictured to himself the happy hunting grounds of the Great Spirit,
covered with boundless herds of wild buffaloes and other animals dear to
the heart of the child of the prairie, which he will be always chasing and
always catching. The Mahomedan of the East believes in and hopes for
a Paradise where all his sensuous enjoyments will be increased tenfold—
shady groves, refreshing springs, and beautiful houris. The Christian
believes in a future state of spiritual existence, where all his earthly
wants and necessities will leave him, where hunger and thirst, pain and
sorrow, will torment him no more. In short, he expects to live in a state
of ecstatic delirium for ever and ever. We will examine how far this
belief is warranted by facts.
�2
Heaven and Hell.
What is the Christian’s Heaven? Where is it situated? In what part
of the so-called Sacred Writings shall we find a clear and intelligible
description of this abode of bliss—this promised land of never-ending
pleasures, which is to be the reward of all true believers ? It appears to be
situated, by common consent, up above—beyond the clouds—beyond im
measurable space—and yet in the clouds. Whether in the torrid or the
frigid zone, we are not informed. What its climate will be no man
knoweth. Will there be there the severe winter, with its snows and
chilling blasts; the genial and budding spring, giving promise of the
warm and sunny summer, when all nature, in the plenitude of her wealth
and beauty, showers her blessings on mankind; to be followed by the mellow
and glowing autumn, when the seasons, resting as it were from the labours
of production, smile upon the bounties scattered broadcast over the earth?
Men of all climes are to go to Heaven, who believe in the proper number
of orthodox nostrums, but how will the Laplander fare in a climate which
is suitable to the Asiatic ? How will the Englishman live and be happy,
where the African can thrive, or the Russian of the wilds of Siberia will be
at home ? Are all to be dumb there, or are all to speak one language ? If
all are to have the power of articulation, are those only of one country to
talk together, except the happy few who may possess the gift of tongues ?
If so, it will be but a repetition of the educational inequalities of this
world, which the schoolmaster is now making strenuous efforts to rectify.
Will all retain the same intellectual power which they possessed when on
earth ? If so, what gratification will the change bring to the idiots from
birth, who are not capable of comprehending anything ? They cannot be
restored to their senses, seeing that they never possessed any. After death
they would have to be reorganised. Will the cripples be made perfect, and
those who have lost limbs have them restored to them ? These may seem
to the Christian considerations beside the question, but on reflection he
will be bound to admit that they are questions needing an answer.
It is in vain for the Christian to say that man in Heaven will be a
spiritual, and not a material being. In the first place, we have no con
ception, and cannot possibly convey to another, an idea of what a spiritual
being is. There is a contradiction in the very terms, and we have no
analogy by which to judge. This involves the interminable controversy
about spiritual substance, etherealised bodies, and so on. But is it not
manifestly absurd to promise to man eternal happiness in a future state of
existence, when you take away from him all those faculties whereby he
will be alone capable of feeling either pleasure or pain, joy or sorrow? See
the insurmountable difficulties involved in this notion of life after death.
I am promised all this bliss; then, unless I go to that land beyond the
grave as I am—that is, with all my human faculties unimpaired—1 cannot
enjoy it ? I am known from others to all who see me by my outward form,
and by what they hear me say and see me do. I receive pleasure from certain
things, and experience pain in virtue of being what I am. Destroy my
individuality, my body, and where am I ? Ano longer exist. That same
principle of life which animates my body has animated countless millions of
other human beings ; but my form as it now exists has never been pos
sessed by another. What attraction is it to me to be told that when I die
I shall go to another and a better world, if I am not to be I when I get
there ? It is a place clearly intended for a different race of beings or exist
ences, whose happiness will depend, not upon what they may have believed
or disbelieved here, but upon the suitability to their constitution or
organisation of the circumstances surrounding them. No Christian can
imagine himself to be other than he is on this earth. Disguise the fact as
�Heaven and Hell.
3
they may, those who desire a life after death believe it will be one calcu
lated to promote their own special enjoyments.
Some time ago, the Rev. J. C. Ryle, B.A., Vicar of Stradbroke, pub
lished in the Quiver—a publication issued by Cassell & Co.—an essay en
titled “ Shall we know one another?” in which he singularly confirms this
view of the matter. He is a Churchman, and of course quite orthodox.
He quotes three short passages from Thessalonians (1, iv. 13,14), which he
says “ all imply the same great truth, that saints in heaven shall know
one another. They shall have the same body and the same character
that they had on earth—a body perfected and transformed like Christ’s in
his transfiguration, but still the same body—a character perfected and
purified from all sin, but still the same character. But in the moment
that we who are saved shall meet our several friends in heaven, we shall
at once know them, and they will at once know us.” But this declaration
complicates the subject farther than ever. What does he mean by the same
body ? How can it be the same body if it be “ perfected and transformed?”
It is as unintelligible as Daniel’s dreams or St. John’s visions. The rev.
gentleman candidly remarks:—“ I grant freely that there are not many
texts in the Bible which touch the subject at all. I admit fully that pious
and learned divines are not of one mind with me about the matter.”
The best Scriptural description to be found of Heaven, appears to be in
the Revelation of St.John; and as it is put as the grand climax or perora
tion to the sacred writings, we must accept it as the only authoritative
account to be had. St. John “ writeth his revelation to the seven churches
of Asia, signified by the seven golden candlesticks.” What light
does John put into these said candlesticks, which is supposed to
illumine a benighted and ruined world ? This revelation is the most in
coherent jumble that perhaps ever came from the mouth of a sane man.
In fact, it is only equalled by the insane ravings continually heard from
those unfortunate creatures, now too often to be met with, who have been
stricken with the revival mania. We shall be told that some parts are
symbolical, and are not to be taken as written. As they stand, there is
no earthly meaning in them; but where does the symbolical end, and the
literal begin ? There is no internal evidence to guide U3; then who is to
be the sworn interpreter ? The Catholic Church has settled that question
for itself, but in the Protestant Church we go upon the principle, if not the
practice, of each judging for himself. We in England have some thousands
of ordained and self-appointed ministers and expounders of the Gospel, who
do the interpretation business for the multitude, and for such as are too
indolent or too much occupied to think for themselves. What light do we
get from them to guide us through the perilous paths of life which lead
from the cradle to the grave? Too many of them are like St. John’s seven
candlesticks—they are merely sticks, and have no light in them, not even
so much as the glimmer of a rushlight to shed on the dark pages of Gospel
history.
Any one who takes the trouble to search for authentic information
about the locality and nature of the Heaven in which all Christians pro
fess to believe, will find a total absence of any knowledge upon the subject.
Like the alleged existence of God, it is simply a belief, and not a reality.
Yet all the Churches speak of this phantom of the imagination with as
much confidence as though the “ celestial regions ’’ had been surveyed and
mapped like a tract of country, and their boundaries placed beyond the
possibility of dispute. But so long as people will not think, but content
themselves with believing, there will be no lack of traders upon their cre
dulity.
�4
Heaven and Hell.
We now turn to the second part of our subject. What shall we say
about that other place of abode for departed spirits, the climate of which is
so warm that the natives of centraPAfrica will find it uncomfortable ? Where
is it situated ? Ob, down below, of course; all Christians say so, and they
alone know. Did not Christ descend into Hell ? And yet it cannot be far
from Heaven, for did not Dives and Lazarus hold a conversation toge
ther from their respective abodes ? We are not quite sure that Hell is not
in Heaven itself, for in Revelation xiv. 9 and 10, it says, “ If any man
worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in
his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is
poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be
tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and
in the presence of the Lamb.” We are not to suppose that a little hell is
kept among the holy angels for special use, or that they often go where
Lucifer alone is King; and yet we cannot tell how men are to be tortured in
their presence unless Hell is in Heaven. However that may be, we are
assured that God himself is in Hell. If you doubt it, you need do no more
than go to that royal prophet, that inspired writer, that man after God’s
own heart, who, in one of those sacred oracles which the Holy Spirit itself
has dictated to him, acknowledges and owns it. “Whither shall I go,”
says David, “ from thy spirit ? or whither shall I flee from thy presence 1
If I ascend up into Heaven, thou art there ; if I make my bed in Hell,
behold thou art there." We have Psalm 139 for our authority, and no
one dare dispute that.
There seems to be no doubt in the minds of Christians, that the brim
stone pit is somewhere within the interior of 7 A is planet, but that the
Abode of Bliss is up in the clouds, or beyond them. Now if the other
planetary bodies are inhabited by human beings—and scientific men are
not aware of any reason why they should not be—if the Maker of all things
punishes his children with burning torments who do not believe in Christ
and Him crucified, where are the inhabitants of other planets to be sent
when their hour comes? Are they sent here, or has each of the other vast
worlds in space a nice little Hell of its own in which to put its erring sub
jects ? If they come here, an enlargement of the premises must be con
stantly taking place. If Heaven is not upon this earth, and is never to be
realised here—I prefer believing that Hell also is far up in the clouds, and
a very long way too, so that the journey thither may take as much time as
possible in its accomplishment.
The warm world beyond the grave is popularly known by many names.
Hell is perhaps the most general term used by Christians; though it is
sometimes designated by the appellations of Infernal Regions, Perdition,
Abode of the Damned, and so on. Most orthodox Christians mean by the
term Hell the everlasting lake of brimstone and fire; though there are still
some in the Church, and we believe they are of the best, who do not believe
at ali in a literal Hell of fire. The Catholics have a place which they call
Purgatory, which is a sort of House of Detention, and not the penal settle
ment our Hell is supposed to be. There sinnerscan be released on tickets-ofleave after certain regulations have been complied with; our religious
convicts are condemned for life (or death, whichever it may be) without the
slightest hope of pardon. The Catholics themselves admit, that once in
Hell, you are in it for ever, Michael Angelo, the celebrated painter,
executed, by command of Pope Julius IT., a splendid picture representing
the Day of Judgment. Now Michael Angelo had placed among his other
figures in his scene of Hell, several cardinals and prelates. They had pro.
bably been guilty, like Bishop Colenso and some of the most intelligent men
�Heaven and Hell.
5
of our Church, of thinking for themselves, and, worst of all, of publishing
the result of their thinkings. And this, we know, has been sufficient in all
Christian ages to render any man quite unfit for the company of saints.
However, some of the dignified and proper churchmen of Julius’s time, who
had probably never been guilty of an original thought in their lives, were
extremely enraged at the picture, and made complaint of it to his Holi
ness, and entreated that he would lay his injunctions on the painter to
efface them. To whom the Pope replied—“ My dear brethren, Heaven
has indeed given me the power of recovering as many souls from Pur
gatory as I think proper; but as to Hell, you know as well as I do, that
my power does not extend so far, and those who once go thither, must
remain there for ever!”
What is Hell? Where is it? Is it really the lake of fire some repre
sent it to be? You will be eternally bewildered and completely con
founded if you try to determine this question from the Bible itself. If
Hell be below, it must be contained within the earth, for wherever you
go en the surface of this globe, you will find the firmament still above and
around you. If within, which is the way to it? Strange that no one has
ever even by accident discovered it. The only entrance one can imagine
to it, is the mouth of Vesuvius. But that cannot be the way, as it is not
a brimstone pit, though sulphurous exhalations arise from it. No devil
that we ever heard of, was seen to emerge from it—not even by the
miracle-working monks who infest the country round about. We know
the right place has a door or grating, and that St. John saw the angel who
kept the key. But it is bottomless, and therefore who knows but that
Vesuvius is the other side—the front door in the rear, out of which the
Devil pops when he wants to go roaring up and down the world ? A
bottomless pit full of liquid must be like a pot without a bottom filled with
water, where all things are not only in a state of solution, but the solution
itself is held in suspension 1
We continually hear pious Christians say that the souls of unbelievers
have gone, or are going, to Perdition. But there is a consolation in know
ing that it is not Hell. Revelation xvii. 8, says that the beast which was
so obliging as to carry the scarlet lady of Babylon, ‘ ‘ shall ascend out of
the bottomless pit and shall go into Perdition.” Perhaps Perdition is the
Catholic’s Purgatory 1 Who knows ? But then there is no mistake that
Hell is Hell, and that the Freethinker will go there 1 Not quite so sure.
Read Revelation xx. 14 —“And Death and Hell were cast into the lake
of fire.” Where does this lead us? We have heard of a house being
turned out of window, but we never heard of a pit being thrown into
itself 1 This is one of those mysteries which “ passeth all understanding.”
We still have the lake of fire, where human beings are to be burnt for
ever and ever, and yet never consumed. Now this is simply an impossi
bility. The human body, if thrown into a large fire, would be utterly
destroyed in a very short time, and nothing could prevent it. “ Men
cannot live in fire. It is the nature of fire to burn up, to destroy, to
decompose any animal or vegetable substance that is cast into it. It would
require the properties of life to be altered before men could live in it for
ever. Some will say, God can work a miracle. But we have no reason
to suppose that he can. We know nothing of what God can do—we only
know what is, and miracles do not take place.” We must discard the
idea of a burning Hell as a fiction conceived by a brutal and revengeful
monster in human form, and afterwards taken up and added to by fanatics,
whose minds had been worked upon by superstition, till they believed as
a reality, that which existed only in their own disordered imaginations.
�6
Heaven and Hell.
The believers in what is called philosophical religion, to the credit of
their better nature, reject the brimstone part of the Bible, but cling to the
fascinating hope of an abode after death of everlasting bliss. But they
occupy a wholly illogical position. They have no more reason for
believing in the existence of the one place than in the other, as both rest on
precisely the same foundation—that of belief anti. not knowledge. They
say that the Heaven of the Bible is real, but that, the Hell is figurative,
and that the suffering will be only spiritual, and not material. But it
is in vain to say that men in Hell will suffer all the torments promised to
the damned, in the spirit, and not in the flesh. This is absurd. Besides,
the Bible, with its usual disregard of probabilities or possibilities, says that
in the regions of the damned will be heard weeping, and wailing, and
gnashing of teeth. These are material operations, and who knows what
are phantom grinders, spiritual molars, or immaterial jaws ?
There are some sects of Christians who reject the brimstone Hell as a
fiction, but they scarcely go so far as to say that all mankind will go to
Heaven. They firmly believe that man is immortal, therefore he must go
somewhere after he leaves this earth. Wherever it may be, it must be a
region inhabited by the choicest spirits the world has produced. By
painters, poets, sculptors, orators, statesmen, warriors, authors, reformers,
philanthropists, beautiful and gifted women, and innocent children, who
died without the redeeming blessing of Baptism. Every man, woman, and
child, without exception, born before the Christian era, must be in this
glorious land. They had no Christ crucified to take them to the Heaven
of St. John, inhabited by angels and beasts. In this new world (assum
ing that men live after death), may be expected to be met with, all the
most grave and gifted personages of antiquity — Aristotle, Socrates,
Plato, Demosthenes, Pythagoras, Epictetus, Seneca, Pliny, Herodotus,
Thucydides, Polybius, Livy, Suetonius, Tacitus, Plutarch, Anaxagoras,
Ptolemy, Cicero, Homer, Pindar, Euripides, Sophocles, Ovid, and
Horace, all assembled in one grand philosophic academy. And what a
glorious phalanx of earth’s mightiest intellects and greatest benefactors
have been sent thither since their day! And only think that of all those
who are alive now, and who adorn the age in which we live, how few will
find their way into the heaven of Revelation. St. John and his beasts
will have none but the saints, the hypocrites, the miserable sinners, the
priests, the criminals, both on the throne and in the hovel. They will
reject John Stuart Mill, and accept Richard Weaver; shut the door in the
face of Bishop Colenso, but open it wide for Wright the converted thief;
receive Louis Napoleon with a flourish of trumpets, but hurl anathemas at
Garibaldi; welcome the Pope with incense, but threaten with brimstone
and fire the noble Joseph Mazzini.
Who, with human sympathies and affections, would like to go to a place
where the nearest and dearest ties are broken? Where the husband is
separated from the wife, the parent from the child, the brother from the
sister ? And not only separated, but where you will know that those you
loved are writhing in agony unutterable. It is a doctrine which requires a
fiend or a saint to believe it. We are told that a certain king of the
Frisons, named Redbord, when on the very point of being baptised, took
it into his head to ask the Bishop, who was preparing to perform the cere
mony, whether in the paradise which had been promised him in conse
quence of his changing his religion, he should find his ancestors and pre
decessors. The Bishop having told him, that as they had all died Pagans,
they could enjoy no portion of the heavenly inheritance, but were all in
Hell, “Nay, then,’’ replied the King, lifting his foot out of the font into
�Heaven and Hell.
7
■which he had already dipped it, ‘ ‘ if that be the case, take back again
your baptism and your paradise; I had much rather go to Hell, and be
there amongst a good and numerous company, with my illustrious ances
tors, and other persons of my own rank, than to your Paradise, from which
you have shut out all these brave people, and filled it up with none but
paupers, miscreants, and people of no note.”
And is not Heaven filled with miscreants, if the Christian theory be
correct ? Who is the most acceptable to Heaven ? Is it not the repentant
sinner? Have not men of the most notoriously abandoned and profligate
lives, who, when they were too ill to sin any more, expressed their sorrow
for what they had done, in the hope of being rewarded with happiness in
another world ? And have not priests in all times assured these monsters
of a sure and certain resurrection to eternal bliss ? How forcibly, how
beautifully has Thomas Moore depicted this hateful doctrine in his en
chanting poem of “ Paradise and the Peri.” A Peri in the East is sup
posed to be one of those beautiful creatures of the air who live upon per
fumes, but still is a kind of fallen angel, who mourns after Paradise—
“ And weeps to think her recreant race
Should ere have lost that glorious place.”
The Peri is represented as hovering about the entrance to heaven, and the
angel who keeps the gates hears her weeping, and taking pity on her, gives
her a chance of re-entering Paradise. The angel imagined by Moore, who
is a much more estimable person than St. Peter, speaks thus:—
“ Nymph of a fair but erring line!”
Gently he said—“ One hope is thine.
’Tis written in the Book of Fate
The Peri yet may be forgiven
Who brings to this eternal gate
The gift that is most dear to heaven!
Go, seek it, and redeem thy sin—
’Tis sweet to let the pardoned in.”
She then starts on her mission, and with a true human instinct, thinks that
the patriot who dies nobly for his country, will be a welcome guest among
the blessed. She goes to the field of carnage, where a battle for freedom
has been raging, but where might and not right has triumphed. She
catches the dying sigh of the patriot, who has fallen in his country’s
cause, and takes that to the celestial gatekeeper:—
“ ‘ Sweet,’ said the Angel, as she gave
The gift into his radiant hand,
‘ Sweet is our welcome of the Brave
Who die thus for their native Land.
But see—alas!—the crystal bar
Of Eden moves not—holier far
Than e’en this drop the boon must be
That opes the gates of Heav’n for thee!’ ”
Oh no! Heaven is no place for patriots. They are disliked there. They
have been meddling people, disturbing the reign of divinely-appointed
rulers — a thing very obnoxious to the ministers of God’s holy word.
Lazarus, as soon as he got to heaven, refused a drop of water to cool the
parching lips of Dives, showing what moral effect that place had upon him.
Now comes the orthodox climax to this tale of injustice. The Peri takes
�8
Heaven and Hell.
her last flight over the vale of Balbec.
from his horse, with a brow—
She there sees a ruffian dismount
“ Sullenly fierce—a mixture dire,
Like thunder-clouds of gloom and fire 1
,
In which the Peri’s eyes could read
Dark tales of many a ruthless deed:
The ruined maid—the shrine profaned—
Oaths broken—and the threshold stain’d
With blood of guests—there written, all,
Black as the damning drops that fall
From the denouncing Angel’s pen,
Ere mercy weeps them out again.”
This guilt-stained wretch sees a child at play, who, when the vesper calls
to prayer, begins to pray. He thought of his own childhood:
‘ * He hung his head—each nobler aim
And hope and feeling which had slept
From boyhood’s hour, that instant came
Fresh o’er him, and he wept—he wept!”
And it is with this crocodile tear that the Peri returns to the Gates of
Light, and instead of its being spurned’with^contempfifit is pronounced
the gift most dear to heaven, and she is rewarded with admission into the
Eden which is made up of such characters as this. Well might Redbord
exclaim, that such a heaven is filled with none but paupers, miscreants,
and people of no note.
This Heaven, for which Christians yearn, and for which they fight, per
secute, and murder, is a creation of the brain, appearing to each what
each desires. There is no line in the Revelation which will warrant the
belief that it is the abode of bliss some would have us believe. There is
no love, no sympathy, no warmth of affection, which can alone make life
endurable. Who would be happy in the presence of angels, who pour out
the vials of the wrath of the Lord upon all mankind? We have had too
much of this wrath from his ministers on earth, who seem never able to
exhaust the vials.
The Bible, or any other book, which teaches the doctrine of Hell tor
ments, is not, cannot be, a revelation from a God of mercy and love. It
is the crude production of an ignorant, a superstitious, a priest-ridden, and
brutal people. The Bible alone, of all books in the world, first promul
gated the monstrous, the fiendish doctrine of eternal, never-ending tor
ments prepared for all men, not one-millionth part of whom ever saw or
heard of it. This doctrine, so far from keeping men good, makes good
men bad, and brutalises all who believe in it. It distracts men’s minds
from the duties of this life, and deludes them into the belief of another
which, when looked at calmly and with reason, will be seen to contain no
element worthy of their acceptance, or capable of promoting their perma
nent happiness.
PRICE ONE PENNY.
London: Printed and Published by Austin & Co., 17, Johnson’s Court,
Fleet Street, E.C.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Heaven and hell: where situated? a search after the objects of Man's fervent hope and abiding terror
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Holyoake, Austin [1826-1874]
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 8 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Presented in Memory of Dr. Moncure D. Conway by his children, July Nineteen hundred & eight.
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Austin & Co.
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[187-?]
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CT18
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Heaven
Hell
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Christian Doctrine
Conway Tracts
Heaven
Hell
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2
Hell.
Every book has been written by man. Men existed before
the books. If books had existed before man, I might admit
there was such a thing as a sacred volume. Man never had
an idea, man will never have an idea, except those supplied
to him by his surroundings. Every idea in the world that
man has, came to him by nature. You can imagine an
animal with the hoof of a bison, with the pouch of the
kangaroo, with the wings of an eagle, with the beak of a
bird, and with the tail of the lion; and yet every point of
this monster you borrowed from nature. Every thing you
can think of, every thing you can dream of, is borrowed from
your surroundings. And there is nothing on this earth
coming from any other sphere whatever. Man has produced
every religion in the world. And why? Because each
religion bodes forth the knowledge and the belief of the
people at the time it was made, and in no book is there any
knowledge found, except that of the people who wrote it. In
no book is there found any knowledge, except that of the
time in which it was written. Barbarians have produced and
always will produce barbarian religions; barbarians have
produced and always will produce ideas in harmony with
their surroundings, and all the religions of the past were
produced by barbarians. We are making religions to-day.
That is to say, we are changing them, and the religion of to
day is not the religion of one year ago. What changed it ?
Science has done it; education and the growing heart of man
have done it. And just to the extent that we become
civilized ourselves, will we improve the religion of our fathers.
If the religion of one hundred years ago compared with the
religion of to-day is so low, what will it be in one thousand
years ? If we continue making the inroads upon orthodoxy
which we have been making during the last twenty-five
years, what will it be fifty years from to-night ? It will have
to be remonetized by that time, or else it will not be
legal tender.
In my judgment, every religion that stands by appealing to
miracles is dishonoured. Every religion in the world has
denounced every other religion as a fraud. That proves to
me that they all tell the truth—about others. Why
�BU3I
N35E>
Hell.
suppose Mr Smith should tell Mr Brown that he—Smith—
saw a corpse get out of the grave, and that when he first saw
it, it was covered with the worms of death, and that in his
presence it was re-clothed in healthy, beautiful flesh. And
then suppose Mr Brown should tell Mr Smith, “I saw the
same thing myself. I was in a graveyard once, and I saw a
dead man rise.” Suppose then that Smith should say to
Brown, “ You’re a liar,” and Brown should reply to Smith,
‘‘And you’re a liar,” what would you think? It would
simply be because Smith, never having seen it himself, didn’t
believe Brown ; and Brown, never having seen it, didn’t
believe Smith had. Now, if Smith had really seen it, and
Brown told him he had seen it too, then Smith would regard
it as a corroboration of his story, and he would regard Brown
as one of his principal witnesses. But, on the contrary, he
says, “You never saw it.” So, when a man says, “I was
upon Mount Sinai, and there I met God, and he told me,
‘ Stand aside and let me drown these people j ’ ” and another
man says to him, “ I was up upon a mountain, and there I
met the Supreme Brahma,” and Moses says, “That’s not
true,” and contends that the other man never did see Brahma,
and he contends that Moses never did see God, that is in my
judgment proof that they both speak truly.
Every religion, then, has charged every other religion with
having been an unmitigated fraud; and yet, if any man had
ever seen the miracle himself, his mind would be prepared to
believe that another man had seen the same thing. When
ever a man appeals to a miracle he tells what is not true.
Truth relies upon reason, and the undeviating course of all
the laws of nature.
Now, we have a religion—that is, some people have. I do
not pretend to have religion myself. I believe in living for
this world—that’s my doctrine—to make everybody happy
that you can. Let the future take care of itself, and if I
ever touch the shores of another world, I will be just as
ready and anxious to get into some remunerative employment
as anybody else. Now, we have in this country a religion
which men have preached for about eighteen hundred years,
and just in proportion as their belief in that religion has
B
�4
Hell.
grown great, men have grown mean and wicked ; just in
proportion as they have ceased to believe it, men have
become just and charitable. And if they believed it to-night
as they once believed it, I wouldn’t be allowed to speak in
the city of New York. It is from the coldness and infidelity
of the churches that I get my right to preach; and I say it
to their credit. Now we have a religion. What is it !
They say in the first place that all this vast universe was
created by a Deity. I don’t know whether it was or not.
They say, too, that had it not been for the first sin of Adam
there would never have been any devil in this world, and if
there had been no devil there would have been no sin, and
if there had been no sin there never would have been any
death. For my part I am glad there was death in this
world, because that gave me a chance. Somebody had to die
to give me room, and when my turn comes I’ll be willing to
let somebody else take my place. But whether there is an
other life or not, if there is any being who gave me this, I shall
thank him from the bottom of my heart, because, upon the
whole, my life has been a joy. Now they say, because of
this first sin all men were consigned to eternal hell. And
this because Adam w’as our representative. Well, I always
had an idea that my representative ought to live somewhere
about the same time as myself. I always had an idea that
I should have some voice in choosing my representative.
And if I had a voice I never should have voted for the old
gentleman called Adam. Now in order to regain man from the
frightful hell of eternity, Christ himself came to this world and
took upon himself flesh, and in order that we might know
the road to eternal salvation he gave us a book, and that
book is called the Bible, and wherever that Bible has been
read men have immediately commenced cutting each others’
throats. Wherever that Bible has been circulated, they have
invented inquisitions and instruments of torture, and have
commenced hating each other with all their hearts. But I
am told now, we are all told, that this Bible is the foundation
of civilization; I say that this Bible is the foundation of hell,
and we never shall get rid of the dogma of hell until we get
rid of the idea that it is an inspired book.
�Hell.
5
Now, what does the Bible teach? I am not going to talk
about what this minister or that minister says it teaches; the
question is, “ Ought a man to be sent to eternal hell for not
believing this Bible to be the work of a merciful Father ? ”
and the only way to find out is to read it; and as very few
people do read it now, I will read a few passages. This is
the book to be read in the schools, in order to make our
children charitable and good ; this is the book that we must
read in order that our children may have ideas of mercy,
charity, and justice.
Does the Bible teach mercy ? Now be honest. I read :
“ I will make mine arrows drunk with blood ; and my sword
shall devour flesh.” (Deut. xxxii. 42.) Pretty good start
for a merciful God ! “ That thy foot may be dipped in the
blood of thine enemies, and the tongue of thy dogs in the
same.” (Ps. lxviii. 23.) Again : “And the Lord thy God
will put out those nations before thee by little and little ;
thou mayest not consume them at once, lest the beasts of the
field increase upon thee.” (Deut. vii. 23.)
Pead the glorious exploits of Joshua, chosen captain of the
Lord, and note how, having coveted the fertile land of Goshen,
he smote the people, houghed their horses, despoiled their
cities, and put all that breathed to the edge of the sword, as the
moral God had commanded. Moreover, he came against them
suddenly, not a solitary trumpet blast from the celestial
orchestra was there calling upon the people to yield, or to move
out of their country, bag and baggage. No ; instantaneous
fire and butchery. Observe, too, the charming naivete of the
statement: “ There was not a city that made peace with the
children of Israel, save the Hivites.” Why ? Because the
Lord “ hardened their hearts, that they should come against
Israel in battle that he might destroy them utterly.”
Do you wish further examples of a God of mercy ? Read
in Exodus how the Lord ordered the harrying of cities and
the wholesale slaughter of the inhabitants. “Thou shalt
save alive nothing that breatheth; but thou shalt utterly
destroy them.” The old men and the maidens, and the
sweet-dimpled babe smiling upon the lap of his mother.
Recollect, these instructions were given to an army of ir.-
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Hell.
vasion, and the people who were fighting were guilty of the
crime of fighting for their homes. The Old Testament is full
of curses, vengeance, jealousy, and hatred ; of barbarity and
brutality. Now, do not for one moment believe that these
words were written by the most merciful God. Don’t pluck
from the heart the sweet flowers of piety and crush them by
superstition. Do not believe that God ever ordered the
murder of innocent women and helpless babes. Do not let
this supposition turn your hearts into stone. When any
thing is said to have been written by the most merciful God,
and the thing is not merciful, then I deny it, and say he
never wrote it. I will live by the standard of reason, and if
thinking in accordance with reason takes me to perdition,
then I will go to hell with my reason rather than to heaven
without it.
Now, does this Bible teach political freedom, or does it
teach political tyranny 1 Does it teach a man to resist op
pression ? Does it teach a man to tear from the throne of
tyranny the crowned thing and robber called a king ? Let
us see. “Let every soul be subject to the higher powers;
for there is no power but of God : the powers that be are
ordained of God.” (Rom. xiii. 1.) All the kings, and
princes, and governors, and thieves, and robbers that hap
pened to be in authority were placed there by the infinite
father of all! “ Whosoever resisteth the power resisteth the
ordinance of God.” And when George Washington resisted
the power of George the Third, he resisted the power of God.
And when our fathers said “ resistance to tyrants is obedience
to God,” they falsified the Bible itself. “ For he is the
minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which
is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain; for
he is the minister of God, revenger to execute wrath upon
■ him that doeth evil. Wherefore ye must needs be subject
not only for wrath, but also for conscience’s sake.” (Rom.
xiii. 4, 5.)
I deny this wretched doctrine. Wherever the sword of re
bellion is drawn to protect the rights of man, I am a rebel.
Wherever the sword of rebellion is drawn to give man
liberty, to clothe him in all his just rights, I am on the side
�HeJ.
7
/
of that rebellion. I deny that rulers are crowned by the
Most High; the rulers are the people, and the presidents
and others are but the servants of the people. All authority
comes from the people, and not from the aristocracy of the
air. Upon these texts of Scripture which I have just read
rest the thrones of Europe, and these are the voices that
are. repeated from age to age by brainless and heartless
kings.
Does the Bible give woman her rights ? Is this Bible
humane ? Does it treat woman as she ought to be treated, or
is it barbarian ? Let us see. “Let women learn in silence
with all subjection.” (1 Timothy ii. 11.) If a woman would
know anything let her ask her husband. Imagine the
ignorance of a lady who had only that source of information.
“ But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority
over the man, but to be in silence.” Observe the magnificent
reason. “ For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam
was not deceived, but the woman being deceived, was in the
transgression.” Splendid ! “ But I would have you know
that the head of every man is Christ ; and the head of the
woman is the man ; and the head of Christ is God.” That is
to say, there is as much difference between the woman and
man as there is between Christ and man. There is the
liberty of woman. “ For the man is not of the woman, but
the woman is of the man. Neither was the man created for
the woman.” Well, what was he created for? “But the
woman was created for the man. Wives, submit yourselves
unto your husbands, as unto the Lord.” There’s liberty !
“For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is
the head of the church ; and he is the saviour of the body.
Therefore, as the church is subject unto Christ so let the
wives be to their own husbands in every thing.” Even the
Saviour didn’t put man and woman upon any equality. The
man could divorce the wife, but the wife could not divorce
the husband, and according to the Old Testament, the mother
had to ask forgiveness for being the mother of babes.
Here is something from the Old Testament: “ When
thou goest forth to war against thine enemies, and the Lord
thy God hath delivered them into thine hands, and thou hast
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Hell.
taken them captive. And seest among the captives a beauti
ful woman, and hast a desire unto her, that thou wouldst
have her to thy wife. Then thou shalt bring her home to
thine house; and she shall shave her head, and pare her
nails.” (Deut. xxi. 10, 11, 12.) That is in self-defence, I
suppose!
This sacred book, this foundation of human liberty, of
morality, does it teach concubinage and polygamy ? Read the
thirty-first chapter of Numbers, read the twenty-first chap
ter of Deuteronomy, read the blessed lives of Abraham, of
David, or of Solomon, and then tell me that the sacred scrip
ture does not teach polygamy and concubinage? All the
language of the world is not sufficient to express the infamy
of polygamy ; it makes man a beast and woman a stone. It
destroys the fireside and makes virtue an outcast. And yet
it is the doctrine of the Bible. The doctrine defended by
Luther and Melancthon ! It takes from our language those
sweetest words—father, husband, wife, and mother, and takes
us back to barbarism and fills our hearts with the crawling,
slimy serpents of loathsome lust.
Does the Bible teach the existence of devils ? Of course
it does. Yes, it teaches not only the existence of a good
Being, but a bad being. This good Being had to have a
home; that home was heaven. This bad being had to have
a home; and that home was hell. This hell is supposed to
be nearer to earth than I would care to have it, and to be
peopled with spirits, hobgoblins, and all the fiery shapes with
which the imagination of ignorance and fear could people
that horrible place ; and the Bible teaches the existence of
hell and this big devil and all those little devils. The Bible
teaches the doctrine of witchcraft, and makes us believe that
there are sorcerers and witches, and that the dead could be
raised by the power of sorcery. Read the account of the
spiritual seance at which Saul and the Witch of Endor as
sisted, and which resulted in the calling up of Samuel. Does
any one believe that now ?
In another place it is declared that witchcraft is an
abomination unto the Lord. He wanted no rivals in this
business. Now what does the New Testament teach? Turn
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9
to the story of Jesus being led into the wilderness for the
devil to experiment upon him. He was starved forty days
and nights, and then asked to work a miracle ! After that
the devil placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, and
asked him to cast himself down to prove that he was the Son
of God. Is it possible that any one can believe that the
devil absolutely took God Almighty, and put him on the
pinnacle of the temple, and endeavoured to persuade him to
jump down? “Again the devil taketh him into an exceeding
high mountain, and showeth him all the kingdoms of the
world, and the glory of them ; and saith unto him, All these
things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship
me. Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan, for
it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him
only shalt thou serve/’ (Matt. iv. 8-11.) Now, the devil
must have known at that time that he was God, and God at
that time must have known that the other was the devil.
How could the latter be conceived to have the impudence to
promise God a world in which he did not have a tax-title to
an inch of land.
Then there is that pig story. When the “ boss ” devil had
left Jesus and angels had ministered unto him and he had taken
a short sea voyage, there came out to meet him a man possessed
of a number of minor devils, a man whom no one could tame,
nor bind, no not with chains, and who dwelt among the
tombs. A nice quiet citizen truly ! And after some parley
the devils beseech Jesus, saying:—“Send us into the swine
that we may enter into them. And forthwith Jesus gave
them leave. And the unclean spirits went out, and entered
into the swine; and the herd ran violently down a steep
place into the sea (there were about two thousand) and were
choked in the sea.” No doubt a good riddance; but what
the owner of the swine thought of the transaction, or whether
he was indemnified for the loss of his porkers, deponent can
not say. Are we reasonable men in the nineteenth century
in the United States of America and believe this ? I deny
it. These fables of devils have covered the world with
blood; they have filled the world with fear, and I am going
to do what I can to free the world of these insatiate monsters.
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Hell.
Small and great they have filled the world with spectres,
they have made the world a synonym of liar and ferocity.
And it is this book that ought to be read in all the schools
—this book that teaches man to enslave his brother. If it
is larceny to steal the result of labour, how much more is it
larceny to steal the labourer himself? “Moreover, of the
children of the strangers that do so sojourn among you, of
them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you,
which they begat in your land; and they shall be your
possession. And ye shall take them as an inheritance for
your children after you, to inherit them for a possession;
they shall be your bondmen for ever; but over your brethren
the children of Israel, ye shall not rule one over another with
rigour.” (Lev. xv. 45, 46). Why ? Because they are not
as good as you will buy of the heathen roundabout.
These are edifying texts. Consult also Exod. xxi. 1, where
you will find a complete slave code. No detail is wanting.
Under certain conditions the master is to bring his servants
to the judges, then he is to lug him to the doorpost and bore
his ear through with an awl—“And he shall serve him for
ever.” This is the doctrine which has ever lent itself to the
chains of slavery, and makes a man imprison himself rather
than desert wife and children. I hate it!
What does this same book with its glad tidings of great
joy for all people say of the rights of children? Let us see
how they are treated by the “ most merciful God.” “ If a
man hath a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey
the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that
when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them.
Then shall his father and his mother lay hold of him, and
bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate
of his place. And they shall say unto the elders of his city:
This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our
voice, he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of
his city shall stone him with stones, that he die; so shalt
thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear
and fear.” (Deut. xxi. 18.)
Abraham was commanded to offer his son Isaac as a sacri
fice, and he intended to obey. The boy was not consulted.
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Did you ever hear the story of Jepthah’s daughter? Is
there in the history of the world a sadder story than that ?
Can a God who would accept such a sacrifice he worthy of
the worship of civilized men ? I believe in the rights of
children, I plead for the republic of home, for the democracy
of the fireside, and for this I am called a heathen and a devil
by those who believe in the cheerful and comforting doctrine
of eternal damnation. Read the book of Job ! God met
the devil and asked him where he had been, and he said:
“ Walking up and down the country,” and the Lord said to
him : “ Have you noticed my man Job over here, how good
he is?” And the devil said: “Of course he’s good, you
give him everything he wants. Just take away his property
and he’ll curse you. You just try it.” And he did try it,
and took away his goods, but Job still remained good. The
devil laughed and said that he had not been tried enough.
Then the Lord touched his flesh, but he was still true. Then
he took away his children, but he remained faithful, and in
the end, to show how much Job made by this fidelity, his
property was all doubled, and he had more children than
ever. If you have a child, and you love it, would you be
satisfied with a God who would destroy it, and endeavour to
make it up by giving you another that was better looking ?
No, you want that one; you want no other, and yet this is
the idea of the love of children taught in the Bible.
Does the Bible teach you freedom of religion ? To-day we
say that every man has a right to worship God or not, to
worship him as he pleases. Is it the doctrine of the Bible ?
Read Deut. xii. 6. If a brother, or son, or daughter, or wife
proposes to serve any god but your own, or that of your
fathers, thou shalt not pity, nor spare, nor conceal. “ Thou
shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be the first upon him
to put him to death, and thou shalt stone him with stones
that be die.”
And do you know, according to that, if you had lived in
Palestine, and your wife that you love as your own soul had
said to you, “ Let us worship the sun whose golden beams
clothe the world in glory; let us bow to that great luminary;
I love the sun because it gave me your face ; because it gave
�I 2
Hell.
me the features of my babe ; let us worship the sun ; ” it was
then your duty to lay your hands upon her, your eye must
not pity her, but it was your duty to cast the first stone
against that tender and loving breast! I hate such doctrine!
I hate such books ! I hate gods that will write such books !
I tell you that it is infamous ! That is the religious liberty
of the Bible. And this God taught that doctrine to the
Jews, and said to them, “Any one that teaches a different
religion, kill him ! ”
Now, let me ask, and I want to do it reverently: If, as is
contended, God gave these frightful laws to the Jews, and
afterwards this same God took upon himself flesh, and came
among the Jews, and taught a different religion, and these
Jews, in accordance with the laws which this same God gave
them, crucified him, did he not reap what he had sown 1
The mercy of all this conies in what is called “ the plan of
salvation.’’ What is that plan 1 According to this great
plan, the innocent suffer for the guilty to satisfy a law.
What sort of a law must it be that would be satisfied with
the suffering of innocence ? According to this plan, the sal
vation of the whole world depends upon the bigotry of the
Jews and the treachery of Judas. According to the same
plan, there would have been no death in the world if there
had been no sin, and if there had been no death you and
I would not have been called into existence, and if we
did not exist we could not have been saved, so we owe our
salvation to the bigotry of the Jews and the treachery of
Judas, and we are indebted to the devil for our existence. I
speak this reverently. It strikes me that what they call the
atonement is a kind of moral bankruptcy. Under its merci
ful provisions man is allowed the privilege of sinning credit,
and whenever he is guilty of a mean action, he says, “ Charge
it.” In my judgment, this kind of bookkeeping breeds ex
travagance in sin.
Suppose we had a law in New York that every merchant
should give credit to every man who asked.it, under pain and
penitentiary, and that every man should take the benefit of
the bankruptcy statute any Saturday night. Doesn’t the
credit system in morals breed extravagance in sin 1 That’s
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the question. Who’s afraid of punishment which i3 so far
away 1 Whom does the doctrine of hell stop 1 The great,
the rich, the powerful1? No; the poor, the weak, the de
spised, the mean. Did you ever hear of a man going to hell
who died in New York worth a million of dollars, or with an
income of twenty-five thousand a year 1 Did you ever hear
of a man going to hell who rode in a carriage? Never. They
are the gentlemen who talk about their assets, and who say,
“ Hell is not for me ; it is for the poor. I have all the
luxuries I want, give that to the pdbr.” Who go to hell ?
Tramps !
Let me tell you a story. There was once a frightful rain,
and all the animals held a convention, to see whose fault it
was, and the fox nominated the lion for chairman. The wolf
seconded the motion, and the hyena said that suits. When
the convention was called to order, the fox was called upon
to confess his sins. He stated, however, that it would be
much more appropriate for the lion to commence first. There
upon the lion said : “ I am not conscious of having com
mitted evil. It is true I have devoured a few men, but for
what other purpose were men made 1” And they all cheered,
and were satisfied. The fox gave his views upon the goose
question, and the wolf admitted that he had devoured sheep,
and occasionally had killed a shepherd, but “all acquainted
with the history of my family will bear me out when I say
that shepherds have been the enemies of my family from the
beginning of the world.” Then away in the rear there arose
a simple donkey, with a kind of Abrahamic countenance. He
said, “ I expect it’s me, I had eaten nothing for three days
except three thistles. I was passing a monastery; the monks
were at mass. The gates were open leading to a yard full of
sweet clover. 1 knew it was wrong, but I did slip in and I
took a mouthful, but my conscience smote me, and I went
out.” And all the animals shouted, “ He’s tne fellow ! ” and
in two minutes they had his hide on the fence. That’s the
kind of people that go to hell.
Now, this doctrine of hell, that has been such a comfort to
my race, which so many ministers are pleading for, has been
defended for ages by the fathers of the church, Your
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Hell.
preacher says that the sovereignty of God implies that he has
an absolute, unlimited, and independent right to dispose of
his creatures as he will, because he made them. Has he ?
Suppose I take this book and change it immediately into a
servient human being. Would I have a right to torture it
because I made it ? No; on the contrary. I would say,
having brought you into existence, it is my duty to do the
best for you I can. They say God has a right to damn me
because he made me. I deny it.
Another one says, God is not obliged to save even those
who believe in Christ, and that he can either bestow salvation
upon his children or retain it without any diminution of his
glory. Another one says, God may save any sinner whatso
ever, consistently with his justice. Let a natural person—
and I claim to be one—moral or immoral, wise or unwise, let
him be as just as he can, no matter what his prayers may be,
what pains he may have taken to be saved, or whatever cir
cumstances he may be in, God, according to this writer, can
deny him salvation, without the least disparagement of his
glory. His glories will not be in the least obscured ; there is
no natural man, be his character what it may, but God may
cast down to hell without being charged with unfair dealing
in any respect with regard to that man. Theologians tell us
that God’s design in the creation was simply to glorify him
self. Magnificent object! “The same shall drink of the
wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mix
ture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tor
mented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy
angels, and in the presence of the Lamb.” (Rev. i. 10.)
Do you know nobody would have had an idea of hell in
this world if it hadn’t been for volcanoes 1 They were looked
upon as the chimneys of hell. The idea of eternal fire never
would have polluted the imagination of man but for them.
An eminent theologian, describing hell, says, “ There is no
recounting up the million of ages the damned shall suffer.
All arithmetic ends here ”—and all sense, too ! “ They shall
have nothing to do in passing away this eternity but to con
flict with torments. God shall have no other use or employ
ment for them.” These words were said by gentlemen who
�Hell.
15
died Christians, and who are now in the harp business in the
world to come. Another declares there is nothing to keep
any man or Christian out of hell except the mere pleasure of
God, and their pains never grow any easier by their becoming
accustomed to them. It is also declared that the devil goes
about like a lion, ready to doom the wicked. Did it never
occur to you what a contradiction it is to say that the devil
will persecute his own friends ? He wants all the recruits he
can get; why then should he persecute his friends ? In my
judgment he should give them the best hell affords.
It is in the very nature of things that torments inflicted
have no tendency to bring a wicked man to repentance. Then
why torment him if it will not do him good ? It is simply
unadulterated revenge. All the punishment in the world
will not reform a man, unless he knows that he who inflicts
it upon him does it for the sake of reformation, and really
and truly loves him, and has his good at heart. Punishment
inflicted for gratifying the appetite makes man afraid, but
debases him. Various reasons are given for punishing the
wicked; first, that God will vindicate his injured majesty.
Well, I am glad of that! Second, He will glorify his justice
—think of that. Third, He will show and glorify his grace.
Every time the saved shall look upon the damned in hell it
will cause in them a lively and admiring sense of the grace
of God. Every look upon the damned will double the ardour
and the joy of the saints in heaven. Can the believing
husband in heaven look down upon the torments of the un
believing wife in hell and then feel a thrill of joy ? That's
the old doctrine—that if you saw your wife in hell—the wife
you love, who, in your last sickness, nursed you, that perhaps
supported you by her needle when you were ill; the wife who
watched by your couch night and day, and held your corpse
in her loving arms when you were dead—the sight would
give you great joy. That doctrine is not preached to-day.
They do not preach that the sight would give you joy; but
they do preach that it will not diminish your happiness.
That is the doctrine of every orthodox minister in New York,
and I repeat that I have no respect for men who preach such
doctrines. The sight of the torments of the damned in hell
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Hell.
will increase the ecstasy of the saints for ever! On this
principle a man never enjoys a good dinner so much as when
a fellow-creature is dying of famine before his eyes, or he
never enjoys the cheerful warmth of his own fireside so greatly
as when a poor and abandoned wretch is dying on his door
step. The saints enjoy the ecstasy, and the groans of the
tormented are music to them !
An old saint believed that hell was in the interior of the
earth, and that the rotation of the earth was caused by the
souls trying to get away from the fire. The old church at
Stratford-on-Avon, Shakespeare’s home, is adorned with pic
tures of hell and the like. One of the pictures represents
resurrection-morning. People are getting out of their graves,
and devils are catching hold of their heels. In one place there
is a huge brass monster, and devils are’driving scores of lost
souls into his mouth. Over hot fires hang caldrons with fifty
or sixty people in each, and devils are poking the fires.
People are hung up on hooks by their tongues, and devils
are lashing them. Up in the right-hand corner are some of
the saved, with grins on their faces stretching from ear to ear.
They seem to say, “ Aha, what did I tell you ? ”
Some of the old saints—gentlemen who died in the odour
of sanctity, and are now in glory—insisted that heaven and
hell would be plainly in view of each other. Only a few
years ago, Rev. J. Furness (an appropriate name) published
a little pamphlet called “A Sight in Hell.” I remember
when I first read that. My little child, seven years old, was
ill and in bed. I thought she would not hear me, and I read
some of it aloud. She arose and asked, “ Who says that ? ” I
answered, “ That’s what they preach in some of the churches.”
“ I never will enter a church as long as I live! ” she said,
and she never has.
The doctrine of orthodox Christianity is that the damned
shall suffer torment for ever and for ever. And if you were
a wanderer, footsore, weary, with parched tongue, dying for
a drop of water, and you met one who divided his poor portion
with you, and died as he saw you reviving—if he was an un
believer and you a believer, and you died and went to heaven,
and he called to you from hell for a draught of "water, it would
be your duty to laugh at him.
�Hell.
*7
Rev. Mr Spurgeon says that everywhere in hell will be
written the words “ for ever.” They will be branded on every
wave of flame, they will he forged in every link of every
chain, they will be seen in every lurid flash of brimstone—
everywhere will be those words “ for ever.” Everybody will
be yelling and screaming them. Just think of that picture
of the mercy and justice of the eternal Father of us all. If
these words are necessary why are they not written now every
where in the world, on every tree, and every field, and on
every blade of grass 1 I say I am entitled to have it so. I
say that it is God’s duty to furnish me with the evidence.
In old times they had to find a place for hell, and they
found a hundred places for it. One says that it was under
Lake Avernus, but the Christians thought differently. One
divine tells us that it must be below the earth because Christ
descended into hell. Another gives it as his opinion that hell
is in the sun, and he tells us that nobody, without an express
revelation from God, can prove that it is not there. Most
likely. Well, he had the idea at all events of utilizing the
damned as fuel to warm the earth. Another divine preached
a sermon no further back than 1876, in which he said that
the damned will grow worse, and the same divine says that
the devil was the first Universalist. Then I am on the side
of the devil.
The fact is, that you have got not merely to believe the
Bible, but you must also believe in a certain interpretation
of it; and, mind you, you must also believe in the doctrine
of the Trinity. If you don’t understand it, it is your own
fault. You must believe in it all the same. If you do not,
all the orthodox churches agree in condemning you to ever
lasting flames. We have got to burn through all our lives
simply with the view of making them happy. We are
taught to love our enemies, to pray for those that persecute
us, to forgive. Should not the merciful God practise what
he preaches 1 I say that reverently. Why should he say
“ Forgive your enemies ” if he will not himself forgive 1
Why should he say “Pray for those that despise and perse
cute you, but if they refuse to believe my doctrine I will
burn them for ever ”1 I cannot believe it. Here is a little
�i8
Hell.
child, residing in the purlieus of the city—some little boy
who is taught that it is his duty to steal by his mother, who
applauds his success, and pats him on the head and calls
him a good boy—would it be just to condemn him to an
eternity of torture ? Suppose there is a God; let us bring
to this question some common sense.
I care nothing about the doctrines or religions or creeds of
the past. Let us come to the bar of the nineteenth century
and judge the matter by what we know, by what we think,
by what we love. But they say to us, “ If you throw away
the Bible what are we to depend on then ? ” But no two
persons in the world agree as to what the Bible is, what they
are to believe, or what they are not to believe. It is like a
guide-post that has been thrown down in some time of
disaster, and has been put up the wrong way. Nobody can
accept its guidance, for nobody knows where it would direct
him. I say “ Tear down the useless guide-post,” but they
answer, “ Oh, do not do that or we will have nothing to go
by.” I would say, “ Old Church, you take that road, and I
will take this.” Another minister has said that the Bible is
the great town-clock, at which we all may set our watches.
But I have said to a friend of that minister, “ Suppose we
all should set our watches by that town-clock, there would
be many persons to tell you that in old times the long hand
was the hour hand, and besides, the clock hasn’t been wound
up for a long time.” I say, let us wait till the sun rises and
set our watches by nature. For my part, I am willing to
give up heaven to get rid of hell. I had rather there
should be no heaven than that any solitary soul should be
condemned to suffer for ever and ever. But they tell me that
the Bible is the book of hope. Now, in the Old Testament
there is not, in my judgment, a single reference to another
life. Is there a burial service mentioned in it in which a
word of hope is spoken at the grave of the dead ? The idea
of eternal life was not born of any book. That wave of hope
and joy ebbs and flows, and will continue to ebb and flow as
long as love kisses the lips of death.
Let me tell you a tale of the Persian religion—of a man
who, having done good for long years of his life, presented
�Hell.
*9
himself at the gates of Paradise hut the gates remained closed
against him. He went back and followed up his good works
for seven years longer, and the gates of Paradise still re
maining shut against him, he toiled in works of charity until
at last they were opened unto him. Think of that, and send
out your missionaries among those people. There is no
religion but goodness, but justice, but charity. Religion is
not theory—it is life. It is not intellectual conviction—it is
divine humanity, and nothing else. There is another tale
from the Hindoo of a man who refused to enter Paradise
■without a faithful dog, urging that ingratitude was the
blackest of all sins. “And the god,” he said, “admitted
him, dog and all.” Compare that religion with the orthodox
tenets of the city of New York.
There is a prayer which every Brahmin prays, in which
he declares that he will never enter into a final state of bliss
alone, but that everywhere he will strive for universal re
demption ; that never will he leave the world of sin and
sorrow, but remain suffering and striving and sorrowing
after universal salvation. Compare that with the orthodox
idea, and send out your missionaries to the benighted
Hindoos.
The doctrine of hell is infamous beyond all power to de
scribe. I wish there were words mean enough to express
my feelings of loathing on this subject. What harm has it
not done ? What waste places has it not made 1 It has
planted misery and wretchedness in this world; it fills the
future with selfish joys and lurid abysses of eternal flame.
But we are getting more sense every day. We begin to
despise those monstrous doctrines. If you want to better
men and women change their conditions here. Don’t pro
mise them something somewhere else. One biscuit will do
more good than all the tracts that were ever peddled in the
world. Give them more whitewash, more light, more air.
You have to change men physically before you change them
intellectually. I believe the time will come when every
criminal will be treated as we now treat the diseased and sick,
when every penitentiary will become a reformatory; and
that if criminals go to them with hatred in their bosoms,
�20
Hell.
they will leave them without feelings of revenge. Let me
tell you the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. Eurydice had
been carried away by the god of hell, and Orpheus, her
lover, went in quest of her. He took with him his lyre, and
played such exquisite music that all hell was amazed. Ixion
forgot his labours at the wheel, the daughters of Danaus
ceased from their hopeless task, Tantalus forgot his thirst, even
Pluto smiled, and, for the first time in the history of hell,
the eyes of the Furies were wet with tears. As it was with
the lyre of Orpheus, so it is to-day with the great harmonies
of science, which are rescuing from the prisons of superstition
the torn and bleeding heart of man.
��
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Victorian Blogging
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An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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Hell
Creator
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Ingersoll, Robert Green [1833-1899]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 20 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Lacks title page. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
Publisher
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[Freethought Publishing Company]
Date
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[n.d.]
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N355
Subject
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Hell
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Hell), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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English
Hell
NSS
-
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b0cf99995448c6a975202f298aefb7c1
PDF Text
Text
HELL.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
11 THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD, UPPER NORWOOD
LONDON, S.E.
Price Threepence.
�LONDON :
PRINTED BY C. W. BEYNELL, LITTLE PULTENEY STREET,
HAYMARKET, V.
�305.
INTRODUCTION.
“ Dieu condamne aux enfers la plupart des
hommes.
“ L’enfer est bon et aimable comme une partie
très-considérable du palais de Dieu. Il venge
tous les mépris et toutes les injures de Dieu, ’en
quoi il lui rend un très-grand service qui fait que
quiconque aime Dieu sincèrement doit aussi
aimer l’enfer sous, ce point de vue.”—Théologie
Affective, Bail.
The work from which the above extract is
taken is long and interesting.
Founded upon the teaching of S. Thomas
Aquinas, it imparts, in five closely-printed
volumes, a considerable amount of information,
conveyed in lucid and forcible language, of which
the above quotation is a favourable specimen.
Bail thinks Hell good and amiable. Those who
love God sincerely ought, in his opinion, to love
Hell too, because in that large portion of God’s
palace he is avenged of his adversaries.
Some people may envy Bail the inward and
spiritual light which enabled him to discern the
beauty of damnation. Others may drift away
�4
Introduction.
from Hell to Calvary, and wonder of what use
the Atonement was, if, as Bail assures us, God
condemns the greater part of mankind to Hell,
and places himself under an obligation to the
Devil. But one and all may like to know where
Hell is and what sort of an existence its inmates
lead.
Availing ourselves, therefore, of the informa
tion afforded us by a contemporary writer, who
views Hell from a very practical point of view,
we will take a brief survey of the place which
“ Eternal justice had prepared for those rebel
lious.”
�HELL.
N inexpensive but unusually comprehensive
little work has long been before the public, but
has not hitherto received the attention it deserve®,
though a striking quotation from it has found its
way into Lecky’s interesting pages.
A
The book costs only a penny, and may be bought
of Duffy in the Row, or of any other Roman Catholic
bookseller. It is drawn up for the use of Roman
Catholic children, but it cannot fail to interest and
edify adults of all denominations. It is written by
the Rev. Father Furniss—a name in curious harmony
with its title, ‘ The Sight of Hell.’ Published like all
Roman Catholic works permissu superiorum, it has
the sanction and probably the approval of Cardinal
Manning. It is a work of considerable merit, the
result not merely of minute research, but of deep
conviction, and it needs but a few good illustrations
by the hand of some God-fearing artist to take its
rank as the best Guide to Hell before the public.
Swedenborg has written at greater length upon the
fertile theme, but his work is too mystic for the
general reader ; that of Father Furniss is adapted to
every capacity—it is a simple and soul-stirring pro
duction. There is only one point about which the
writer seems in any uncertainty, and that is the
exact locality of Hell; however, he thinks it likely
to be 4‘ in the middle of the earth just four thousand
miles off.” Bail, on the contrary, seems to consider
�6
Hell.
it a part of Heaven, and S. John, in the unintelligible
work attributed to him, favours the supposition by
telling us that the smoke of Hell penetrates into the
region of bliss, an arrangement quite irreconcilable
with mundane notions of comfort.
All Christians are supposed to know—and all
Roman Catholic children are very distinctly taught,
that Hell was created for Lucifer the Seraph, and
about a third of the inhabitants of Heaven, who, for
one sin of thought, and without one minute’s time
for repentance, were suddenly thrust into the new
wing of what Bail is not afraid to call “ God’s
palace,” and which Father Furniss has described in
such glowing language. He tells us that “ millions on
millions” are in Hell, and that so long ago as the
time of S. Teresa, it was inconveniently crowded, for,
during the visit of that great Saint to those great
sinners, she found it “ impossible to sit or lie down,
for there was no room.” From each inmate is
emitted an odour of such a nature that if but one
body were removed and placed among us, “ in that
same moment every living creature on the earth
would die,” and Father Furniss is of opinion that
the bad smell is increasing. An incessant and
appalling noise prevails there; the poor prisoners
“ hiss, howl, wail, shriek, groan, and yell; ” but there
is a worse still, for above all you hear “ the roaring
of the thunders of God’s angerof course a good
and an amiable anger by no means at variance with
“ His tender mercies which are over all His works,”
and of which the eternal torture of the damned is an
eloquent proof.
How long the angelic host had undisturbed pos
session of Hell we are not informed. Countless ages
may have elapsed ere the monotony was broken by
the entrance of the first ill-fated human being whose
�Hell,
7
name and crime are nowhere recorded. In the
celebrated ‘ Catéchisme de Persévérance,’ the Church
teaches that, with the exception of beauty, “les
mauvais anges n’ont rien perdu de leurs dons
naturels,” we may therefore venture to assume that
until the mundane multitude began to pour in daily,
the social condition of Hell was endurable ; for
Lucifer was one of the highest order of angels, called
Seraphim, when that horrible thought was put into
his angelic mind and caused the instantaneous damna
tion of a third of Heaven. Who put the sinful thought
into the seraphic mind has never transpired.
At that time Lucifer was handsome—now he is
hideous. S. Francis saw him. He was sitting upon
a great beam which passes right through Hell. He
is so tall that his hands can be chained to the roof
and his feet to the floor. Horns smoking like
ehimnies come out of his head. His breath is foetid
and fiery. His eyes are full of pride, anger, rage,
spite, blood, fire, and cruelty. Who made him so ?
This.is the description given of the Devil by a great
Saint.
People have become so familiar with the word
Devil, that one would suppose it occurred very
frequently in the Bible; however, it is not to be
found at all in the Old Testament. As synonymous
with idols we see it four times in the plural number,
but of Satan we hear nothing until we come to the
book of Chronicles. Brought forward by theologians
of all persuasions,’ with what some might consider
unnecessary and injudicious prominence, we are some
times forced to consider him and his melancholy
mission, especially when such a book as the one we
are engaged upon falls into our hands.
Animated, doubtless by an excellent motive, Father
�Hell,
Furaiss has produced a work of questionable utility,
more calculated, some might think, to promote con
vulsions than conversion. We will give two ex
tracts.
The children alluded to, have been previously
cursed in the following words, taken from ‘The
Terrible Judgment,’ by the same author :—
“ The curse of God the Father Almighty is upon
you ; I am God the Son, my curse is upon you ; the
curse of the Holy Ghost who sanctified you is upon
you ; the curse of every creature is upon you.”
“ THE RED-HOT OVEN.
“ ‘ Thou shalt make him as an oven of fire in the
time of thy anger ’—Psalm xx. You are going to
see again the child about which you read in the
‘ Terrible J udgment ’ that it was condemned to
Hell! See ! it is a pitiful sight. The little child is
in this red-hot oven. Hear how it screams to come
out. See how it turns and twists itself about in the
fire. It beats its head against the roof of the oven.
It stamps its little feet on the floor of the oven. You
can see on the face of this little child what you see
on the faces of all in Hell—despair, desperate and
horrible ! The same law which is for others is also
for children. If children knowingly and willingly
break God’s commandments they must be punished
like others. This child committed very bad mortal
sins knowing that Hell would be the punishment.
God was very good to this child. Very likely God
saw that this child would get worse and worse and
never repent, and so it would have to be punished
much more in Hell. So God, in his mercy, called it
out of the world in its early childhood.”
Thus ends the story of the red-hot oven which a
�Hell.
9
merciful father prepared for his little child, and into
which he thrust her because he was so fond of her !
We will give one more extract from Father
Furniss
“What are they doing?
“ Perhaps at this moment—seven o’clock in the
evening—a child is just going into Hell. To-morrow
evening at seven o’clock go and knock at the gates
of Hell and ask what the child is doing. The devils
will go and look. Then they will come back again
and say, the child is burning. Go in a week and ask
what the child is doing; you will get the same
answer, it is burning! Go in a year and ask, the
same answer comes, it is burning! Go in a million
of years and ask the same question, the answer is
just the same, it is burning/ So if you go for ever
and ever you will always get the same answer, it is
burning in the fire”
Longer and equally horrible passages might be
chosen, but enough has been quoted to show with
what wholesome and inviting food the lambs of the
Roman Catholic fold are fed, those lambs of whom
the mild Son of Man is reported to have said t—“ It
is not the will of my father that one of these little
ones should perish.”
Sincere anxiety for the salvation of souls has,
we doubt not, urged Father Furniss to condense
into a very small compass a collection of horrors
from which adults turn away with dismay, wondering
that the “ superiors ” by whose permission the infernal
little book is printed and circulated, sanction any
thing so ill-calculated to impress the golden rule
upon the infant mind and so utterly at variance
�IO
Hell.
with the injunction attributed to Jesus, “If thine
enemy hunger feed him, and if he thirst give him
drink.”
Fortunately for the interests of what is called
religion, no little children and very few adults
“ meditate upon these things.” Those who do,
neither fear the Hell nor covet the Heaven of
theology. It is the generally received opinion
among the Fathers that Adam had been created
but a few hours when Lucifer succeeded in procuring
his ignominious dismissal from Paradise; but we have
never heard how soon after his creation Lucifer
himself was exposed to the malevolent and fatal
influence of some occult agent who, like the Satan
of the book of Job, was suffered to present himself
“ before the Lord ” and to achieve the instantaneous
transformation of angels into devils.
Accustomed from our childhood to hear much
and often about the Fall of man, the depravity of
our nature, our proneness to sin, innate tendency
to evil thoughts, etc., but wholly unaccustomed to
“meditate upon these things,” we sometimes lose
sight of the still more startling and indigestible
doctrine of the Fall of the Seraphim, the imper
fection of their nature, tlieir proneness to evil
thoughts, and their consequent liability to be pre
cipitated into Hell. How are we to know that evil
thoughts are now banished from that haven of
rest where once they wrought such disastrous and
abiding consequences ? Those who are aspiring
to that “ better land,” where “ the ways are ways
of pleasantness and all the paths peace,” may
rejoice that religion and theology are not synony
mous—that it is possible to love God sincerely
without loving Hell too, and that they can train
up their children in the way they should go, with
�Hell.
ii
out having recourse to Father Furniss’s method of
salvation by fear—a method singularly at variance
with the teaching of One who is reported to have
said, “Whoso shall offend one of these little ones
which believe in me, it were better for him that a
millstone were hanged about his neck, and that
he were drowned in the depths of the sea.” How
ever, perhaps “ the end justifies the means; ” in
which case ‘ The Sight of Hell ’ will contribute ad
majorem Dei gloriam.
PRINTED BY C. W. BEYNELL, LITTLE PULTENEY STREET, HAYMARKET.
��
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Hell
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 11 p. ; 17 cm.
Notes: Published anonymously. Printed by C.W. Reynell, Little Pulteney Street, London. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Thomas Scott
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[n.d.]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
N305
Subject
The topic of the resource
Hell
Creator
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[Unknown]
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Hell), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Hell
NSS
-
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c983eb584b3872f3a21bd7165b697d42
PDF Text
Text
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
HELL:
WHERE
IS
IT?
•
BEING
A LETTER TO THE ARCHBISHOP [OF I ORE.
BY
*
SALADIN,
[reprinted
from
“the secular review.”]
London :
W. STEWART & Co., 41, FARRINGDON St., E.C.
��HELL: WHERE IS IT?
My Lord Archbishop,—May it please your Grace, you
have not yet replied to my last letter to you on Agnosti
cism ; you have only alluded to it in a letter, and in that
tried to raise a false issue in regard to it. I never ex
pected that you would answer it—nay, more, I had my
conviction from the outset as to whether you could
answer it. May I assure your Grace that it is a matter
of supreme indifference to me whether you answer it or
not ? I have met with no one who is sanguine enough
to expect that your attempted answer to it would throw a
single new ray of light upon a problem so difficult and
momentous as the one you had the temerity to interfere
with, and from which, when challenged to deal with it
fairly, you have had the timidity to run away.
According to a recent report in the Northern Echo,
your Grace abolished Heaven and Hell as localities, and
made them mere mental conditions. You and yours
allowed the report, which was no doubt correct, to pass
unchallenged. It was not till an “ Infidel ” paper com
mented on your Grace’s allegation that Heaven and
Hell were nowhere that you saw fit to take exception to
the Northern Echo report. One of your own pious
satraps pointed out to you, in Christian horror, that you
had suppressed Heaven’s fearful manag'erie of beasts,
with horns on their hips and eyes in their elbows, and
had played havoc with Hell’s everlasting teeth-gnashing,
and had cut the tail of that curious helminthological
specimen, “ the worm that never dies.”
I will give your Grace a present of your heaven ; do
what you like with it; “make a kirk and a mill of it;”
no one but a beast with eyes in his elbows cares what you
do with it. Burns and Shelley and a good many of my
�4
HELL:
WHERE IS IT?
friends, according to your doctrines, are in Hell; there
fore, Hell interests me more, and it is upon that I would
have a word with your Grace. In the letter to your
satrap, the Rev. Henry Macdougall, you do not contra
dict the Northern Echo report. You simply act as a
sort of clerical cuttlefish, and raise an obfuscation of
words by means of which you attempt to escape from a
dilemma. Your Grace knows as well as I do that, with all
except the most devoutly ignorant, Hell is now as extinct
as Hades or Nifleheim. In all the regions of inter
stellar space through which the vision of the telescope
has ranged no vestige of Hell has been discovered.
Where is Hell ? Since it is so distant that it is beyond
the range of the telescope, it matters not to us where it
is, for, even if it did exist, and we were despatched to it,
it would take us billions of years to reach it, even if we
travelled without ceasing at the rate of a cannon-ball.
Much must, necessarily, come and go in such a long
journey. Talk of “ Coelebs in search of a wife what
is that to a sinner in search of Hell ?
So much for Hell, if it is a place. If it has geographi
cal, or rather astronomical, position, which your Grace
would seem to imply by challenging the report in which
you were represented as submitting that it was only a
mental condition, I am justified in dealing with it as
if subject to the attributes of time and space. Your
Grace is fully aware that your space-Hell is an utter
absurdity, and that, even if it were not, its horrible tor
ments are so revolting to the sense of modern civilised
man that you dare not preach them for fear of bringing
down the whole Christian fabric about your ears. Piti
able is your plight. On the one hand you dare not
preach the doctrine of eternal torment, and on the other
hand you dare not repudiate it.
The cultured Christianity your Grace represents leans,
in this its decrepit old age, on the staff of quibble and
subterfuge. The most prominent doctrines of the New
Testament are ignored if they are out of harmony with
modern aesthetics. The doctrines now insisted upon
are not those upon which the Holy Ghost laid most
stress, but those which Mr. John Smith will pay to hear
discussed. John Smith has now got a step beyond Hell
�HELL :
WHERE IS IT ?
5
and so the parson finds that Hell will not pay : Mr.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon is almost the only man left
who can make money out of Hell.
And yet, though you dare not preach it, your Grace
well knows that, if there is a single unmistakable teaching
in the New Testament, it is that there is a fine, fiery,
flaming Hell. Pontifical cowardice may desert, but
pontifical ingenuity will never explain away, such
passages as Matthew v. 22, 29, 30 ; x. 28 ; xxiii. 15-33;
xi. 23; xviii. 8, 9; Mark ix. 43-47 ; Luke x. 15;
xvi. 23. The unfortunate thing for your Grace’s Church
is that Christ himself has expressed himself so unequi
vocally as regards Hell. Of course, I commiserate a
cautious and discreet man like your Grace uf>on having
such a rash and injudicious Saviour, who gives you such
incalculable trouble to tone down and explain away his
utterances, so as to adapt them to modern acceptance.
You complain of the Secularists that they are “vehement.”
No doubt you feel that Christ, too, erred grievously in
this way. He, like the Secularists, was in earnest, and,
like them, spoke with the directness that springs from
singleness of purpose and the force that is born of con
viction. Those who now pose as the ministers of this
simple-minded and single-hearted teacher live by garble
and quibble and fraud; for his teachings are exploded
and obsolete, but they are still associated with rich
emolument, and so persons in the position of your Grace
dare neither preach them nor admit that they do not.
It is unfortunate for your Grace that that inconvenient
Christ in whose name you have your
10,000 a year,
but whose doctrines you have to explain away, not only
believed in a material Hell, but placed it at no great
distance—-in fact, alarmingly too near. T^evya rov irvpos,
says Christ, in Matthew v. 22. reej/nx is the word of
his which has been translated Hell; but once or twice
he uses Hades, showing that he had not had the origi
nality to construct a Hell of his own, but had knocked
together a sort of mongrel one borrowed from Homer
and Jeremiah. Teevva. is only a corruption of y??, land
and Hinnon, the name of a person who once owned
land in a valley near Jerusalem. This Valley of Hinnon,
referred to in Jeremiah xix., and elsewhere throughout
�6
hell:
where is it?
the Old Testament, is, in Hebrew, called Gehenna,
Christian Hell, as every scholar knows. In
this Gehenna, or Valley of Hinnon, human beings were
burnt alive to Moloch and Christ’s father of the same
age as himself, Jehovah.
*
Tophet was the particular
spot in Gehenna where the furnaces were erected for
the burning of human flesh. A huge brazen God stood
in the fire to receive living human sacrifices into his
brazen arms. “They lighted a great fire within the
statue and another before it. They put upon its arms
the child they intended to sacrifice, which soon fell into
the fire at the foot of the statue, putting forth cries, as
may easily be imagined. To stifle the noise of these
cries and howlings, they made a great rattling of drums
and other instruments, that the spectators might not be
moved with compassion at the clamours of these miser
able victims.”!
That horrible Gehenna, your Grace, with a dash of
the classical Hades added, is the frame-work of the
Christian Hell, as no doubt you very well know. If it
had been said to Christ, when in Galilee, “ Go to Hell I”
and he had obeyed the mandate, he would have given
his bridle reins a shake and Henglered off to the Valley
of Gehenna, “ riding on an ass and a colt the foal of an
ass —a foot on the back of each. Your Grace can, any
day, for a few pounds, purchase one of Cook’s tourist
tickets and go to Hell, as Christ understood the term;
and perhaps the best thing you could do would be to
stay there. The children roasting on the fiery arms of
brass was your Christ’s basis for “ the fire that never
shall be quenched the worms wriggling in the stercorous
and putrid remains of flesh the fire had not consumed
were the parents of Christ’s “worm that never dies.”
■ I do not know whether Jesus ever seriously reasoned
that all the wicked of all the world were to come to be
eternally cremated in the small and obscure Valley of
Gehenna. One with the limited mental and moral vision
of a fanatical Jewish peasant could hardly be expected
to devise a Hell large enough for all the damned. He
* See Isaiah xxx. 27-33.
+ Cruden’s “ Concordance,” under Tophet.
�HELL :
WHERE IS IT ?
7
seems to have been incapable of giving a second thought
to anything. The few fishermen, mechanics, Pharisees,
and wastrels he had seen in a little obscure part of Syria
were, to him, the world. The Valley of Gehenna was
big enough for the burning of the whole of them—at least,
the few of them who might not find room to be cremated
could be provided for in his “ father’s house,” in which
there were many mansions, which, let us trust, have been
duly papered, and have had gas and water laid on.
Last time, your Grace, I wrote with forbearance and
deferential courtesy. The letter was a pertinent one. I
am an Agnostic who, week by week, drag men out of your
Church, and, according to you, send them straight to the
Hell anent which you quibble. If you value these men’s
“ immortal souls,” cannot you show them the error of my
teaching? You cannot urge that the issue involved is a
trifling one : it is one in which, according to your teach
ing, the eternal destinies of the thousands who are
deluded by me are involved. Up, your Grace, and arm
yourself with the “ sword of the spirit” and “the whole
armour of righteousness,” for to your very teeth I defy
you.
“Let,” as Milton puts it, “Truth and Error
grapple.” Why are you so reluctant to measure swords
with me, seeing that you are so sure that Truth is on your
side and Error on mine ? Pardon me for assuring your
Grace that by your conduct you show clearly enough that
you know as well as I do where the Truth lies, and
where the Error. My challenge to you to prove my
Agnosticism erroneous is at your feet, and your exalted
rank shall not stand between you and the bitterness of
my pen, which is honest and unhired. Still, I must assure
your Grace that I have as much respect for you as I have
for any august imposture and well-paid poltroonery. I
am no sycophant or flunkey, and, standing sturdily in
front of you, I refuse to recognise the line that separates
you from Norna of Fitful Head who sold prosperous
winds and the latest old crone who was sent to prison for
palmistically telling the .fortunes of a servant-girl. You,
outraging the spirit of the age, pray for rain, and that
bullets may not hit our soldiers on the battle-field. I
have more sympathy with the poor and vulgar than I
have with the rich and aristocratic thaumaturgist. You
�8
HELL :
WHERE IS IT ?
know well that to be an archbishop you must also be an
archhumbug. I am, your Grace, whatever I may be,
neither bishop nor humbug, but simply a. thoughtful
and thoroughly earnest man, whose pen gibes at
your heaven and knocks the bottom out of your
bottomless pit.
I ask you, and I want an answer—Where did
you get Hell ? Your Grace is a Protestant, and your
doctrines must necessarily find their basis in the Scrip
tures. Then, where in the Scriptures, from Genesis to
Revelation, do you find your Christian Hell ? Point
me out in the entire Scriptures, from Genesis to Revela
tion, any word which, when correctly translated, means
a place of torment for the souls of the dead. The
word
often translated Hell in the English and
Hades in the Greek version of the Old Testament,
signifies only the grave, a great depth, or a cavern or cave,
such as in which the dead were wont to be buried.
The Saxon word helion, to be concealed, from which
come hole and hollow, corresponds pretty closely to
the Hebrew shaol, or sheol. So where in Scripture
does your Grace get your Christian Hell, or your Chris
tian Heaven either, for that part of it ? Come, your
Grace; since I and those who follow my teachings are
to be burnt in it, we should, naturally enough, like to
know where you get it. We should like to be made
aware of your authority for assuring us that somebody
is to be at such expense for brimstone on our account ;
that our incisors and molars are so sound that they will
stand an everlasting gnashing ; and where you get the
vermicular swirls of the red-hot worm that never dies.
When you archbishops and your Church had the power,
you could make such a Hell upon earth, and you
made it, that your ignorant and intimidated dupes could
easily enough believe there was also another hell some
where else. But alas ! poor Prelate, you have fallen
upon times when I, the defiant and aggressive “Infidel,”
dare to extinguish your Hell with my ink-pot, and
challenge you to show me where you get it before I
will consent to go to it. From Scripture you don't
get it—that you know as well as I do, although you
dare not say so straight out as I do. Your Hell, your
�HELL :
WHERE IS IT ?
9
Grace, is stolen from Paganry, and your Heaven also,
and made horrible with Christian vulgarity. Your Hell
is a poor, unpoetic affair, compared with the awful
regions through which /Eneas wandered after the soul
of Anchises, not to mention the frozen terrors of the
realm where Odin and Thor drank blood out of the
skulls of the dead, their toast and revel and wassail
illumed by the yellow flash of the hair of the Norse
maidens and the blue gleam of the Norland steel. The
poor, brutal faith of which your Grace is an archbishop,
having neither art nor poetry, nor flight of dream nor
range of vision, spoilt Hell when it stole it. Get a
better Hell, your Grace, before you presume to think it
is good enough for a heretic, although that heretic may
be your match in honesty, and far more than your match
in intellectual power.
Your Grace may reply that that which was good
enough for your Jesus Christ is good enough for me;,
but I claim the right of private judgment, and demur.
Since you Christians have partly stolen and partly
invented a Hell, you can, of course, put your Jesus
Christ into it if you like ; it matters not to me. I know
that, now-a-days, you find it necessary to refine away
the teaching that he was ever there. But this shilly
shallying comes too late. The most learned and devout
of the Christian fathers have taught that Christ spent
three days in the charming company of the never-dying
worm. As you and yours, your Grace, are usually not
so well versed in the records of your own Church as we
Freethinkers might expect, I will cite you my authorities,
in case you might lay small account upon the mere
ipse dixit of an avowed and aggressive heretic. “St.
Thomas, pp. 3, 9, 52, art. ii., teaches that Christ, by his
real presence, descended but to limbus patrum, and in
effect only to the other places of Hell. Secondly, St.
Thomas seems to say that it was some punishment to
Christ to be in Hell, according to his soul. Cajetan
saith that the sorrows of Christ’s death continued on
him till his resurrection, in regard of three penalties,
whereof the second is that the soul remained in
Hell, a place not convenient for it. But Bonaventure
saith that Christ’s soul, while it was in Hell, was
�IO
HELL:
WHERE IS IT?
in the place of punishment indeed, but without punish
ment; which seems to me more agreeable to the fathers.”*
■Cardinal Cajetan and Thomas Aquinas—no mean pillars
■in the Christian Church, your Grace—are on the side of
Bonaventure in alleging that Christ went from Calvary
to Hell.
I think I hear your Grace repudiate such authorities
with the pious scorn with which Protestantism regards
her venerable mother, the Scarlet Lady. Do you allege
that, in support of Christ going to Hell, I have relied
upon a Roman Catholic heresy which your reformed
Church repudiates? Not so fast, your Grace. Hugh
Latimer, your glorious Protestant martyr, taught the
same doctrine, and not only roasted your Christ in plain
brimstone, but also treated him to a “ scalding house,”
where, in all seriousness, we may conclude that the
■second person of the Trinity had poured over him
successive kettles of boiling water. I refer your Grace
to Bishop Latimer’s seventh Sermon, where you will
find his own words as follows : “ But now I will say a
word ; and here I protest, first of all, not arrogantly to
■determine and define it. I will contend with no man
for it; but I offer it unto you to consider and weigh
it. There be some great clerks that take my part;
and I perceive not what evil can come of it, in saying
that our Saviour, Christ, not only descended into Hell,
/W also that he suffered in Hell sttch pains as the
damned spirits did suffer there. Surely, I believe, verily,
for my part, that he suffered the pains of Hell pro
portionally as it corresponded and answered to the
whole sin of the world. He would not suffer only
bodily in the garden and upon the Cross, but also in
his soul when it was from the body, which was a pain
due for our sin........... Some write so, and I can believe
it, that he suffered in the very place (and I cannot tell
what it is ; call it what you will—even in the scalding
house, in the ugsomeness of the place, in the presence
of the place) such pain as our capacity cannot attain
unto. It is somewhat declared unto us when we utter
Bellarmine, “ De Christo,” lib. iv., cap. 16, pp. 396, 397.
�HELL :
WHERE IS IT ?
11
it by these effects—viz., by fire, by gnashing of teeth, by
the worm that gnaweth on the conscience.”
So, your Grace, the venerable Latimer, a luminary
and master-spirit of the Christian Church, and of
your own section of it, not only introduces your
Christ to the interesting companionship of the neverdying worm, but to the delicate attentions of the ever
scalding kettle. This is the teaching of your Church,
as you will see; and I have quoted the ipsissima verba
of one of your greatest men—one who was concerned
in the compilation of your Book of Common Prayer
and the drawing up of your formularies. And yet you
would seek in your Northallerton sermon to explain
away this Hell altogether; and even when challenged on
the point, in your letter of extenuation you go crawling
round the subject in a labyrinth of verbal mists as only
a Churchman can ; but you never once venture to assert
that Hell, as an objective reality, exists. If your Lord
had such a tough time of it for three days with the
worm and the kettle, he will not thank your Grace for
explaining the whole thing away. With him it will be
just the one thing that cannot be explained away, even
if he should forget Gethsemane and Judas Iscariot, and
even your Grace.
I recognise your difficulty, my Lord Archbishop, and
I sympathise with you. Some eighteen hundred years
ago you had the misfortune to have a dead god—a
god killed with a hammer and four tenpenny nails, and
your Church has been in a terrible quandary as to
where to put his “soul” during the three days he
managed to get along without it in the Arimathean’s
tomb. You could not send him to Heaven, because, to
produce the proper effect, he had subsequently to fly
from Olivet to that elevated region. So you had to
send him to Hell; and nowT, since you explain away
Hell, will you be good enough to say where the sheol
he went to ? As I have said, I really sympathise with
your Grace in this, literally, infernal dilemma, and I
hasten to relieve you from impalement on its horns.
Explain away Christ as well as Hell, and then you will
not be perplexed as to what to do with his “ soul ”
during the three awkward days that he remained “ in
�12
HELL :
WHERE IS IT ?
the heart of the earth,” even as Jonah had remained
three days “in the whale’s belly,” that the Scripture
might be fulfilled. I admit, your Grace, that I write
with irreverence. I should have no reverence for the
human race, no reverence for my own manhood, if I had
reverence for a learned and sane man w’ho, in the last
quarter of this nineteenth century, accepts of ,£10,000
per annum for the task of attempting to reconcile the
fabulous rubbish of 2,000 years ago with the light and
reason of to-day.
There are Christians and Christians, your Grace ; and
it would, perhaps, be as unfair to make you responsible
for the wild theological teachings of Mr. Spurgeon as it
w’ould be to hold me responsible for the feculent socio
logical doctrines of Mr. Bradlaugh. According to the
luminary of the Newington Tabernacle, the damned may
devote thousands of years to examining the wounds
which were inflicted on Christ at the crucifixion. From
this I infer that Mr. Spurgeon not only believes that
Christ went to Hell, but that he stayed there. If he is
not in Hell, how can the denizens of that torrid realm
examine his wounds ? Does he “ sit at the right hand
of God,” but send his wounds down to Hell in a brown
paper parcel that they may be inspected ? After having
examined wounds for thousands of years, “ the Lost ”
should have a considerable knowledge of morbid
anatomy. Your Grace, a Protestant Archbishop, would
explain away Hell altogether; but another Protestant,
Bishop Latimer, thinks it good enough for Christ, and
puts him into the “ scalding house,” while yet another
Protestant, Pastor Spurgeon, also deems it good enough
for Christ, and makes him reside there permanently as a
“subject” in a Hospital for Incurables. In me, an out
sider, what profound respect is inspired for the three of
you—for Latimer and Spurgeon’s realistic crudities, and
for your Grace’s disingenuous shuffling !
By-the-bye, your Grace, the Bottomless Pit is not so
deep after all. The word is a/Lwos, /Suo-cros, deep,
*
intensified by the prefix a. It is only the word Homerf
uses to signify the bottom of the sea. In the Septuagint
Rev. xi. 15.
+ “ Iliad,” bk. xxiv., line 80.
�HELL:
WHERE IS IT?
13
it answers generally to the Hebrew □‘infb deep waters.
It is, moreover, only the word used to show where the
*
pigs of the Gadarenes ran to. Accordingly, Why, in
“ the Authorized Version,” is it not stated that the pigs
ran down a steep place into the bottomless pit and were
choked ? Why is the same word in Revelation trans
lated the “bottomless pit” and in Luke “the sea”?
Only one of the tricks of parson-craft, your Grace. The
translators of 1611 apparently did not like the idea of
the swine running down a steep place into Hell. So,
accordingly, although they had the same word to deal
with, they made it into a bottomless pit to put the dragon
into, and a sea into which to put the pigs. From this
sort of fact an Agnostic like myself infers that those who
translate the works of their Maker require gumption, in
the exercise of which they need not be over-scrupulous.
Again, if it does not trouble your Grace, I should like to
know how the Devil is confined in a pit without a bottom.
An angel “ shut him up and set a seal upon him;” but
was the angel a lunatic ? If you put a cat into a bag
without a bottom, you may tie up the neck of the bag,
and even “ set a seal on it p but the cat will set small
value upon all your precautions. Your Bottomless Pit,
my Lord Archbishop, is worthy of your Bottomless
Creed.
Your Grace will remember that many years ago it was
decided by the Court of Arches that a disbelief in the
Devil did not invalidate a man’s right to be a commu
nicant of the Church of England. Further, Lord West
bury, in the matter of “ Essays and Reviews,” in address
ing the jury, uttered the pithy and memorable words :
“ Gentlemen, your verdict kills the Devil, and puts out
Hell-fire.” The verdict of the jury of the entire civilised
and educated world is now dead against the existence
of Satan and his flaming throne. This is a verdict that
brings relief and delectation to all, except to that burglar
the priest, who used the Devil and his fearful pyrotechnics
as a jemmy with which to force open the doors, that
he might pilfer the belongings of mankind.
* Luke viii. 31.
�14
HELL : WHERE IS IT ?
One very plain question, your Grace : If there be no
Hell, what use is there for you ? Your sole business
upon earth is to keep people out of Hell; but to what
honest calling do you think of turning your attention
now that there is no Hell to keep them out of? You
have admitted there is no such place as Hell; but, when
pushed into a corner, you, in a sort of obscure way, eat
your own words. In short, your Grace, the exigencies
of your office make it incumbent upon you to put out
Hell with the one hand and kindle it with the other.
If there be no Hell, not only what is the use of you,
but what is the use of your Christ ? It must be morti
fying for him to discover that, after all his redeeming
escapade, and the bother the Ghost had in begetting
him with a virgin, the human race he came to “redeem "’
were not in the slightest danger of Hell—in fact, that
there was no Hell for them to go to. He surely must
have been taught a salutary lesson. Surely, when he
comes down from Heaven again, he will take more pains
to discover why he is coming, and not go on such a
wild-goose chase as that which taxed his energies eighteen
centuries ago. Of course, your Grace’s whole raison
d'etre is based upon the assumption that mankind are
unthinking and credulous simpletons, and I am sorry
to admit that this is almost the only warrantable assump
tion your Church has ever made. But, at last, after
centuries of pious stupor, the world is rubbing its eyes
and beginning to awake : you are beginning to be found
out, my Lord Archbishop. How long do you calculate
you will still be paid for blowing hot and cold—-for
putting out Hell with the one hand and kindling it with
the other ? The wheels of Progress are like the pro
verbial mills of God—they move exceeding slow; but
on they move, from the darkness into the penumbra,
from the penumbra into the light; and those who drive
her triumphal car through the shining fields of the
world’s to-morrow shall look back over the plains they
have left behind, and, far away in the rear, see your
Christian faith crushed to death under the wheels, dis
embowelled and rotten—the ugliest and slimiest of the
snakes that had to be strangled before the Herakles of
Humanity could rise from its cradle and realise the
�HELL:
WHERE IS IT?
15;
thought, the action,'the glory, and the triumph which all
lie in the arena of life for those who can win and wear
them.
I am
Your Grace’s Most Obedient Servant,
Saladin.
Price id., by post i%d., 100 copies for distribution post free 5s. 6d.,
AGNOSTICISM:
WHAT IT IS, PUT IN THE BRIEFEST AND
PLAINEST WAY.
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Hell : where is it? being a letter to the Archbishop of York
Description
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Edition: New ed.
Place of publication: London
Collation: 14. [1] p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references. Publisher's advertisements on unnumbered pages at the end. Date of publication not earlier than 1889 (advertisement for The agnostic journal and eclectic review on back cover). "by Saladin" [title page]. Saladin is the pseudonym of William Stewart Ross. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
THE
CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE
OF
BY
J. M. WHEELER.
-price Win opence>
*
B
LONDON:
EOBDEB, 28, STONECUTTEB STBEET, E.C.
1890.
�FEINTED BY GEOBGE STANDBING
7 FINSBUBY ST., LONDON, E.G.
�g^ioe».
¡p
®lje iljrhtian Qortrine of ijell.
WOULD not willingly quit this world without having
said my say upon the most terrible of all its super
stitions, the doctrine of eternal torments—which
Archdeacon Farrar describes as the “hideous incubus of
atrocious conceptions ”—and which, in my own experi
ence, 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 men
tioned 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 doc
trines 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.”
l5pon the healthy-minded the doctrine of eternal tor
ments 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
I
�4
until minds were mature enough to examine it, it might
safely be left; but while it is continually taught to in
fancy, 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 unques
tioned. Christians are becoming ashamed of their hell
—which they rarely realise as possibly the fate of them
selves 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 dis
covered 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 eter
nal.” 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
game expression which is used to signify the eternity of
God, that of his being for ever and ever, as in Eev. iv. 9,
v. 14, x. 6, and xv. 7, is used of the torments of those in
hell in Eev. 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 un
doubtedly 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 far
ing 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 com
ing 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 “tor
mented 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 hus
bands 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 tor
ture 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 fife, 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
�6
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 Christ
tians. 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 illwill 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 He. 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
* Antiq. xviii. 1-3 ; Wars ii, 8, 11-14.
�7
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).
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, lii), “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. Irenaeus, 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 pre
pared 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 [wickedj angels chained in Tartarus as punish
ment for their sins.”
Tertullian, in his treatise on the Resurrection of the
.Flesh, chap, xxxv., declares “ The fire of hell is eternal
—dxpressly 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
�8
and the miserable rich man is only imaginary ? Then
why the name of Lazarus in this narrative, if the circum
stance 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 cala
mity ; 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 wrest
lers, 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 re
main 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 be
lieve ! 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
* De Spectaculis, c. 30. I have quoted the rendering in the
orthodox Ante-Nicene Christian Library, vol. xi.,pp. 34-35. Gib
bon’s version is more forcible.
�9
balanced against a spectacle eternal.” And the savage
saint backs up his pleasant prospect with “Holy Scrip
ture."
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 com
mitted 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 h©
never was mindful of it, therefore he fell into it.
*
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 unnum
bered 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,” con
tinues 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 punish
ment." Again he says (Hom. Heb. xi. 37-38), “Why,
wfyat are ten thousand years to ages boundless and with
out 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
* Homily on 2 Thess. i., 1-2.
�10
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 Countil 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 mean
ing “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 neverending 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, f
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 tre
mendous 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.”
* Library of the Fathers, pp. 15-16.
t Lecky, History of European Morals, vol. ii., p. 222.
�11“
Grandly horrible is the reflection in Dante’s Inferno of
the doctrine of hell, held in the palmiest days of Chris
tianity. 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 strik
ing 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 punish
ments 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 pro
bably 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.
Even the mystic Suso expressed himself as follows:—
‘ Give us a millstone,’ say the damned, ‘as large as the whole
earth, and so wide in circumference as to touch the sky all around
and let a little bird come once in a hundred thousand years and
pick off a small particle of the stone, not larger than the tenth
part of a grain of millet, and after another hundred thousand
yearfs let him come again, so that in ten hundred thousand years
he would pick off as much as a grain of millet, we wretched sin
ners would desire nothing but that the stone might have an end,
and thus our pains also ; yet even that cannot be.’ f
* Summse Suppl. qu 97.
t Quoted in Hagenbach’s History of Doctrines, §210, vol. ii., p. 152*
�12
The work of Father Pinamonti, entitled Hell Opened to
Christians, has been for over two hundred years one of
the most popular among Catholic Christians. It has also
circulated among Protestants. An English version, with
horrible pictures of the torments of the damned, has gone
through many editions. "We recommend its purchase to
those who complain of the illustrations in the Freethinker,
or who desire to see how savage the Christian religion is
at bottom. The Christian Father of course accepts the
literal meaning of hell fire. He says (p. 28) : “Every
one that is damned will be like a lighted furnace, which
has its own flames in itself; all the filthy blood will boil
in the veins, the brains in the skull, the heart in the
breast, the bowels within the unfortunate body, sur
rounded with an abyss of' fire out of which it cannot
escape.”
The Sight of Hell, by the Rev. J. Furniss, C.S.S.R., is
another popular work issued “ permissu superiorum”
among “ Books for Children and Young Persons.” A
more atrocious composition it is difficult to conceive.
The agony is piled on as though the imagination of the
writer revelled in the description of torture. One speci
men, a mild one, will suffice:—
Perhaps at this moment, seven o’clock in the evening, a child
is just going into Hell. To-morrow evening at seven o’clock, go
and knock at the gates of Hell and ask what the child is doing.
The devils will go and look. Then they will come back again
and say, the child is burning! Go in a week and ask what the
child is doing; you will get the same answer—it is burning! Go
in a year and ask, the same answer comes—it is burning! Go in
a million of years and ask the same question ; the answer is just
the same—it is burning ! So if you go for ever and ever, you will
always get the same answer—it is burning in the fire!
I declare I would rather put into the hands of any
young child Boccaccio’s Decameron, or any of the works
put on the Roman Index Librorum Prohibitorum, with
which I am acquainted, than this pious work by a
Christian Father.
Protestantism did nothing to lighten the realm of outer
darkness. Bather, by its repudiation of the priest-serving,
doctrine of purgatory, it rendered more glaring the con
trast between the condition of the saved and that of the
�non-elect. Calvin asks: “ How is it that the fall of Adam
involves so many nations, with their infant children, to
eternal death without remedy, unless that it so seemed
meet to God?” The same holy Christian says of the
damned: “ For ever harassed with a dreadful tempest,
they shall feel themselves torn asunder by an angry God,
and transfixed and penetrated by mortal stings, terrified
by the thunderbolts of God, and broken by the weight
of his hand, so that to sink into any gulf would be
more tolerable than to stand for a moment in these
terrors.”
According to the Westminster Confession, ch. xxxiii.:
“The wicked who know not God and obey not the gospel
of Jesus Christ, shall be cast into eternal torments.”
And the Larger Catechism, A. 29, declares: “ The pun
ishments of sin in the world to come are everlasting
separation from the comfortable presence of God, and
most grievous torments in soul and body, without inter
mission, in hell fire forever.” “They that have done
good shall go into life everlasting; and they that have
done evil into everlasting fire,” is the doctrine of theBoofe
of Common Prayer.
Bishop Jeremy Taylor, the prose poet of the Church
of England, says in his discourse on the Pains of Hell :
*
“We are amazed at the inhumanity of Phalaris, who
roasted men in his brazen bull: this was joy in respect
of that fire of hell which penetrates the very entrails
without consuming them.” “ Husbands shall see their
wives, parents shall see their children, tormented before
their eyes.” Picture it, think of it, Christian, and then
give praises to your demon God. The good, really good,
bishop tells us the bodies of the damned shall be crowded
together in hell like grapes in a wine press, which press
one another till they burst. “ Every distinct sense and
organ shall be assailed with its own appropriate and most
exquisite sufferings.” Surely the creed is accursed which
led so worthy a man as Taylor to paint with unction this
description of the Pains of Hell.
Our own Milton, liberal in theology though he was,
adheres to the Biblical idea of
* Contemplation of the State of Man, ch. 68.
�Regions of Sorrow ! doleful Shades! where Peace
And Rest can never dwell; Hope never comes,
That comes to all: but Torture without End
Still urges, and a fiery Deluge fed
With ever-burning sulphur unconsum’d.
Bishop Hall says : “ What, oh, what is it to conceive
of lying in a fire more intense than nature can kindle, for
hundreds, thousands, millions, yea millions of millions of
years, which, after all, are only a minute of time com
pared with eternity.”
Dr. Barrow asserts that “ our bodies will be afflicted
continually by a sulphurous flame piercing the inmost
sinews.” Wesley says:
Eternity and deep despair
On every flame is written there.
Again he says: ‘ ‘ From the moment wherein they are
plunged into the lake of fire, burning with brimstone, their
torments are not only without intermission, but likewise
without end.”
The sight of the torments of the damned in hell will
increase the ecstacy of the saints in heaven. This is the
doctrine of St. John, and it has been repeated by ortho
dox Christian preachers times without number. And
though orthodox Christian preachers dare not preach it
now, it is the legitimate outcome of their belief. In
heaven the angels see all, and must therefore witness the
torments of the damned; and these do not diminish their
happiness, though the damned be their own parents or
their own children.
Jonathan Edwards, one of the most consistent Chris
tians that ever breathed, devoted a work to the subject.
The Thirteenth Sermon of his Works is entitled “The
End of the Wicked contemplated by the Righteous,”
and is particularly devoted to the illustration of the
doctrine that “ the sight of hell torments will exalt
the happiness of the saints forever.” “ It will,” he con
tinues, “ not only make them more sensible of the great
ness and freeness of the grace of God in their happiness,
but it really makes their happiness the greater, as it will
make them more sensible of their own happiness. It will
give them a more lively relish' of it; it will make. them
prize it more. When they see others who were of the
�15
Same nature, and born under the same .circumstances,
plunged in such misery, and they so distinguished, it will
make them the more sensible how happy they are.”*
In his direful poem on the Last Day, the once popular
Dr. Young makes one of God’s victims vainly ask :
This one, this slender, almost no request:
When I have wept a thousand lives away,
When torment is grown weary of its prey,
When I have ran of anguish’d years in fire
Ten thousand thousands, let me then expire.
The pious Dr. Samuel Hopkins thus displays the
.Divine character and illustrates the loving kindness of
the blessed Scripture promises : “ The smoke of their
torment shall ascend up in the sight of the blessed for
ever and ever, and serve, as a most clear glass before
their eyes, to give them a bright and most effective view.
This display of the Divine character will be most enter
taining to all who love God, will give them the highest
and most ineffable pleasure. Should the fire of this eter
nal punishment cease, it would in a great measure ob
scure the light of heaven and put an end to a great part
of the happiness and glory of the blessed.”
Contrast with this holy utterance of the pious Chris
tian, the burning words of the Atheist poet, James Thom
son :
If any human soul at all
Must die the second death, must fall
Into that gulph of quenchless flame
Which keeps its victims still the same,
Unpurified as unconsumed,
To everlasting torments doomed ;
Then I give God my scorn and hate,
And turning back from Heaven’s gate
(Suppose me got there !) bow, Adieu !
Almighty Devil, damn me too.^
Baxter, in his Saint’s Everlasting Rest, declares: “ The
principal author of hell torments is God himself. As it
was no less than God whom the sinner had offended, so
it is no less than God who will punish them for their
offences. He, has prepared those torments for his
* The Eternity of Hell Torments, p. 25 (London, 1789).
t Vane's Story.
�16
enemies. . . The everlasting flames of hell will not
be thought too hot for the rebellious; and when they
have burnt there for millions of ages, he will not repent
him of the evil which is befallen them.”
Was not Shelley right when he described the Christian
God
A vengeful, pitiless and almighty fiend,
Whose mercy is a nick-name for the rage
Of tameless tigers hungering for blood.
It would be easy to multiply citations. Spurgeon,
among living divines, has preached hell as hot as any
body. But the doctrine is decaying together with real
faith in Christianity.
Walter Savage Landor well says: “ The priesthood in
all religions sings the same anthem. First, the abuses
are stoutly defended, but when the ground is no longer
tenable, then these abuses are to be distinguished and
separated from the true faith.” But what are we to
think of the sudden conversion of a church that has
taught falsity so long ? If it did not know the truth on
this important point, how can it be credited with knowing
it upon any other matter ? The rejection of hell cuts the
ground from under the gospel. Salvation supposes a
prior damnation. If there is no hell no Savior is needed.
Christianity is all of a piece, and, its main prop gone, it
must fall like a house of cards.
BIOGRAPHICAL
DICTIONARY of FREETHINKERS.
BY J. M. WHEELER.
Containing the Lives of over 1,600 eminent Freethinkers
of all Ages and Nations.
BRICE SEVEN SHILLINGS AND SIXPENCE
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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The Christian doctrine of hell
Creator
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Wheeler, J. M. (Joseph Mazzini) [1850-1898]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 16 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references. Printed by George Standring, 7 Finsbury St., London, E.C. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
Publisher
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R. Forder
Date
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1890
Identifier
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N686
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Hell
Christianity
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (The Christian doctrine of hell), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
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English
Christianity
Hell
NSS