to feel the torments; not for one minute, nor for one day, nor for one age, nor for two ages, nor for a hundred ages, nor for ten thousands of millions of ages one after another, but for ever and ever, without any end at all, and never, never be delivered." 7 Calvin says, "Iterum quaro, unde factum est, ut tot gentes una c.u.m liberis eorum infantibus aterna morti involveret lapsus Ada absque remedio, nisi quia Deo ita visum est? Decretum horribile fateor."
8 Outraged humanity before the contemplation cries, "O G.o.d, horror hath overwhelmed me, for thou art represented as an omnipotent Fiend." It is not the Father of Christ, but his Antagonist, whose face glares down over such a scene as that! The above diabolical pa.s.sage at the recital of which from the pulpit, Edwards"s biographers tell us, "whole congregations shuddered and simultaneously rose to their feet, smiting their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, weeping and groaning" is not the arbitrary exaggeration of an individual, but a fair representation of the actual tenets and vividly held faith of the Puritans. It is also, in all its uncompromising literality, a direct and inevitable part of the system of doctrine which, with insignificant exceptions, professedly prevails throughout Christendom at this hour. We know most persons will hesitate at this statement; but let them look at the logic of the case in the light of its history, and they must admit the correctness of the a.s.sertion. Weigh the following propositions, the accuracy of which no one, we suppose, will question, and it will appear at once that there is no possibility of avoiding the conclusion.
First, it is the established doctrine of Christendom that no one can be saved without a supernatural regeneration, or sincere faith in the vicarious atonement, or valid reception of sacramental grace at the hands of a priest, conditions which it is not possible that one in a hundred thousand of the whole human race has fulfilled. Secondly, it is the established doctrine of Christendom that there will be a general day of judgment, when all men will be raised in the same bodies which they originally occupied on earth, when Christ and his angels will visibly descend from heaven, separate the elect from the reprobate, summon the sheep to the blissful pastures on the right hand, but "Proclaim The flocks of goats to folds of flame."
The world is to be burnt up, and the d.a.m.ned, restored to their bodies, are to be driven into the everlasting fire prepared for them. The resurrection of the body, still held in all Christendom, taken in connection with the rest of the a.s.sociated scheme, necessitates the belief in the materiality of the torments of h.e.l.l. That eminent living divine, Dr. Gardiner Spring, says, "The souls of all who have died in their sins are in h.e.l.l; and there their bodies too will be after the resurrection." 9 Mr. Spurgeon also, in his graphic and fearful sermon on the "Resurrection of the Dead," uses the following language: "When thou diest, thy soul will be tormented alone; that will be a h.e.l.l for it: but at the day of judgment thy body will join thy soul, and then thou wilt have twin h.e.l.ls, thy soul sweating drops of blood, and thy body suffused with agony. In fire exactly like that which we have on earth thy body will lie,
7 Edwards"s Works, vol. viii. p. 166.
8 Inst.i.t., lib. iii. cap. xxiii. sect. 7.
9 The Glory of Christ, vol. ii. p. 258.
asbestos like, forever unconsumed, all thy veins roads for the feet of pain to travel on, every nerve a string on which the devil shall forever play his diabolical tune of h.e.l.l"s Unutterable Lament!" And, if this doctrine be true, no ingenuity, however fertile in expedients and however fiendish in cruelty, can possibly devise emblems and paint pictures half terrific enough to present in imagination and equal in moral impression what the reality will be to the sufferers. It is easy to speak or hear the word "h.e.l.l;" but to a.n.a.lyze its significance and realize it in a sensitive fancy is difficult; and whenever it is done the fruit is madness, as the bedlams of the world are shrieking in testimony at this instant. The Revivalist preachers, so far from exaggerating the frightful contents latent in the prevalent dogma concerning h.e.l.l, have never been able and no man is able to do any thing like justice to its legitimate deductions. Edwards is right in declaring, "After we have said our utmost and thought our utmost, all that we have said and thought is but a faint shadow of the reality." Think of yourselves, seized, just as you are now, and flung into the roaring, glowing furnace of eternity; think of such torture for an instant, multiply it by infinity, and then say if any words can convey the proper force of impression. It is true these intolerable details are merely latent and unappreciated by the mult.i.tude of believers; and when one, roused to fanaticism by earnest contemplation of his creed, dares to proclaim its logical consequences and to exhort men accordingly, they shrink, and charge him with excess. But they should beware ere they repudiate the literal horrors of the historic orthodox doctrine for any figurative and moral views accommodated to the advanced reason and refinement of the times, beware how such an abandonment of a part of their system affects the rest.
Give up the material fire, and you lose the bodily resurrection.
Renounce the bodily resurrection, and away goes the visible coming of Christ to a general judgment. Abandon the general judgment, and the climacteric completion of the Church scheme of redemption is wanting. Mar the wholeness of the redemption plan, and farewell to the incarnation and vicarious atonement. Neglect the vicarious atonement, and down crumbles the hollow and broken sh.e.l.l of the popular theology helplessly into its grave. The old literal doctrine of a material h.e.l.l, however awful its idea, as it has been set forth in flaming views and threats by all the accredited representatives of the Church, must be uncompromisingly clung to, else the whole popular system of theology will be mutilated, shattered, and lost from sight. The theological leaders understand this perfectly well, and for the most part they act accordingly.
We have now under our hand numerous extracts, from writings published within the last five years by highly influential dignitaries in the different denominations, which for frightfulness of outline and coloring, and for unshrinking a.s.sertions of literality, will compare with those already quoted.
Especially read the following description of this kind from John Henry Newman: "Oh, terrible moment for the soul, when it suddenly finds itself at the judgment seat of Christ, when the Judge speaks and consigns it to the jailers till it shall pay the endless debt which lies against it! "Impossible! I a lost soul? I separated from hope and from peace forever? It is not I of whom the Judge so spake! There is a mistake somewhere; Christ, Savior, hold thy hand: one minute to explain it! My name is Demas: I am but Demas, not Judas, or Nicholas, or Alexander, or Philetus, or Diotrephes.
What! eternal pain for me? Impossible! it shall not be!" And the poor soul struggles and wrestles in the grasp of the mighty demon which has hold of it, and whose every touch is torment. "Oh, atrocious!" it shrieks, in agony, and in anger too, as if the very keenness of the infliction were a proof of its injustice.
"A second! and a third! I can bear no more! Stop, horrible fiend!
give over: I am a man, and not such as thou! I am not food for thee, or sport for thee! I have been taught religion; I have had a conscience; I have a cultivated mind; I am well versed in science and art; I am a philosopher, or a poet, or a shrewd observer of men, or a hero, or a statesman, or an orator, or a man of wit and humor.
Nay, I have received the grace of the Redeemer; I have attended the sacraments for years; I have been a Catholic from a child; I died in communion with the Church: nothing, nothing which I have ever been, which I have ever seen, bears any resemblance to thee, and to the flame and stench which exhale from thee: so I defy thee, and abjure thee, O enemy of man!"
"Alas! poor soul! and, whilst it thus fights with that destiny which it has brought upon itself and those companions whom it has chosen, the man"s name perhaps is solemnly chanted forth, and his memory decently cherished, among his friends on earth. Men talk of him from time to time; they appeal to his authority; they quote his words; perhaps they even raise a monument to his name, or write his history. "So comprehensive a mind! such a power of throwing light on a perplexed subject and bringing conflicting ideas or facts into harmony!" "Such a speech it was that he made on such and such an occasion: I happened to be present, and never shall forget it;" or, "A great personage, whom some of us knew;"
or, "It was a rule with a very worthy and excellent friend of mine, now no more;" or, "Never was his equal in society, so just in his remarks, so lively, so versatile, so un.o.btrusive;" or, "So great a benefactor to his country and to his kind;" or, "His philosophy so profound." "Oh, vanity! vanity of vanities! all is vanity! What profiteth it? What profiteth it? His soul is in h.e.l.l, O ye children of men! While thus ye speak, his soul is in the beginning of those torments in which his body will soon have part, and which will never die!" 10
Some theologians do not hesitate, even now, to say that "in h.e.l.l the bodies of the d.a.m.ned shall be nealed, as we speak of gla.s.s, so as to endure the fire without being annihilated thereby." "Made of the nature of salamanders," they shall be "immortal kept to feel immortal fire." Well may we take up the words of the Psalmist and cry out of the bottomless depths of disgust and anguish, "I am overwhelmed with horror!"
Holding this abhorrent ma.s.s of representations, so grossly carnal and fearful, up in the free light of to day, it cannot stand the test of honest and resolute inquiry. It exists only by timid, unthinking sufferance. It is kept alive, among the superst.i.tious vestiges of the outworn and out grown past, only by the power of tradition, authority, and custom. In refutation of it we shall not present here a prolonged detail of learned researches and logical processes; for that would be useless to those who are enslaved to the foregone conclusions of a creed and possessed by invulnerable prejudices, while those who are thoughtful and candid can make
10 Sermon on "Neglect of Divine Calls and warnings."
such investigations themselves. We shall merely state, in a few clear and brief propositions, the results in which we suppose all free and enlightened minds who have adequately studied the subject now agree, leaving the reader to weigh these propositions for himself, with such further examination as inclination and opportunity may cause him to bestow upon the matter.
We reject the common belief of Christians in a h.e.l.l which is a local prison of fire where the wicked are to be tortured by material instruments, on the following grounds, appealing to G.o.d for the reverential sincerity of our convictions, and appealing to reason for their truth. First, the supposition that h.e.l.l is an enormous region in the hollow of the earth is a remnant of ancient ignorance, a fancy of poets who magnified the grave into Hades, a thought of geographers who supposed the earth to be flat and surrounded by a brazen expanse bright above and black beneath.
Secondly, the soul, on leaving the body, is a spiritual substance, if it be any substance at all, eluding our senses and all the instruments of science. Therefore, in the nature of things, it cannot be chained in a dungeon, nor be cognizant of suffering from material fire or other physical infliction, but its woes must be moral and inward; and the figment that its former fleshly body is to be restored to it is utterly incredible, being an absurdity in science, and not affirmed, as we believe, in Scripture. Thirdly, the imagery of a subterranean h.e.l.l of fire, brimstone, and undying worms, as used in the Scriptures of the New Testament, is the same as that drawn from heathen sources with modifications and employed by the Pharisees before the time of Christ and his disciples; and we must therefore, since neither Persians nor Pharisees were inspired, either suppose that this imagery was adopted by the apostles figuratively to convey moral truths, or else that they were left, in common with their countrymen, at least partially under the dominion of the errors of their time. Thus in every alternative we deny that the interior of the earth is, or ever will be, an abode of souls, full of fire, a h.e.l.l in which the d.a.m.ned are to be confined and physically tormented.
The elements of the popular doctrine of future punishment which we thus reject are the falsities contributed by superst.i.tion and the priestly spirit. The truths remaining in the doctrine, furnished by conscience, reason, and Scripture, we will next exhibit, in order not to dismiss this head, on the nature of future punishment, with negations. What is the real character of the retributions in the future state? We do not think they are necessarily connected with any peculiar locality or essentially dependent on any external circ.u.mstances. As Milton says, when speaking of the best theologians, "To banish forever into a local h.e.l.l, whether in the air, or in the centre, or in that uttermost and bottomless gulf of chaos deeper from holy bliss than the world"s diameter multiplied, they thought not a punishment so proper and proportionate for G.o.d to inflict as to punish sin with sin."
G.o.d does not arbitrarily stretch forth his arm, like an enraged and vindictive man, and take direct vengeance on offenders; but by his immutable laws, permeating all beings and governing all worlds, evil is, and brings, its own punishment. The intrinsic substances and forces of character and their organized correlations with the realities of eternity, the ruling principles, habits, and love of the soul, as they stand affected towards the world to which they go, these are the conditions on which experience depends, herein is the hiding of retribution.
"Each one," as Origen says, "kindles the flame of his own appropriate fire." Superior spirits must look on a corrupted human soul with a sorrow similar, though infinitely profounder, to that with which the lapidary contemplates a splendid pearl with a dark flaw in its centre. The Koran says, "Men sleep while they live, and when they die they wake." The sudden infliction of pain in the future state comes from the sudden unveiling of secrets, quickening of the moral consciousness, and exposure of the naked soul"s fitnesses to the spiritual correspondences of its deserts.
It is said, "Death does Away disguise: souls see each other clear, At one glance, as two drops of rain in air Might look into each other had they life."
The quality of the soul"s character decides the elements of the soul"s life; and, as this becomes known on crossing the death drawn line of futurity, conscious retribution then arises in the guilty. This is a retribution which is reasonable, moral, unavoidable, before which we may well pause and tremble. The great moral of it is that we should not so much dread being thrust into an eternal h.e.l.l as we should fear carrying a h.e.l.l with us when we go into eternity. It is not so bad to be in h.e.l.l as to be forced truly to say, "Which way I fly is h.e.l.l; myself am h.e.l.l."
If these general ideas are correct, it follows even as all common sense and reflection affirm that every real preparation for death and for what is to succeed must be an ingrained characteristic, and cannot consist in a mere opinion, mood, or act. Here we strike at one of the shallowest errors, one of the most extensive and rooted superst.i.tions, of the world. Throughout the immense kingdoms of the East, where the Brahmanic and Buddhist religions hold sway over six hundred millions of men, the notion of yadasanna that is, the merit instantaneously obtained when at the point of death fully prevails. They suppose that in that moment, regardless of their former lives and of their present characters, by bringing the mind and the heart into certain momentary states of thought and feeling, and meditating on certain objects or repeating certain sacred words, they can suddenly obtain exemption from punishment in their next life.11 The notion likewise obtains almost universally among Christians, incredible as it may seem.
With the Romanists, who are three fourths of the Christian world, it is a most prominent doctrine, everywhere vehemently proclaimed and acted on: that is the meaning of the sacrament of extreme unction, whereby, on submission to the Church and confession to a priest, the venal sins of the dying man are forgiven, purgatory avoided or lessened, and heaven made sure. The ghost of the King of Denmark complains most of the unwarned suddenness of his murder, not of the murder itself, but of its suddenness, which left him no opportunity to save his soul: "Sleeping, was I by a brother"s hand Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,
11 Hardy, Manual of Buddhism, p. 489.
Unhousel"d, disappointed, unanel"d; No reckoning made, but sent to my account With all my imperfections on my head."
Hamlet, urged by supernatural solicitings to vengeance, finds his murderous uncle on his knees at prayer. Stealing behind him with drawn sword, he is about to strike the fatal blow, when the thought occurs to him that the guilty man, if killed when at his devotions, would surely go to heaven; and so he refrains until a different opportunity. For to send to heaven the villain who had slain his father,
"That would be hire and salary, not revenge. He took my father grossly full of bread, With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May; And how his audit stands who knows save Heaven? But, in our circ.u.mstance and course of thought, "Tie heavy with him. And am I then revenged To take him in the purging of his soul, When he is fit and season"d for his pa.s.sage? No; but when he is drunk, asleep, enraged, Or in the incestuous pleasures of his bed, At gaming, swearing, or about some act That has no relish of salvation in"t: Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven, And that his soul may be as d.a.m.n"d and black As h.e.l.l, whereto it goes."
This, though poetry, is a fair representation of the mediaval faith held by all Christendom in sober prose. The same train of thought latently underlies the feelings of most Protestants too, though it is true any one would now shrink from expressing it with such frankness and horrible gusto. But what else means the minute morbid anatomy of death beds, the prurient curiosity to know how the dying one bore himself in the solemn pa.s.sage? How commonly, if one dies without physical anguish, and with the artificial exultations of a fanatic, rejoiceful auguries are drawn! if he dies in physical suffering, and with apparent regret, a gloomy verdict is rendered! It is superst.i.tion, absurdity, and injustice, all. Not the accidental physical conditions, not the transient emotions, with which one pa.s.ses from the earth, can decide his fate, but the real good or evil of his soul, the genuine fitness or unfitness of his soul, his soul"s inherent merits of bliss or bale. There is no time nor power in the instant of death, by any magical legerdemain, to turn away the impending retributions of wickedness and guilt. What is right, within the conditions of Infinite wisdom and goodness, will be done in spite of all traditional juggles and spasmodic spiritual att.i.tudinizations.
What can it avail that a most vile and hardened wretch, when dying, convulsed with fright and possessed with superst.i.tion, compels, or strives to compel, a certain sentiment into his soul, conjures, or tries to conjure, his mind into the relation of belief towards a certain ancient and abstract dogma?
"Yet I"ve seen men who meant not ill, Compelling doctrine out of death, With h.e.l.l and heaven acutely poised Upon the turning of a breath."
Cruelly racking the soul with useless probes of theological questions and statements, they stand by the dying to catch the words of his last breath, and, in perfect consistence with their faith, they p.r.o.nounce sentence accordingly. If, as the pallid lips faintly close, they hear the magic words, "I put my trust in the atoning blood of Christ," up goes the soul to heaven. If they hear the less stereotyped words, "I have tried to do as well as I could: I hope G.o.d will be merciful towards me and receive me,"
down goes the soul to h.e.l.l. Strange and cruel superst.i.tion, that imagines G.o.d to act towards men only according to the evanescent temper and technical phrase with which they leave the world! The most popular English preacher of the present day, the Rev. Mr.
Spurgeon, after referring to the fable that those before whom Perseus held the head of Medusa were turned into stone in the very act and posture of the moment when they saw it, says, "Death is such a power. What I am when death is held before me, that I must be forever. When my spirit goes, if G.o.d finds me hymning his praise, I shall hymn it in heaven: doth he find me breathing out oaths, I shall follow up those oaths in h.e.l.l. As I die, so shall I live eternally!" 12
No: the true preparation for death and the invisible realm of souls is not the eager adoption of an opinion, the hurried a.s.sumption of a mood, or the frightened performance of an outward act: it is the patient culture of the mind with truth, the pious purification of the heart with disinterested love, the consecrated training of the life in holiness, the growth of the soul in habits of righteousness, faith, and charity, the organization of divine principles into character. Every real preparation of the soul for death must be a characteristic rightly related to the immortal realities to which death is the introduction of the soul. An evil soul is not thrust into a physical and fiery h.e.l.l, fenced in and roofed over from the universal common; but it is revealed to itself, and consciously enters on retributive relations. In the spiritual world, whither all go at death, we suppose that like perceives like, and thus are they saved or d.a.m.ned, having, by the natural attraction and elective seeing of their virtues or vices, the beatific vision of G.o.d, or the horrid vision of iniquity and terror.
It cannot be supposed that G.o.d is a bounded shape so vast as to fill the entire circuits of the creation. Spirit transcends the categories of body, and it is absurd to apply the language of finite things to the illimitable One, except symbolically. When we die, we do not sink or soar to the realm of spirits, but are in it, at once, everywhere; and the resulting experience will depend on the prevailing elements of our moral being. If we are bad, our badness is our banishment from G.o.d; if we are good, our goodness is our union with G.o.d. In every world the true nature and law of retribution lie in the recoil of conduct on character, and the a.s.similated results ensuing. Take a soul that is saturated with the rottenness of depravity into the core of heaven, and it is in the heart of h.e.l.l still. Take a soul that is compacted of divine
12 Sermons, 3d Series. Sermon XIV., Thoughts on the Last Battle.
realities to the very bottom of h.e.l.l, and heaven is with it there.
We are treading on eternity, and infinitude is all around us. Now, as well as hereafter, to us, the universe is action, the soul is reaction, experience is the resultant. Death but unveils the facts. Pa.s.s that great crisis, in the pa.s.sage becoming conscious of universal realities and of individual relations to them, and the Father will say to the discordant soul, "Alienated one, incapable of my embrace, change and come to me;" to the harmonious soul, "Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine."
Having thus considered the question as to the nature of future punishments, it now remains to discuss the question concerning their duration. The fact of a just and varied punishment for souls we firmly believe in. The particulars of it in the future, or the degrees of its continuance, we think, are concealed from the present knowledge of man. These details we do not profess to be able to settle much about. We have but three general convictions on the subject. First, that these punishments will be experienced in accordance with those righteous and inmost laws which indestructibly express the mind of G.o.d and rule the universe, and will not be vindictively inflicted through arbitrary external penalties. Secondly, that they will be accurately tempered to the just deserts and qualifications of the individual sufferers. And thirdly, that they will be alleviated, remedial, and limited, not unmitigated, hopeless, and endless.
Upon the first of these thoughts perhaps enough has already been said, and the second and third may be discussed together. Our business, therefore, in the remainder of this dissertation, is to disprove, if truth in the hands of reason and conscience will enable us to disprove, the popular dogma which a.s.serts that the state of the condemned departed is a state of complete d.a.m.nation absolutely eternal. Against that form of representing future punishment which makes it unlimited by conceiving the destiny of the soul to be an eternal progress, in which their initiative steps of good or evil in this life place different souls under advantages or disadvantages never relatively to be lost, we have nothing to object. It is reasonable, in unison with natural law, and not frightful.13 But we are to deal, if we fairly can, a refutation against the doctrine of an intense endless misery for the wicked, as that doctrine is prevailingly taught and received.
The advocates of eternal d.a.m.nation primarily plant themselves upon the Christian Scriptures, and say that there the voice of an infallible inspiration from heaven a.s.serts it. First of all, let us examine this ground, and see if they do not stand there only upon erroneous premises sustained by prejudices. In the beginning, then, we submit to candid minds that, if the literal eternity of future torment be proclaimed in the New Testament, it is not a part of the revelation contained in that volume; it is not a truth revealed by inspiration; and that we maintain for this reason. The same representations of the everlasting duration of future punishment in h.e.l.l, the same expressions for an unlimited duration, which occur in the New Testament, were previously employed by the Hindus, Greeks, and Pharisees, who were not inspired, but must have drawn the doctrine from fallible sources.
Now, to say the least, it is as reasonable to suppose that these expressions, when found in the New Testament, were
13 Lessing, Ueber Leibnitz von den Ewigen Strafen.
employed by the Saviour and the evangelists in conformity with the prevailing thought and customary phraseology of their time, as to conclude that they were derived from an unerring inspiration. The former is a natural and reasonable inference; the latter is a gratuitous hypothesis for which we have never heard of any evidence. If its advocates will honestly attempt really to prove it, we are convinced they will be forced to renounce it. The only way they continue to hold it is by taking it for granted. If, therefore, the strict eternity of future woe be declared in the New Testament, we regard it not as a part of the inspired utterance of Jesus, but as an error which crept in among others from the surrounding notions of a benighted pagan age.
But, in the next place, we do not admit by any means that the literal eternity of future d.a.m.nation is taught in the Scriptures.
On the contrary, we deny such an a.s.sertion, for several reasons.
First, we argue from the usage of language before the New Testament was written. The Egyptians, Hindus, Greeks, often make most emphatic use of phrases declaring the eternal sufferings of the wicked in h.e.l.l; but they must have meant by "eternal" only a very long time, because a fundamental portion of the great system of thought on which their religions rested was the idea of recurring epochs, sundered by immense periods statedly arriving, when all things were restored, the h.e.l.ls and heavens vanished away, and G.o.d was all in all. If the representations of the eternal punishment of the wicked, made before the New Testament was written, were not significant, with metaphysical severity, of an eternity of duration, but only, with popular looseness, of an extremely long period, the same may be true of the similar expressions found in that record.
Secondly, we argue from the usage of language in and after the New Testament age. The critics have collected, as any one desirous may easily find, and as every theological scholar well knows, scores of instances from the writings of authors contemporary with Christ and his apostles, and succeeding them, where the Greek word for "eternal" is used popularly, not strictly, in a rhetorical, not in a philosophical, sense, not denoting a duration literally endless, but one very prolonged. In all Greek literature the word is undoubtedly used in a careless and qualified sense at least a hundred times where it is used once with its close etymological force. And the same is true of the corresponding Hebrew term. The writer of the "Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs," at the close of every chapter, describing the respective patriarch"s death, says, "he slept the eternal sleep," though by "eternal" he can only mean a duration reaching to the time of the resurrection, as plainly appears from the context. Iamblichus speaks of "an eternal eternity of eternities."14 Origen, and Gregory of Nyssa, and others, the fact of whose belief in final universal salvation no one pretends to deny, do not hesitate with earnestness and frequency to affirm the "eternal" punishment of the wicked in h.e.l.l. Now, if the contemporaries of the evangelists, and their successors, often used the word "eternal" popularly, in a figurative, limited sense, then it may be so employed when it occurs in the New Testament in connection with the future pains of the bad.