HELL OR SHEOL AND OTHER SUBJECTS.
Question. Colonel, have you read the revised Testament?
Answer. Yes, but I don't believe the work has been fairly done. The clergy are not going to scrape the butter off their own bread. The clergy are offensive partisans, and those of each denomination will interpret the Scriptures their way. No Baptist minister would countenance a "Revision" that favored sprinkling, and no Catholic priest would admit that any version would be correct that destroyed the dogma of the "real presence." So I might go through all the denominations.
Question. Why was the word sheol introduced in place of hell, and how do you like the substitute?
Answer. The civilized world has outgrown the vulgar and brutal hell of their fathers and founders of the churches. The clergy are ashamed to preach about sulphurous flames and undying worms. The imagination of the world has been developed, the heart has grown tender, and the old dogma of eternal pain shocks all civilized people. It is becoming disgraceful either to preach or believe in such a beastly lie. The clergy are beginning to think that it is hardly manly to frighten children with a detected falsehood. Sheol is a great relief. It is not so hot as the old place. The nights are comfortable, and the society is quite refined. The worms are dead, and the air reasonably free from noxious vapors. It is a much worse word to hold a revival with, but much better for every day use. It will hardly take the place of the old word when people step on tacks, put up stoves, or sit on pins; but for use at church fairs and mite societies it will do about as well. We do not need revision; excision is what we want. The barbarism should be taken out of the Bible. Passages upholding polygamy, wars of extermination, slavery, and religious persecution should not be attributed to a perfect God. The good that is in the Bible will be saved for man, and man will be saved from the evil that is in that book. Why should we worship in God what we detest in man?
Question. Do you think the use of the word sheol will make any difference to the preachers?
Answer. Of course it will make no difference with Talmage. He will make sheol just as hot and smoky and uncomfortable as hell, but the congregations will laugh instead of tremble. The old shudder has gone. Beecher had demolished hell before sheol was adopted. According to his doctrine of evolution hell has been slowly growing cool. The cindered souls do not even perspire. Sheol is nothing to Mr. Beecher but a new name for an old mistake. As for the effect it will have on Heber Newton, I cannot tell, neither can he, until he asks his bishop. There are people who believe in witches and madstones and fiat money, and centuries hence it may be that people will exist who will believe as firmly in hell as Dr. Shedd does now.
Question. What about Beecher's sermons on "Evolution"?
Answer. Beecher's sermons on "Evolution" will do good. Millions of people believe that Mr. Beecher knows at least as much as the other preachers, and if he regards the atonement as a dogma with a mistake for a foundation, they may conclude that the whole system is a mistake. But whether Mr. Beecher is mistaken or not, people know that honesty is a good thing, that gratitude is a virtue, that industry supports the world, and that whatever they believe about religion they are bound by every conceivable obligation to be just and generous. Mr. Beecher can no more succeed in reconciling science and religion, than he could in convincing the world that triangles and circles are exactly the same. There is the same relation between science and religion that there is between astronomy and astrology, between alchemy and chemistry, between orthodoxy and common sense.
Question. Have you read Miss Cleveland's book? She condemns George Eliot's poetry on the ground that it has no faith in it, nothing beyond. Do you imagine she would condemn Burns or Shelley for that reason?
Answer. I have not read Miss Cleveland's book; but, if the author condemns the poetry of George Eliot, she has made a mistake. There is no poem in our language more beautiful than "The Lovers," and none loftier or purer than "The Choir Invisible." There is no poetry in the "beyond." The poetry is here—here in this world, where love is in the heart. The poetry of the beyond is too far away, a little too general. Shelley's "Skylark" was in our sky, the daisy of Burns grew on our ground, and between that lark and that daisy is room for all the real poetry of the earth.
—Evening Record, Boston, Mass., 1885.