Christianity is Intolerant.
Revelation does not admit of two sides to religious questions. There is only one side, say the Moodys and Talmages, and that side is God’s side. We have no right to question Holy Writ. We must accept it. “Believe or be damned,” does not admit of the latitude of free thought, or the right of reason to question the authority of the Bible.
“Reason is ‘carnal,’ says the Christian idolator, and you cannot rely upon it—only trust in Jesus and you are saved.”
The following historical facts prove beyond question that intolerance is the very soul of Christianity:
“When any step was taken to establish a system of permanent institutions, which might effectually protect liberty from the invasions of power in general, the church always ranged herself on the side of despotism.” (Guizot’s “History of Civilization in Europe,” p. 154.)
“Persecution for religious heterodoxy, in all its degrees, was in the sixteenth century, the principle as well as the practice of every church.” (Hallam’s “Middle Ages,” vol. 2, p. 48.)
When Queen Mary, the first queen of England, had burned Latimer, Ridley and others, and her ministers had chided her for it, she replied that she did not think God could be angry with her for burning the heretics a few hours in this world, for their heresy, since he was going to burn them eternally in the next world for the same thing.
Here you have the unadulterated article. It is nothing, if not intolerant, and in every age and country, with sword and hand, has commanded the trembling people to believe or be damned. And the Christian who does not do his utmost toward having heretics and infidels burned at the stake, is trying to be better than his God.
Hell, Hades, Gehenna, Sheol.
How many mortals have been frightened out of their senses by the false alarm of fire in the next world. Preachers have pictured to mothers their children who died without the sacraments of the church being administered to them, as rolling on the fiery billows of hell. Parents have been demented by such descriptions, and have gone to lunatic asylums, or to their graves in consequence. Millions thus frightened have joined the church, and confessed belief in the creed, although they may not have known the meaning of a single article of it. But once having avowed their adherence to the church have lived lives of hypocrisy ever afterward because they had not the honor and the courage to break away from their bondage. What stories the pulpit has related of Infidels being struck dead for profanity and blasphemy. These holy pulpit alarmists will have much to answer for if there is any such thing as a judgment day or a God in Israel.
It is plain that Jesus taught the doctrine of future, if not endless punishment. It was endless punishment to those who committed the unpardonable sin: “And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him; but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come.” ([Mat. 12 : 32].)
Other passages may be cited to show that Jesus taught the horrible doctrine of eternal torment, and all efforts on the part of modern commentators to explain away hell are in vain. “And these shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal.” ([Mat. 25 : 46].)
If these words do not teach the doctrine of endless torment, it would be a hard matter to express it in the vernacular.
Pictures of Hell.
John Bunyan describes this interesting locality, and its inhabitants thus: “All the devils in hell will be with thee howling and roaring, screeching and yelling in such a manner that, thou wilt be at thy wits end, and be ready to run stark mad from anguish and torment. * * * Here thou must lie and fry, and scorch, and broil, and burn forevermore.”
The father of New England theology, Jonathan Edwards, portrays his own imagination after this fashion:
“The saints in glory will be far more sensible, how dreadful the wrath of God is, and will better understand how terrible the sufferings of the damned are, yet this will be no occasion of grief to them, but rejoicings. They will not be sorry for the damned: it will cause no uneasiness or dissatisfaction to them, but on the contrary when they see this sight, it will occasion rejoicing, and excite them to joyful praises.”
Dr. Emmons reveals his own “true inwardness” by giving it the following description:
“The happiness of the elect in heaven will in part consist of watching the torment of the damned in hell. Among these it may be their own children, parents, husbands, wives and friends on earth. One part of the business of the blest is to celebrate the doctrine of reprobation. While the decree of reprobation is eternally executing on the vessels of wrath, the smoke of their torment will be eternally ascending in view of the vessels of mercy who instead of taking the part of those miserable objects will sing, Amen, hallelujah: praise the Lord.”
Again, he says: “When they (the saints) see how great the misery is from which God hath saved them and how great a difference he hath made between their state and the state of others who were by nature, and perhaps by practice no more sinful and ill deserving than they, it will give them more a sense of the wonderfulness of God’s grace to them in making them so to differ. The sight of hell-torments will exalt the happiness of the saints forever.”
“Where saints and angels from their blest abode,
Chanting loud hallelujahs to their God.
Look down on sinners in the realm of woe
And draw fresh pleasures from the scenes below.”
The Rev. Thomas Button, describes the bottomless character of his fancies thus:
“The godly wife shall applaud the justice of the judge in the condemnation of her ungodly husband. The godly husband shall say, Amen! to the damnation of her who lay in his bosom. The godly parent shall say hallelujah! at the passing of the sentence upon the ungodly child. And the godly child, shall from his heart, approve the damnation of his wicked parents who begot him, and the mother who bore him.”
Thomas Vincent, a reverend, raves after this fashion: “This will fill them, the saints, with astonishing admiration and joy, when they see some of their near relatives going to hell; their fathers, their mothers, their children, their husbands, their wives, their human friends, and companions while they themselves are saved. * * * Those affections they now have for relatives out of Christ will cease, and they will not have the least trouble to see them sentenced to hell and thrust into the fiery furnace.”
My thoughts on awful subjects roll,
Damnation and the dead;
What horrors seize the guilty soul
Upon a dying bed.
Where endless crowds of sinners lie,
And darkness makes their chains;
Tortured with keen despair they cry,
Yet wait for fiercer pains.
Then swift and dreadful she descends
Down to the fiery coast
Amongst abominable fiends,
Herself a frighted ghost.
Adore and tremble, for your God
Is a consuming fire;
His jealous eyes with wrath inflame,
And raise his vengeance higher.
Almighty vengeance, how it burns!
Vast magazines of plagues and storms
Lie treasured for his foes.
These grisly rhymes full of horrors are found in one of Watt’s hymn books written in England in the early part of the last century, but they are omitted from all modern hymn books.
Tertullian finds great joy in the idea of seeing his enemies in hell.
“What shall be the magnitude of that scene! How shall I laugh! How shall I rejoice! How shall I triumph when I behold so many and such illustrious kings, who were said to have mounted into heaven, groaning with Jupiter their god, in the lowest darkness of hell.” (Quoted by Lecky, “Rationalism in Europe,” vol. 1, p. 329.)
“One great objection to the Old Testament is the cruelty said to have been commanded by God, but all the cruelties recounted in the Old Testament ceased with death. The vengeance of Jehovah stopped at the portal of the tomb. He never threatened to avenge himself upon the dead; and not one word, from the first mistake in Genesis to the last curse of Malachi, contains the slightest intimation that God will punish in another world. It was reserved for the New Testament to make known the frightful doctrine of eternal pain. It was the teacher of universal benevolence who rent the veil between time and eternity, and fixed the horrified gaze of man on the lurid gulfs of hell. Within the breast of non-resistance was coiled the worm that never dies.” (Ingersoll’s Reply to Black.)
“Is it necessary that heaven should borrow its light from the glare of hell? Infinite punishment is infinite cruelty, endless injustice, immortal meanness. To worship an eternal gaoler hardens, debases, and pollutes the soul. While there is one sad and breaking heart in the universe, no perfectly good being can be perfectly happy. Against the heartlessness of this doctrine every grand and generous soul should enter its solemn protest. I want no part in any heaven where the saved, the ransomed, and the redeemed drown with merry shout the cries and sobs of hell—in which happiness forgets misery—where the tears of the lost increase laughter and deepen the dimples of joy. The idea of hell was born of ignorance, brutality, fear, cowardice, and revenge. This idea tends to show that our remote ancestors were the lowest beasts. Only from dens, lairs, and caves—only from mouths filled with cruel fangs—only from hearts of fear and hatred—only from the conscience of hunger and lust—only from the lowest and most debased, could come this most cruel, heartless, and absurd of all dogmas.” (Ingersoll’s Reply to Black.)
“A religion that teaches a mother that she can be happy in heaven, with her children in hell—in everlasting torment—strikes at the very roots of family affection. It makes the human heart stone. Love that means no more than that, is not love at all. No heart that has ever loved can see the object of its affection in pain, and itself be happy. The thing is impossible. Any religion that can make that possible is more to be dreaded than war or famine or pestilence or death. It would eat out all that is great and beautiful and good in this life. It would make life a mockery and love a curse.” (Helen H. Gardener’s “Men, Women, and Gods.”)
“They divided the world into saints and sinners, and all the saints were going to heaven, and all the sinners yonder. Now, then, you stand in the presence of a great disaster. A house is on fire, and there is seen at a window the frightened face of a woman with a babe in her arms, appealing for help; humanity cries out, “Will some one go to the rescue?” They do not ask for a Methodist, Baptist, or a Catholic; they ask for a man. All at once there starts from the crowd one that nobody ever suspected of being a saint; one may be, with a bad reputation; but he goes up the ladder and is lost in the smoke and flame; and a moment after he emerges, and the great circles of flames hiss around him; in a moment more he has reached the window; in another moment, with the woman and child in his arms, he reaches the ground and gives his fainting burden to the by-standers, and the people all stand hushed for a moment, as they always do at such times, and then the air is rent with acclamations. Tell me that that man in going to be sent to hell, to eternal flames, who is willing to risk his life rather than a woman and child should suffer from the fire one moment! I despise that doctrine of hell! Any man that believes in eternal hell is afflicted with at least two diseases; petrifaction of the heart and putrefaction of the brain.” (Ingersoll’s “Ghosts.”)