259. It is extremely striking to read in this connection the following extract from Plato’s Gorgias. We quote from Jowett’s translation. Socrates is the speaker:—
‘This is a tale, Callicles, which I have heard and believe, and from which I draw the following inferences: Death, if I am right, is in the first place the separation from one another of two things, soul and body;—this, and nothing else. And after they are separated they retain their several characteristics, which are much the same as in life; the body has the same nature and ways and affections, all clearly discernible; for example, he who by nature or training, or both, was a tall man while he was alive, will remain as he was after he is dead; and the fat man will remain fat; and so on: and the dead man, who in life had a fancy to have flowing hair, will have flowing hair. And if he was marked with the whip and had the prints of the scourge, or of wounds in him while he was alive, you might see the same in the dead body; and if his limbs were broken or misshapen while he was alive, the same appearance would be visible in the dead. And, in a word, whatever was the habit of the body during life would be distinguishable after death, either perfectly or in a great measure and for a time. And I should infer that this is equally true of the soul, Callicles; when the man is stripped of the body all the natural or acquired affections of the soul are laid open to view. And when they come to the judge, as those from Asia came to Rhadamanthus, he places them near him and inspects them quite impartially, not knowing whose the soul is: perhaps he may lay hands on the soul of the great king, or of some other king or potentate, who has no soundness in him, but his soul is marked with the whip, and is full of the prints and scars of perjuries, and of wrongs which have been plastered into him by each action, and he is all crooked with falsehood and imposture, because he has lived without truth. Him Rhadamanthus beholds, full of all deformity and disproportion, which is caused by licence and luxury and insolence and incontinence, and despatches him ignominiously to his prison, and there he undergoes the punishment which he deserves.’
260. As, in Eastern monarchies, a veil was sometimes cast over the face of the guilty;[67] so in the New Testament the veil of darkness is drawn over the fate of the lost soul who falls into the hands of the living God. ‘And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man which had not on a wedding-garment: and he saith unto him, Friend, how camest thou in hither, not having a wedding-garment? And he was speechless. Then said the king to the servants, Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’[68]
We greatly question whether any school of theologians have succeeded in throwing a single ray of real light into this mysterious region.[69] Our readers are well aware that there are three such schools. One of these contemplates the eternity of punishment physical, mental, or both; another the final salvation of all men; while a third expects the annihilation of the wicked in Gehenna. Now while it is entirely without our province to enter into these discussions, we may yet be permitted to point out that, as it appears to us, the principle of Continuity demands not merely one state, but rather an eternal and infinite succession of states, in order to constitute true immortality.
The precise conditions of such an immortality it is not for us to discuss. Under any school of theological thought a glorious immortality implies the ultimate union, morally and spiritually, of the individual with the Divine over-life, while the fate of the impenitent must surely be something so awful that language fails to bring it fully before the mind.
261. But this graphic and powerful picture of the fate of the lost fared as badly as other New Testament conceptions when it fell into the hands of the materialists of the middle ages. Its meaning was entirely altered, and the Christian Hell, instead of being the Gehenna of the Universe, where all its garbage and filth is consumed, was changed into a region shut in by adamantine walls and full of impossible physical fires—the Devil being the chief stoker.
The one idea is awful, while the other is simply grotesque. An antient Jew who had occasion to pass by the valley of Hinnom, and whose senses were invaded by the sights and smells of that doleful region, must have entertained a conception of the Hell described by Christ as different as possible from that which has reached us from the middle ages, and to which some even of the readers of this book may have been accustomed in their earlier years. The reader who desires to know something of the more than fiendish malignity with which human beings (mainly Christian ministers) have improved upon the solemn but markedly reserved language of Scripture on such points has only to refer to the Inferno. Perhaps the hideous realism of Doré’s illustrations will of itself be enough for him. If not, a very few lines of the original cannot fail to suffice.
Perch’ io dissi:—Maestro, esti tormenti
Cresceranno ei dopo la gran sentenza,
O fien minori, o saran si cocenti?