Did a merciful God inspire this prayer?
“Let his days be few; and let another take his office. Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow. Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg; let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places. Let the extortioner catch all that he hath; and let the strangers spoil his labor. Let there be none to extend mercy unto him; neither let there be any to favor his fatherless children” (Ps. cix, 8–12).
“In the literature of the world there is nothing more heartless, more infamous, than the 109th Psalm.”—Ingersoll.
Let me quote from the New Testament:
“He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned” (Mark xvi, 16).
“Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire” (Matt. xxv, 41).
“These shall go away into everlasting punishment” (Matt. xxv, 46).
“Cast into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched” (Mark ix, 45).
These passages ought to consign to everlasting abhorrence the being who uttered them, the book containing them, and the church indorsing them. This dogma of endless punishment is the dogma of fiends, the most infamous dogma that human lips have ever breathed! What needless terror it has inspired! What misery it has caused! Think of the millions of innocent children whose young lives it has filled with gloom! This horrible nightmare of hell has strewn the pathway of childhood with thorns where flowers should have been made to bloom; it has filled the minds of children with fear and made them wretched when their hearts should have been filled with joy; it has robbed home of wife and mother, it has driven thousands of pure and loving women to madness and despair. I had rather trace my descent to the tiger or hyena than to the creation of a God who dooms his creatures to eternal pain; and the time will come when the remembrance of the theologians who have taught this hideous lie will provoke more shame and pity than the ancestral apes do now.
“If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house” (2 John i, 10).