This is the doctrine of the Christian world. If this dogma be true, then God will never release a soul from hell—the pardoning power will never be exercised.
How happy God will be and how happy all the saved will be, knowing that billions and billions of his children, of their fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, wives, and children are convicts in the eternal dungeons, and that the words of pardon will never be spoken!
Yet this is in accordance with the promise contained in the New Testament, of happiness here and eternal joy hereafter, to those who would desert brethren or sisters, or father or mother, or wife or children.
It seems to me clear that Christianity did not bring "tidings of great joy," but that it came with a "message of eternal grief"—that it did "fill the future with fear and flame," that it did make God "the keeper of an eternal penitentiary," that the penitentiary "was destined to be the home of nearly all the sons of men," and that "it deprived God of the pardoning power."
Of course you can find passages full of peace, in the Bible, others of war—some filled with mercy, and others cruel as the fangs of a wild beast.
According to the Methodists, God has an eternal prison—an everlasting Siberia. There is to be an eternity of grief, of agony and shame.
What do I think of what the Doctor says about the Telegram for having published my Christmas sermon?
The editor of the Christian Advocate has no idea of what intellectual liberty means. He ought to know that a man should not be insulted because another man disagrees with him.
What right has Dr. Buckley to disagree with Cardinal Gibbons, and what right has Cardinal Gibbons to disagree with Dr. Buckley? The same right that I have to disagree with them both.
I do not warn people against reading Catholic or Methodist papers or books. But I do tell them to investigate for themselves—to stand by what they believe to be true, to deny the false, and, above all things, to preserve their mental manhood. The good Doctor wants the Telegram destroyed—wants all religious people to unite for the purpose of punishing the Telegram—because it published something with which the reverend Doctor does not agree, or rather that does not agree with the Doctor.