“With my limited power I can not elaborate this point, or even present it as I should like to, and you must be content with a bare and imperfect statement.”
July 6, 1882:
“Before the mythologists of antiquity had constructed a hell they had on their hands a personal, individualized spirit of evil, known as the serpent or satan, and more modernly as the devil. Investing this mythological creature with all the distinguishing attributes of the Lord, save that of goodness, they must have a localized place of sufficient capacity, and properly arranged for the enjoyment by him of the fruits of his labors. Divesting him of all goodness per se, the hell of their creation must necessarily represent his newly-acquired condition of total depravity, for previously he had been an angel in heaven, and must possess the proper and sufficient elements to enable him to gratify his hatred of the Lord in the punishment of his children. It was but natural in that day that the element of fire should be chosen, as it was supposed to be the most destructive element in nature, and best calculated in its very nature to induce the most intense and excruciating suffering to physical and material bodies possessed of the animating principle of animal life. In their unspiritual and ignorant state they supposed and believed that the bodies in the other world would be similar to those in this, and therefore subject to similar effects from heat and fire. What a monstrous conception, and how utterly inexplicable that it should ever have been believed. Even John the Revelator took a material view of hell, and described it as a ‘lake of fire and brimstone.’
“I was compelled, or rather impelled, from reason or from experiences sufficiently clear, in my frequent moods or states of spiritual exaltation to depart from this grossly materialistic view. While my hells were in the plural, yet I fell into nearly as great error in my creations. They were the progeny of imperfect visions, imperfectly understood and grossly erroneous in their relation.
“You have only to think a moment seriously to discover the utter folly of my hells, and I will only present one instance among many equally absurd. You will find in my ‘memorable relations’ that I spoke of a certain class of Jews and others wading through mud, quagmires and swamps, and being injuriously affected by them, and this for the purposes of punishment. Now, the conception of a spirit, composed largely of pure ether, wading in the mire and wallowing in spiritual miasmatic swamps and filthy dirt, is only equaled by the mythological conception believed in and advocated by Christians that a spirit could be effected to any degree of suffering by material fire and brimstone. Both conceptions are as false as God is true.
“In reference to the mythological arch fiend of mankind let us summarize: First an angel in heaven; then a rebel; then a war in the peaceful realms of heaven, instigated by this fiend; then the fall from the angelic state; then a transformation into a terrible and grim devil; then the building of a hell for his use, convenience and felicity, and then turning over to his control and malignant fiendishness three-fourths or more of poor, weak beings, creatures of an Infinite God, and you have fitly spoken a system that could only have originated in an orthodox hell, figuratively speaking, and by an orthodox devil, and which for malevolence far exceeds any thing ever thought of in this or any other world.”
July 17, 1882:
“The bible makers having established a heaven and hell, with God presiding over the one and the devil over the other, were driven to the necessity of concocting a scheme for populating them. The God of their creation they represent to be possessed of infinite perfections and glory, and heaven the very ideal of grandeur and beatitude. One would very naturally conclude that in their scheme they would have so arranged that God would have had the first choice, and heaven the destination of the best and wisest of the denizens of earth. Nothing short of this could have so completely enamored us of the conception and rendered heaven devoutly to be wished for; but here the arrangement in value and superlative worth meets with a severe set back. One of the weak and frail points in the scheme consists in not allowing this infinite God to have his own choice in selecting those to become consociated with him in enjoying celestial delights in heaven. Human nature, by the fall in the Garden of Eden, became weak and subjected to malign influences with an inadequacy of repellant power to overcome them. The cruel authors of this system, while they establish their god in heaven, a far distant locality, and keep him there constantly occupied and absorbed with the music and praises of the ransomed few, turn the devil loose to roam at will, and invest him not only with the deific attribute of omnipresence, but also confer upon him the extraordinary power without restraint of assuming angel’s garbs even to the deceiving of the elect. In addition they place under his authority and to do his bidding an unlimited number of smaller devils, whose services have been utilized by him in preying upon the peace and happiness of the children of this world, and in preparing their souls for eternal punishment and subservience to his will in the world to come.”
July 20, 1882:
“To counteract this terrible invisible influence of evil no power of equal potency is furnished. They say that God’s holy spirit in conjunctive co-operation with the saints embodied (they mean, of course, the preachers and good church people) is seeking man’s deliverance and salvation. They confess, however, that this agency is impotent when compared with the power wielded by the devil and his invisible cohorts. They make Jesus say substantially that the road that leads to heaven is narrow and circumscribed and few travel in it, while the road that leads to hell is broad and the many travel therein, ‘many shall be called, but few chosen,’ etc., etc.