soul of Jesus, who wept over Jerusalem, and loved the "unevangelical" young lawyer who was "not far from the kingdom of heaven," and yearned towards the penitent Peter, and from the tenderness of his immaculate purity said to the adulteress, "Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more." There are some sectarians in whom the arbitrary narrowness, fierceness, and rigidity of their received creeds have so demoralized and hardened conscience and sensibility in their native healthy directions, and artificially inflamed them in diseased channels, that we verily believe, if the decision of the eternal destiny of the human race were placed in their hands, they would with scarcely a twinge of pain perhaps some of them even with a horrid satisfaction and triumph doom all except their own dogmatic coterie to hell. They are bound to do so. They profess to know infallibly that God will do so: if, therefore, the case being in their arbitration, they would decide differently, they thereby impeach the action of God, confess his decrees irreconcilable with reason and justice, and set up their own goodness as superior to his. Burnet has preserved the plea of Bloody Mary, which was in these words: "As the souls of heretics are hereafter to be eternally burning in hell, there can be nothing more proper than for me to imitate the Divine vengeance by burning them on earth." Thanks be to the infinite Father that our fate is in his hands, and not in the hands of men who are bigots,
"Those pseudo Privy Councillors of God,
Who write down judgments with a pen hard nibb'd:
Ushers of Beelzebub's black rod,
Commending sinners, not to ice thick ribb'd,
But endless flames to scorch them up like flax,
Yet sure of heaven themselves, as if they'd cribb'd
The impression of St. Peter's keys in wax!"
It may be thought that this doctrine and its awful concomitants, though once promulgated, are now nearly obsolete. It is true that, in thinking minds and generous hearts, they are getting to be repudiated. But by no means is it so in the recognised formularies of the established Churches and in the teachings of the popular clergy. All through the Gentile world, wherever there is a prevailing religion, the threats and horrors of a fearful doctrine of hell are still brandished over the trembling or careless multitudes. In Christendom, the authoritative announcement of the Roman and Greek Churches, and the public creeds confessed by every communicant of all the denominations, save two or three which are comparatively insignificant in numbers, show that the doctrine is yet held without mitigation. The Bishop of Toronto, only a year or two ago, published the authoritative declaration that "every child of humanity, except the Virgin Mary, is from the first moment of conception a child of wrath, hated by the blessed Trinity, belonging to Satan, and doomed to hell!" Indeed, the doctrine, in its whole naked and frightful extent, is necessarily, in strict logic, an integral part of the great system of the popular Christianity, that is, Christianity as falsely interpreted, paganized, and scholasticized. For if by the sin of Adam the entire race were totally depraved and condemned to a hopeless hell, and only those can be saved who personally appropriate by a realizing faith the benefits of the subsequent artifice carried out in the atoning blood of the incarnate God, certainly the extremist advocate of the doctrine concerning hell has not exceeded the truth, and cannot exceed it. All the necessities of logic rebuke the tame hearted theologians, and great Augustine's, great Calvin's, ghost walks unapproached among them, crying out that they are slow and inefficient in describing the enormous sweep of the inherited penalty! Many persons who have not taken pains to examine the subject suppose that the horrifying descriptions given by Christian authors of the state and sufferings of the lost were not intended to be literally received, but were meant as figures of speech, highly wrought metaphors calculated to alarm and impress with physical emblems corresponding only to moral and spiritual realities. The progress of thought and refinement has made it natural that recourse should often be had to such an explanation; but unquestionably it is a mistake. The annals of theology, both dogmatic and homiletic, from the time of the earliest Fathers till now, abound in detailed accounts of the future punishment of the wicked, whereof the context, the train of thought, and all the intrinsic characteristics of style and coherence, do not leave a shadow of doubt that they were written as faithful, though inadequate, accounts of facts. The Church, the immense bulk of Christendom, has in theory always regarded hell and its dire concomitants as material facts, and not as merely spiritual experiences.
Tertullian says, "The damned burn eternally without consuming, as the volcanoes, which are vents from the stored subterranean fire of hell, burn forever without wasting." 5 Cyprian declares that "the wretched bodies of the condemned shall simmer and blaze in those living fires." Augustine argues at great length and with ingenious varieties of reasoning to show how the material bodies of the damned may withstand annihilation in everlasting fire.6 Similar assertions, which cannot be figuratively explained, are made by Irenaus, Jerome, Athanasius, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventura, Gerson, Bernard, and indeed by almost all the Christian writers. Origen, who was a Platonist, and a heretic on many points, was severely condemned for saying that the fire of hell was inward and of the conscience, rather than outward and of the body. For the strict materiality of the fire of hell we might adduce volumes of authorities from nearly every province of the Church. Dr. Barrow asserts that "our bodies will be afflicted continually by a sulphurous flame, piercing the inmost sinews." John Whitaker thinks "the bodies of the damned will be all salted with fire, so tempered and prepared as to burn the more fiercely and yet never consume." Jeremy Taylor teaches that "this temporal fire is but a painted fire in respect of that penetrating and real fire in hell." Jonathan Edwards soberly and believingly writes thus: "The world will probably be converted into a great lake or liquid globe of fire, a vast ocean of fire, in which the wicked shall be overwhelmed, which will always be in tempest, in which they shall be tost to and fro, having no rest day or night, vast waves or billows of fire continually rolling over their heads, of which they shall forever be full of a quick sense within and without: their heads, their eyes, their tongues, their hands, their feet, their loins, and their vitals shall forever be full of a glowing, melting fire, fierce enough to melt the very rocks and elements; and also they shall eternally be full of the most quick and lively sense
5 Apol. cap. 47-48.
6 De Civ. Dei, lib. xxi. cap. 2 4.
to feel the torments; not for one minute, nor for one day, nor for one age, nor for two ages, nor for a hundred ages, nor for ten thousands of millions of ages one after another, but for ever and ever, without any end at all, and never, never be delivered." 7 Calvin says, "Iterum quaro, unde factum est, ut tot gentes una cum liberis eorum infantibus aterna morti involveret lapsus Ada absque remedio, nisi quia Deo ita visum est? Decretum horribile fateor." 8 Outraged humanity before the contemplation cries, "O God, horror hath overwhelmed me, for thou art represented as an omnipotent Fiend." It is not the Father of Christ, but his Antagonist, whose face glares down over such a scene as that! The above diabolical passage at the recital of which from the pulpit, Edwards's biographers tell us, "whole congregations shuddered and simultaneously rose to their feet, smiting their breasts, weeping and groaning" is not the arbitrary exaggeration of an individual, but a fair representation of the actual tenets and vividly held faith of the Puritans. It is also, in all its uncompromising literality, a direct and inevitable part of the system of doctrine which, with insignificant exceptions, professedly prevails throughout Christendom at this hour. We know most persons will hesitate at this statement; but let them look at the logic of the case in the light of its history, and they must admit the correctness of the assertion. Weigh the following propositions, the accuracy of which no one, we suppose, will question, and it will appear at once that there is no possibility of avoiding the conclusion.
First, it is the established doctrine of Christendom that no one can be saved without a supernatural regeneration, or sincere faith in the vicarious atonement, or valid reception of sacramental grace at the hands of a priest, conditions which it is not possible that one in a hundred thousand of the whole human race has fulfilled. Secondly, it is the established doctrine of Christendom that there will be a general day of judgment, when all men will be raised in the same bodies which they originally occupied on earth, when Christ and his angels will visibly descend from heaven, separate the elect from the reprobate, summon the sheep to the blissful pastures on the right hand, but "Proclaim The flocks of goats to folds of flame."
The world is to be burnt up, and the damned, restored to their bodies, are to be driven into the everlasting fire prepared for them. The resurrection of the body, still held in all Christendom, taken in connection with the rest of the associated scheme, necessitates the belief in the materiality of the torments of hell. That eminent living divine, Dr. Gardiner Spring, says, "The souls of all who have died in their sins are in hell; and there their bodies too will be after the resurrection." 9 Mr. Spurgeon also, in his graphic and fearful sermon on the "Resurrection of the Dead," uses the following language: "When thou diest, thy soul will be tormented alone; that will be a hell for it: but at the day of judgment thy body will join thy soul, and then thou wilt have twin hells, thy soul sweating drops of blood, and thy body suffused with agony. In fire exactly like that which we have on earth thy body will lie,
7 Edwards's Works, vol. viii. p. 166.