The Christian Idea Of Hell may be seen by quoting the following
testimonies. Do they resemble anything in the Old Testament? Do they not
exactly copy the heathen descriptions? Where did these ideas come from? They
are not found in the Old Testament? And yet the world was full of them when
Christ came. Read the verse of Pollok as lurid and blasphemous as it is
vigorous:
Wide was the place,
And deep as wide, and ruinous as
deep.
Beneath I saw a lake of burning fire,
With tempest tost perpetually, and
still
The waves of fiery darkness, gainst
the rocks
Of dark damnation broke, and music
made
Of melancholy sort; and over head,
And all around, wind warred with
wind, storm howled
To storm, and lightning forked
lightning, crossed,
And thunder answered thunder,
muttering sound
Of sullen wrath; and far as sight
could pierce,
Or down descend in caves of hopeless
depth,
Thro' all that dungeon of unfading
fire,
I saw most miserable beings walk,
Burning continually, yet unconsumed;
Forever wasting, yet enduring still;
Dying perpetually, yet never dead.
Some wandered lonely in the desert
flames,
And some in fell encounter fiercely
met,
With curses loud, and blasphemies,
that made
The cheek of darkness pale; and as
they fought,
And cursed, and gnashed their teeth,
and wished to die
Their hollow eyes did utter streams
of wo.
And there were groans that ended not,
and sighs
That always sighed, and tears that
ever wept,
And ever fell, but not in Mercy's
sight
And Sorrow, and Repentance, and
Despair,
Among them walked, and to their
thirsty lips
Presented frequent cups of burning
gall.
And as I listened, I heard these
being curse
Almighty God, and curse the Lamb, and
curse
The Earth, the Resurrection morn, and
seek,
And ever vainly seek for utter death.
And to their everlasting anguish
still,
The thunders from above responding
spoke
These words, which thro' the caverns
of perdition
Forlornly echoing, fell on every ear-
"Ye knew your duty but ye did it
not"
The place thou saw'st was Hell; the
groans thou heard'st
The wailings of the damned-of those
who would
Not be redeemed-and at the judgment
day,
Long past for unrepented sins were
damned.
The seven loud thunders which thou heard'st, declare
The eternal wrath of the Almighty
God.
There in utter darkness, far
Remote, I beings saw forlorn in wo.
Burning, continually yet unconsumed.
And there were groans that ended not,
and sighs
That always sighed, and tears that
ever wept
And ever fell, but not in Mercy's
sight;
And still I heard these wretched
beings curse
Almighty God, and curse the Lamb, and
curse
The Earth, the Resurrection morn, and
seek,
And ever vainly seek for utter death;
And from above the thunders answered
still,
"Ye know your duty, but ye did
it not."
Such descriptions are not confined to
poetry. Plain prose has sought to set forth the doctrine in words equally
repulsive and graphic. Rutherford, in his "Religious Letters,"
declares that hereafter "Tongue, lungs and liver, bones and all shall
boil and fry in a torturing fire,--a river of fire and brimstone, broader than
the earth!"
Boston, in his 'Fourfold State,'
says: "There will be universal torments, every part of the creature being
tormented in that flame. When one is cast into a fiery furnace, the fire makes
its way into the very bowels, and leaves no member untouched; what part then
can have ease when the damned sinner is in a lake of fire, burning with
brimstone?"
Buckle, in his "Civilization in
England," thus sums up the popular doctrine: "In the pictures which
they drew, they reproduced and heightened the barbarous imagery of a barbarous
age. They delighted in telling their hearers that they would be roasted in
great fires and hung up by their tongues. They were to be lashed with
scorpions, and see their companions writhing and howling around them. They
were to be thrown into boiling oil and scalding lead. A river of brim-stone
broader than the earth was prepared for them; in that they were to be
immersed. . . Such were the first stages of suffering, and they were only the
first. For the torture besides being unceasing, was to become gradually worse.
So refined was the cruelty, that one Hell was succeeded by another; and, lest
the sufferer should grow callous, he was, after a time, moved on, that he
might undergo fresh agonies in fresh places, provision being made that the
torment should not pall on the sense, but should be varied in its character as
well as eternal in its duration.
"All this was the work of the
God of the Scotch clergy. It was not only his work, it was his joy and his
pride. For, according to them, Hell was created before man came into the word;
the Almighty, they did not hesitate to say, having spent his previous leisure
in preparing and completing this place of torture, so that when the human race
appeared, it might be ready for their reception. Ample, however, as the
arrangements were, they were insufficient; and Hell not being big enough to
contain the countless victims incessantly poured into it, had, in these latter
days, been enlarged. But in that vast expanse there was no void, for the whole
of it reverberated with the shrieks and yells of undying agony. Both children
and fathers made Hell echo with their piercing screams, writhing in convulsive
agony at the torments which they suffered, and knowing that other torments
more grievous still were reserved for them." And it was not an infinite
Devil, but a just and merciful God who was accused of having committed all
this infernal cruelty.
Michael Angelo's Last Judgment is an
attempt to de-scribe in paint, what was believed then and has been for
centuries since. Henry Ward Beecher thus refers to that great painting.
(Plymouth Pulpit, Oct. 29, 1870): "Let any one look at that; let any one
see the enormous gigantic coils of fiends and men; let any one look at the
defiant Christ that stands like a superb athlete at the front, hurling his
enemies from him and calling his friends toward him as Hercules might have
done; let any one look upon that hideous wriggling mass that goes plunging
down through the air-serpents and men and beasts of every nauseous kind, mixed
together; let him look at the lower parts of the picture, where with the
pitchforks men are by devils being cast into caldrons and into burning fires,
where hateful fiends are gnawing the skulls of suffering sinners, and where
there is hellish cannibalism going on-let a man look at that picture and the
scenes which it depicts, and he sees what were the ideas which men once had of
Hell and of divine justice. It was a nightmare as hideous as was ever begotten
by the hellish brood it-self; and it was an atrocious slander on God. . . . I
do not wonder that men have reacted from these horrors-I honor them for
it."
Tertullian says: "How shall I
admire, how laugh, how rejoice, how exult, when I behold so many proud
monarchs groaning in the lowest abyss of darkness; so many magistrates
liquifying in fiercer flames than they ever kindled against the Christians; so
many sage philosophers blushing in red-hot fires with their deluded pupils; so
many tragedians more tuneful in the expression of their own sufferings; so
many dancers tripping more nimbly from anguish then ever before from
applause."
Jeremy Taylor, of the English
Church, says: "The bodies of the damned shall be crowded together in
hell, like grapes in a wine-press, which press one another till they burst;
every distinct sense and organ shall be assailed with its own appropriate and
most exquisite sufferings."
Calvin describes it: "Forever
harassed with a dreadful tempest, they shall feel themselves torn asunder by
an angry God, and transfixed and penetrated by mortal stings, terrified by the
thunderbolts of God, and broken by the weight of this hand, so that to sink
into any gulf would be more tolerable than to stand for a moment in these
terrors."
Jonathan Edwards said: "The
world will probably be converted into a great lake or liquid globe of fire, in
which the wicked shall be overwhelmed, which will always be in tempest, in
which they shall be tossed to and fro, having no rest day or night, vast waves
and 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 flowing, 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 to feel the torments; not for one minute, not for one day,
not for one age, not for two ages, not for a hundred ages, nor for ten
thousand millions of ages, one after another, but forever and ever, without
any end at all, and never to be delivered."
And Spurgeon uses this language even
in our own days: "When you die, the 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 you will 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, asbestos-like, forever unconsumed, all thy veins roads for the
feet of pain to travel on, every nerve a string on which the devil shall
forever play his diabolical tun of Hell's Unutterable Lament."
"A Catholic Book for
Children" says: "The fifth dungeon is a red-hot oven in which is a
little child. Hear how it screams to come out! see how it turns and twists
itself about in the fire! It beats its head against the roof of the oven. It
stamps its little feet on the floor of the oven. To this child God was very
good. Very likely God saw that this child would get worse and worse, and would
never repent, and so it would have to be punished much worse in Hell. So God,
in his mercy, called it out of the world in its early childhood."
Now the horrible ideas we have just
quoted were not obtained from the Old Testament, and yet they were fully
believed by the Jew and Pagan when Christ came. From where came these views?
If the New Testament teaches them, then Christ must have borrowed them from
uninspired heathen. What does the New Testament teach concerning Hell?
Within a few years Christians have
quite generally abandoned their faith in material torments, and have
substituted mental anguish, spiritual torture. But the torment, the anguish,
the woe and agony are only faintly hinted by any possible effect of literal
fire. The modification of opinion from literal fire to spiritual anguish,
gives no relief to the character of God, and renders the "orthodox"
hell no less revolting to every just and merciful feeling in the human heart,
no less dishonorable to God. It is woe unspeakable to millions, without
alleviation and without end, inflicted by a being called God, ordained by him
from the foundation of the world for those he foresaw, before their birth,
would inevitably suffer that woe, if he consented to their birth, compelling
his wretched children to cry for endless eons in the language of Young (Night
Thoughts):
"Father of Mercies! why from
silent earth
Did you awake and curse me into
birth,
Tear me from quiet, banish me from
night,
And make a thankless present of Thy
light,
Push into being a reverse of Thee
And animate a clod with misery?
This question never can be answered.
Good men groping in the eclipse of faith created by the false doctrine of an
endless Hell, have tried in vain to see or explain the reason of it. Albert
Barnes, (Presbyterian,) voices the real thought of millions, when he says:
"That any should suffer forever, lingering on in hopeless despair, and
rolling amidst infinite torments without the possibility of alleviation and
without end; that since God can save men and will save a part, he has not
proposed to save all-these are real, not imaginary, difficulties. . . . My
whole soul pants for light and relief on these questions. But I get neither;
and in the distress and anguish of my own spirit, I confess that I see no
light whatever. I see not one ray to disclose to me why sin came into the
world; why the earth is strewn with the dying and the dead; and why man must
suffer to all eternity. I have never seen a particle of light thrown on these
subjects, that has given a moment's ease to my tortured mind. . . . I confess,
when I look on a world of sinners and sufferers-upon death-beds and
grave-yards-upon the world of woe filled with hosts to suffer for ever: when I
see my friends, my family, my people, my fellow citizens when I look upon a
whole race, all involved in this sin and danger-and when I see the great mass
of them wholly unconcerned, and when I feel that God only can save them, and
yet he does not do so, I am stuck dumb. It is all dark, dark, dark to my soul,
and I cannot disguise it."
