My Path to Atheism

The theory of M'Leod Campbell stands alone, and is highly interesting and ingenious—it is the more valuable and hopeful as coming from Scotland, the home of the dreariest belief as to the relations existing between man and God. He rejects the penal character of the Atonement, and makes it consist, so to speak, in leading God and man to understand one another. He considers that Christ witnessed to men on behalf of God, and vindicated the father's heart by showing what he could be to the son who trusted in him. He witnessed to God on behalf of men—and this is the weakest point in the book, verging, as it does, on substitution—showing in humanity a perfect sympathy with God's feelings towards sin, and offering to God for man a perfect repentance for human transgression. I purposely say "verging," because Campbell does not intend substitution; he represents this sorrow of Jesus as what he must inevitably feel at seeing his brother-men unconscious of their sin and danger, so no fiction is supposed as between God and Christ. But he considers that God, having seen the perfection of repentance in Jesus, accepts the repentance of man, imperfect as it is, because it is in kind the same as that of Jesus, and is the germ of that feeling of which his is the perfect flower; in this sense, and only in this sense, is the repentance of man accepted "for Christ's sake." He considers that men must share in the mind of Christ as towards God and towards sin, in order to be benefited by the work of Christ, and that each man must thus actually take part in the work of atonement. The sufferings of Jesus he regards as necessary in order to test the reality of the life of sonship towards God, and brotherhood towards men, which he came to earth to exemplify. I trust I have done no injustice in this short summary to a very able and thoughtful book, which presents, perhaps, the only view of the Atonement compatible with the love and the justice of God; and this only, of course, if the idea of any atonement can fairly be said to be consistent with justice. The merits of this view are practically that this work of Jesus is not an "atonement" in the theological sense at all. The defects of Campbell's book are inseparable from his creed, as he argues from a belief in the deity of Jesus, from an unconscious limitation of God's knowledge (as though God did not understand man till he was revealed to him by Jesus) and from a wrong conception of the punishment due to sin. I said, at starting, that the Atonement was the raison d'être of Christianity, and, in conclusion, I would challenge all thoughtful men and women to say whether good cause has or has not been shown for rejecting this pillar "of the faith." The Atonement has but to be studied in order to be rejected. The difficulty is to persuade people to think about their creed, Yet the question of this doctrine must be faced and answered. "I have too much faith in the common sense and justice of Englishmen when once awakened to face any question fairly, to doubt what that answer will be."

ON THE MEDIATION AND SALVATION OF ECCLESIASTICAL CHRISTIANITY.

THE whole Christian scheme turns on the assumption of the inherent necessity of some one standing between the Creator and the creature, and shielding the all-weak from the power of the All-mighty. "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God;" such is the key-note of the strain which is chanted alike by Roman Catholicism, with its thousand intercessors, and by Protestantism, with its "one Mediator, the man Christ Jesus." "Speak thou for me," cries man to his favourite mouthpiece, whoever it may be; "go thou near, but let me not see the face of God, lest I die." The heroes, the saints, the idols of humanity, have been the men who have dared to search into the Unseen, and to gaze straight up into the awful Face of God. They have dashed aside all that intervened between their souls and the Eternal Soul, and have found it, as one of them quaintly phrases it, "a profitable sweet necessity to fall on the naked arm of Jehovah." Then, because they dared to-trust Him who had called them into existence, and to stretch out beseeching hands to the Everlasting Father, they have been forced into a position they would have been the very first to protest against, and have been made into mediators for men less bold, for children less confiding. Those who dared not seek God for themselves have clung to the garments of the braver souls, who have thus become, involuntarily, veils between their brother-men and the Supreme. There is, perhaps, no better way of demonstrating the radical errors from which spring all the so-called "schemes of redemption" and "economies of Divine grace" than by starting from the Christian hypothesis.

We will admit, for argument's sake, the Deity of Jesus, in order that we may thus see the more distinctly that a mediator of any kind between God and man is utterly uncalled for. It is mediation, in itself, that is wrong in principle; we object to it as a whole, not to any special manifestation of it. Divine or human mediators, Jesus or his mother, saint, angel, or priest, we reject them each and all; our birthright as human beings is to be the offspring of the Universal Father, and we refuse to have any interloper pressing in between our hearts and His.

We will take mediation first in its highest form, and speak of it as if Jesus were really God as well as man. All Christians agree in asserting that the coming of the Son into the world to save sinners was the result of the love of the Father for these sinners; i.e., "God so loved the world that He sent His Son." The motive-power of the redemption of the world is, then, according to Christians, the deep love of the Creator for the work of His hands. This it was that exiled the Son from the bosom of the Father, and caused the Eternal to be born into time. But now a startling change occurs in the aspect of affairs. Jesus has "atoned for the sins of the world;" he "has made peace through the blood of his cross;" and having done so, he suddenly appears as the mediator for men. What does this pleading of the Son on behalf of sinners imply? Only this—a complete change in the Father's mind towards the world. After the yearning love of which we have heard, after this absolute sacrifice to win His children's hearts, He at last succeeds. He sees His children at His feet, repentant for the past, eager to make amends in the future; human hands appealing to Him, human eyes streaming with tears. He turns His back on the souls He has been labouring to win; He refuses to clasp around His penitents the arms outstretched to them so long, unless they are presented to Him by an accredited intercessor, and come armed with a formal recommendation. The inconsistency of such a procedure must be palpable to all minds; and in order to account for one absurdity, theologians have invented another; having created one difficulty, they are forced to make a second, in order to escape from the first. So they represent God as loving sinners, and desiring to forgive and welcome them. This feeling is the Mercy of God; but, in opposition to the dictates of Mercy, Justice starts up, and forbids any favour to the sinner unless its own claims are first satisfied to the utmost. A Christian writer has represented Mercy and Justice as standing before the Eternal: Mercy pleads for forgiveness and pity, Justice clamours for punishment. Two attributes of the Godhead are personified and placed in opposition to each other, and require to be reconciled. But when we remember that each personified quality is really but a portion, so to speak, of the Divine character, we find that God is divided against Himself. Thus, this theory introduces discord into the harmonious mind which inspires the perfect melodies of the universe. It sees warring elements in the Serenity of the Infinite One; it pictures successive waves of love and anger ruffling that ineffable Calm; it imagines clouds of changing motives sweeping across the sun of that unchanging Will. Such a theory as this must be rejected as soon as realised by the thoughtful mind. God is not a man, to be swayed first by one motive and then by another. His mercy and justice ever point unwaveringly in the same direction: perfect justice requires the same as perfect mercy. If God's justice could fail, the whole moral universe would be in confusion, and that would be the greatest cruelty that could be inflicted on intelligent beings. The weak pliability, miscalled mercy, which is supposed to be worked upon by a mediator, is a human infirmity which men have transferred to their idea of God.

A man who has announced his intention to punish may be persuaded out of his resolution. New arguments may be adduced for the condemned one's innocence, new reasons for clemency may be suggested; or the judge may have been over-strict, or have been swayed by prejudice. Here a mediator may indeed step in, and find good work to do; but, in the name of the Eternal Perfection, what has all this to do with the judgment of God? Can His knowledge be imperfect, His mercy increased? Can His sentence be swayed by prejudice, or made harsh by over-severity?

But if His judgment is already perfect, any change implies imperfection, and all left for the mediator to do is to persuade God to make a change, i.e., to become imperfect; or, God having decided that sin shall be punished, the mediator steps in, and actually so works upon God's feelings that He revokes His decision, and—most cruel of mercies—lets it go unnoticed. Like an unwise parent, God is persuaded not to punish the erring child. But such is not the case. God is just, and because He is just He is most truly merciful: in that justice rests the certainty of the due punishment of sin, and, therefore of the purification of the sinner! and no mediator—thanks be to God for it!—shall ever cause to waver for one instant that Rock of Justice on which reposes the hope of Humanity.

But the theory we are considering has another fatal error in it: it ascribes imperfection to Almighty God. For God is represented as desiring to forgive sinners, and this desire must be either right or wrong. If it be right, it can at once be gratified; but if Justice opposes this forgiveness, then the desire to forgive is not wholly right. Theologians are thus placed in this dilemma: if God is perfect—as He is—any desire of His must likewise be flawlessly perfect, and its fulfilment must be the very best thing that could happen to His whole creation; on the other hand, if there is any barrier of right—and Justice is right—interposed between God and His desire, then His Will is not the most perfect Good. Theologians must then choose between admitting that the desire of God to welcome sinners is just, or detracting from the Eternal Perfection.

It is obvious that we do not weaken our case by admitting, for the moment, the Deity of Jesus; for we are striking at the root-idea of mediation. That the mediator should be God is totally beside the question, and in no way strengthens our adversaries' hands. His Deity does nothing more than introduce a new element of confusion into the affair; for we become entangled in a maze of contradictions. God, who is One, even according to Christians, is at one and the same time estranged from sinners, pleading for sinners, and admitting the pleading. God pleads to Himself—but we are confounding the persons: one God pleads to another—but we are dividing the substance. Alas and alas for the creed which compels its votaries to deny their reason, and degrade their Maker! which babbles of a Nature it cannot comprehend, and forces its foolish contradictions on indignant souls! If Jesus be God, his mediation is at once impossible and unnecessary; if he be God, his will is the will of God; and if he wills to welcome sinners, it is God who wills to welcome them. If he, who is God, is content to pardon and embrace, what further do sinners require? Christians tell us that Jesus is one with God: it is well, we reply; for you say he is the Friend of sinners, and the Redeemer of the lost. If he be God, we both agree as to the friendliness of God to sinners. You need no mediator between you and Jesus; and, since he is God, you need no mediator with God. This reasoning is irrefragable, unless Christians are content to assign to their mediator some place which is less than divine; for they certainly derogate from his dignity when they imagine him as content to receive those whom Almighty God chases from before His face. And in making this difference between Jesus and the Father they make a fatal admission that he is distinct in feeling from God, and therefore cannot be the One God. It is the proper perception of this fact which has introduced into the Roman Church the human mediators whose intercession is constantly implored. Jesus, being God, is too awful to be approached: his mother, his apostles, some saint or martyr, must come between. I have read a Roman Catholic paper about the mediation of Mary which would be accepted by the most orthodox Protestant were Mary replaced by Jesus, and Jesus by the Father. For Jesus is there painted, as the Father is painted by the orthodox, in stern majesty, hard, implacable, exacting the uttermost farthing; and Mary is represented as standing between him and the sinners for whom she pleads. It is only a further development of the idea which makes the man Jesus the Mediator between God and man. As the deification of Mary progresses, following in slow but certain steps the deification of Jesus, a mediator will be required through whom to approach her; and then Jesus, too, will fade out of the hearts of men, as the Father has faded out of the hearts of Christians, and this superstition of mediation will sink lower and lower, till it is rejected by all earnest hearts, and is loathed by human souls which are aching for the living God.

We see, then, that mediation implies an absurd and inexplicable change in the supposed attitude of God towards man, and destroys all confidence in the justice of the Supreme Ruler. We should further take into consideration the strange feeling towards the Universal Heart implied in man's endeavour to push some one in between himself and the Eternal Father. As we study Nature and try to discover from its workings something of the characteristics of the Worker therein, we find not only a ruling Intelligence—a Supreme Reason, before which we bow our heads in an adoration too deep for words—but we catch also beautiful glimpses of a ruling Love—a Supreme Heart, to which our hearts turn with a glad relief from the dark mysteries of pain and evil which press us in on every side. Simple belief in God at all, that is to say, in a Power which works in the Universe, is quite sufficient to disperse any of that feeling of fear which finds its fit expression in the longing for a mediator. For being placed here without our request, and even without our consent, we have surely, as a simple matter of justice, a right to demand that the Power which placed us here shall provide us with means by which we can secure our happiness. I speak, of course, as of a conscious Power, because a blind Force is necessarily irresponsible; but those who believe in a God are bound to acknowledge that He is responsible for their well-being. If any one should suggest that to say thus is to criticise God's dealings and to speak with presumptuous irreverence, I retort that the irreverence lies with those who ascribe to the Supreme a course of action towards His creatures that they themselves would be ashamed to pursue towards their own children, and that they who fling at us the reproach of blasphemy because we will not bow the knee before their idol, would themselves lie open to the charge, were it not that their ignorance shields them from the sterner censure. All good in man—poor shallow streamlet though it be—flows down from the pure depths of the Fountain of Good, and any throb of Love on earth is a pulsation caused by the ceaseless beating of the Universal Father-Heart. Yet men fear to trust that Heart, lest it should cease beating; they fear to rest on God, lest He should play them false. When will they catch even a glimpse of that great ocean of love which encircles the universe as the atmosphere the earth, which is infinite because God is infinite? If there is no spot in the universe of which it can be said, "God is not here," then is there also no spot where love does not rule; if there is no life existing without the support of the Life-Giver and the Life-Sustainer, then is there also no life which is not cradled in the arms of Love. Who then will dare to push himself in between man and a God like this? In the light of the Universal Reason and the Universal Heart mediation stands confessed as an impertinent absurdity. Away with any and all of those who interfere in the most sacred concerns of the soul, who press in between the Creator and His offspring; between the heart of man and the parent Heart of God. Whoever it may be, saint or martyr, or the king of saints and martyrs, Jesus of Nazareth, let him come down from a position which none can rightly hold. To elevate the noblest son of man into this place of mediator is to make him into an offence to his brethren, and to cause their love to turn into anger, and their reverence into indignation. If men persist in talking about the need of a mediator before they dare to approach God, we must remind them that, if there be a God at all, He must be just, and that, therefore, they are perfectly safe In His hands; if they begin to babble about forgiveness "for the sake of Jesus Christ? we must ask them what in the world they mean by the forgiveness of sin?" Surely they do not think that God is like man, quick to revenge affront and jealous of His dignity; even were it possible for man to injure, in any sense, the Majesty of God, do they conceive that God is an irascible and revengeful Potentate? Those who think thus of God can never—I assert boldly—have caught the smallest glimpse of God. They may have seen a "magnified man," but they have seen nothing more; they have never prostrated themselves before that Universal Spirit who dwells in this vast universe; they have never felt their own littleness in a place so great. How can sin be forgiven? can a past act be undone, or the hands go back on the sun-dial of Time? All God's so-called chastisements are but the natural and inevitable results of broken laws—laws invariable in their action, neither to be escaped or defied. Obedience to law results in happiness, and the suffering consequent on the transgression of law is not inflicted by an angry God, but is the simple natural outcome of the broken law itself. Put your hand in the fire, and no mediator can save you from burning; cry earnestly to God to save you, and then cast yourself from a precipice, and will a mediator come between you and the doom you have provoked? We should do more wisely if we studied laws and tried to conform ourselves to them, instead of going blundering about with our eyes shut, trusting that some one will interpose to shield us from the effects of our own folly and stupidity. Happily for mankind, mediation is impossible in that beautiful realm of law in which we are placed; when men have quite made up their minds that their happiness depends entirely on their own exertions, there will at last be some chance for the advancement of Humanity, for then they will work for things instead of praying for them. It is of real practical importance that this Christian notion of mediation should be destroyed, because on it hang all the ideas about trusting to some one else to do our own work. This plan has not answered: we judge it by results, and it has failed. Surely we may hope that as men get to see that prayer has not succeeded in its efforts to "move the arm which moves the world, to bring salvation down," they may turn to the more difficult, but also the more hopeful task, of moving their own arms to work out their own salvation. For the past, it is past, and none can reverse it; none can stay the action of the eternal law which links sorrow with transgression, and joy and peace with obedience. When we slip back on our path upward, we may repent and call on God or man for forgiveness as we list, but only through toil and suffering can the lost way be recovered, and the rugged path must be trodden with bleeding feet; for there is none who can lift the sinner over the hindrances he has built up for himself, or carry him over the rocks with which he has strewed his road.

Does the sentimental weakness of our age shrink from this doctrine, and whimper out that it is cold and stern? Ay, it is cold with the cold of the bracing sea-breeze, stringing to action the nerves enfeebled by hot-houses and soft-living; ay, it is stern with the blessed sternness of changeless law, of law which never fails us, never varies a hair's breadth. But in that law is strength; man's arm is feeble, but let him submit to the laws of steam, and his arm becomes dowered with a giant's force; conform to a law, and the mighty power of that law is on your side; "humble yourself under the mighty hand of God," who is the Universal Law, "and He shall lift you up."

So much for mediation. We turn with a still deeper repugnance to study the Christian idea of "Salvation." Mediation at least leaves us God, however it degrades and blasphemes Him, but salvation takes us altogether out of His Hands. Not content with placing a mediator between themselves and God, Christians cry out that He is still too near them; they must push Him yet further back, they must have a Saviour too, through whom all His benefits shall filter.

"Saviour," is an expression often found in the Old Testament, where it bears a very definite and noble meaning. God is the Saviour of men from the power of sin, and although we may consider that God does not save from sin in this direct manner, we are yet bound to acknowledge that there is nothing in this idea which is either dishonouring or repulsive. But the word "Saviour" has been degraded by Christianity, and the salvation He brings is not a salvation from sin. "The Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ" is the Saviour of men, not because he delivers them from sin, but "because he saves them from hell, and from the fiery wrath of God." Salvation is no longer the equivalent of righteousness, the antithesis of sin; in Christian life it means nothing more than the antithesis of damnation. It is true that Christians may retort that Jesus "saves his people from their sins;" we gladly acknowledge the nobleness and the beauty of many a Christian life, but nevertheless this is not the primary idea attached by popular Christianity to the word "salvation." "Being saved" is to be delivered out of "those hands of the living God," into which, as they are taught by their Bible, it is so fearful a thing to fall. "Being saved" is the immediate result of conversion, and is the opposite of "being lost." "Being saved" is being hidden "in the riven side of Jesus," and so preserved from the awful flames of the destroying wrath of God. Against all this we, believers in an Almighty Love, in a Universal Father, enter our solemn and deliberate protest, with a depth of abhorrence, with a passion of indignation which is far too intense to find any adequate expression in words. There is no language strong enough to show our deeply-rooted repugnance to the idea that we can be safer anywhere or at any time than we are already here; we cannot repel with sufficient warmth the officious interference which offers to take us out of the hands of God. To push some one in between our souls and Him was bad enough; but to go further and to offer us salvation from our Maker, to try and threaten us away from the arms of His Love, to suggest that another's hands are more tender, another's heart more loving than the Supreme Heart,—these are blasphemies to which we will not listen in silence. It is true that to us these suggestions are only matters of laughter; dimly as we guess at the Deity, we know enough not to be afraid of Him, and these crude and childish conceptions about Him are among ourselves too contemptible to refute.

But we see how these ideas colour men's thoughts and lives, how they cripple their intellect and outrage their hearts, and we rise to trample down these superstitions, not because they are in themselves worth refuting, but simply because they degrade our brother-men. We believe in no wisdom that improves on Nature's laws, and one of those laws, written on our hearts, is that sorrow shall tread on the heels of sin. We are conscious that men should learn to welcome this law, and not to shrink from it. To fly from the suffering following on broken law is the last thing we should do; we ought to have no gratitude for a "Saviour" who should bear our punishment, and so cheat us out of our necessary lesson, turn us into spoiled children, and check our moral growth; such an offer as this, could it really be made, ought to be met with stern refusal. We should trust the Supreme so utterly, and adore His wisdom with a humility so profound, that if we could change His laws we should not dare to interfere; nor ought we, even when our lot is saddest, to complain of it, or do anything more than labour to improve it in steadfast obedience to law. We should ask for no salvation; we should desire to fall—were it possible that we could be out of them—into the hands of God.

Further, is it impossible to make Christians understand that were Jesus all they say he is, we should still reject him; that were God all they say He is, we would, in that case, throw back His salvation. For were this awful picture of a soul-destroying Jehovah, of a blood-craving Moloch, endowed with a cruelty beyond human imagination, a true description of the Supreme Being, then would we take the advice of Job's wife, we would "curse God and die?" we would hide in the burning depths of His hell rather than dwell within sight of Him whose brightness would mock at the gloom of His creatures, and whose bliss would be a sneer at their despair. Were it thus indeed—

"Is it not worth while to believe," blandly urges a Christian writer, "if it is true, as it is true, that they who deny will suffer everlasting torments?" No! we thunder back at him, it is not worth while; it is not worth while to believe a lie, or to acknowledge as true that which our hearts and intellects alike reject as false; it is not worth while to sell our souls for a heaven, or to defile our honesty to escape a hell; it is not worth while to bow our knee to a Satan or bend our heads before a spectre. Better, far better, to "dwell with everlasting burnings" than to degrade our humanity by calling a lie, truth, and cruelty, love, and unreasonableness, justice; better to suffer in hell, than to have our hearts so hard that we could enjoy while others suffer; could rejoice while others are tormented, could sing alleluias to the music of golden harps, while our lyrics are echoed by the anguished wailing of the lost. God Himself—were He such as Christians paint Him—could not blot out of our souls our love of truth, of righteousness, of justice. While we have these we are ourselves, and we can suffer and be happy; but we cannot afford to pay down these as the price of our admission to heaven. We should be miserable even as we paced the golden streets, and should sit in tears beside the river of the water of life. Yet this is salvation; this is what Christians offer us in the name of Jesus; this is the glad tidings brought to us as the gospel of the Saviour, as the "good news of God;" and this we reject, wholly and utterly, laughing it to scorn from the depths of our glad hearts which the Truth has made free; this we denounce, with a stern and bitter determination, in the name of the Universal Father, in the name of the self-reliance of humanity, in the name of all that is holy, and just, and loving.

But happily many, even among Christians, are beginning to shrink from this idea of salvation from the God in whom they say they place all their hopes. They put aside the doctrine, they gloss it over, they prefer not to speak of it. Free thought is leavening Christianity, and is moulding the old faith against its will. Christianity now hides its own cruel side, and only where the bold opponents of its creeds have not yet spread, does it dare to show itself in its real colours; in Spain, in Mexico, we see Christianity unveiled; here, in England, liberty is too strong for it, and it is forced into a semblance of liberality. The old wine is being poured into new bottles; what will be the result? We may, however, rejoice that nobler thoughts about God are beginning to prevail, and are driving out the old wicked notions about Him and His revenge. The Face of the Father is beginning, however dimly, to shine out from His world, and before the Beauty of that Face all hard thoughts about Him are fading away. Nature is too fair to be slandered for ever, and when men perceive that God and Nature are One, all that is ghastly and horrible must die and drop into forgetfulness. The popular Christian ideas of mediation and salvation must soon pass away into the limbo of rejected creeds which is being filled so fast; they are already dead, and their pale ghosts shall soon flit no longer to vex and harass the souls of living men.

ON ETERNAL TORTURE.

SOME time ago a Clergyman was proving to me by arguments many and strong that hell was right, necessary and just; that it brought glory to God and good to man; that the holiness of God required it as a preventive, and the justice of God exacted it as a penalty, of sin. I listened quietly till all was over and silence fell on the reverend denunciator; he ceased, satisfied with his arguments, triumphant in the consciousness that they were crushing and unassailable. But my eyes were fixed on the fair scene without the library window, on the sacrament of earth, the visible sign of the invisible beauty, and the contrast between God's works and the Church's speech came strongly upon me. And all I found to say in answer came in a few words: "If I had not heard you mention the name of God, I should have thought you were speaking of the Devil." The words, dropped softly and meditatively, had a startling effect. Horror at the blasphemy, indignation at the unexpected result of laboured argument, struggled against a dawning feeling that there must be something wrong in a conception which laid itself open to such a blow; the short answer told more powerfully than half an hour's reasoning.

The various classes of orthodox Christian doctrines should be attacked in very different styles by the champions of the great army of free-thinkers, who are at the present day besieging the venerable superstitions of the past. Around the Deity of Jesus cluster many hallowed memories and fond associations; the worship of centuries has shed around his figure a halo of light, and he has been made into the ideal of Humanity; the noblest conceptions of morality, the highest flights of enlightened minds, have been enshrined in a human personality and called by the name of Christ; the Christ-idea has risen and expanded with every development of human progress, and the Christ of the highest Christianity of the day is far other than the Christ of Augustine, of Thomas à Kempis, of Luther, or Knox; the strivings after light, after knowledge, after holiness, of the noblest sons of men have been called by them a following of Jesus; Jesus is baptized in human tears, crucified in human pains, glorified in human hopes. Because of all this, because he is dear to human hearts and identified with human struggles, therefore he should be gently spoken of by all who feel the bonds of the brotherhood of man; the dogma of his Deity must be assailed, must be overthrown, because it is false, because it destroys the unity of God, because it veils from us the Eternal Spirit, the source of all things, but he himself should be reverently spoken of, so far as truthfulness permits, and this dogma, although persistently battled against, should be attacked without anger and without scorn.

There are other doctrines which, while degrading in regard to man's conception of God, and therefore deserving of reprobation, yet enshrine great moral truths and have become bound up with ennobling lessons; such is the doctrine of the Atonement, which enshrines the idea of selfless love and of self-sacrifice for the good of humanity. There are others again against which ridicule and indignation may rightly be brought to bear, which are concessions to human infirmity, and which belong to the childhood of the race; man may be laughed out of his sacraments and out of his devils, and indignantly reminded that he insults God and degrades himself by placing a priesthood or mediator between God and his own soul. But there is one dogma of Orthodox Christianity which stands alone in its atrocity, which is thoroughly and essentially bad, which is without one redeeming feature, which is as blasphemous towards God as it is injurious to man; on it therefore should be poured out unsparingly the bitterest scorn and the sharpest indignation. There is no good human emotion enlisted on the side of an Eternal Hell; it is not hallowed by human love or human longings, it does not enshrine human aspirations, nor is it the outcome of human hopes. In support of this no appeal can be made to any feeling of the nobler side of our nature, nor does eternal fire stimulate our higher faculties: it acts only on the lower, baser, part of man; it excites fear, distrust of God, terror of his presence; it may scare from evil occasionally, but can never teach good; it sees God in the lightning-flash that slays, but not in the sunshine which invigorates; in the avalanche which buries a village in its fall, but not in the rich promise of the vineyard and the joyous beauty of the summer day. Hell has driven thousands half-mad with terror, it has driven monks to the solitary deserts, nuns to the sepulchre of the nunnery, but has it ever caused one soul of man to rejoice in the Father of all, and pant, "as the hart panteth after the water-springs, for the presence of God"?

It is only just to state, in attacking this as a Christian doctrine, that, though believed in by the vast majority of Christians, the most enlightened of that very indefinite body repudiate it with one voice. It is well known how the great Broad-Church leader, Frederick Denison Maurice, endeavoured to harmonize, on this point, his Bible and his strong moral sense, and failed in so doing, as all must fail who would reconcile two contradictories. How he fought with that word "eternal," struggled to prove that whatever else it might mean it did not mean everlasting in our modern sense of the word: that "eternal death" being the antithesis to "eternal life" must mean a state of ignorance of the Eternal One, even as its opposite was the knowledge of God: that therefore men could rise from eternal death, aye, did so rise every day in this life, and might so rise in the life to come. Noble was his protest against this awful doctrine, fettered as he was by undue reverence for, and clinging to, the Bible. His appeal to the moral sense in man as the arbiter of all doctrine has borne good fruit, and his labours have opened a road to free thought greater than he expected or even hoped. Many other clergymen have followed in his steps. The word "eternal" has been wrangled over continually, but, however they arrive there, all Broad Churchmen unite in the conclusion that it does not, cannot, shall not, mean literally lasting for ever. This school of thought has laid much stress on the fondness of Orientals for imagery; they have pointed out that the Jewish word Gehenna is the same as Ge Hinnom, or valley of Hinnom, and have seen in the state of that valley the materials for "the worm that dieth not and the fire that is not quenched:" they show how by a natural transition the place into which were thrown the bodies of the worst criminals became the type of punishment in the next world, and the valley where children were sacrificed to Moloch gave its name to the infernal abode of devils. From that valley Jesus drew his awful picture, suggested by the pale lurid fires ever creeping there, mingling their ghastly flames with the decaying bodies of the dishonoured dead. In all this there is probably much truth, and many Broad Churchmen are content to accept this explanation, and so retain their belief in the supernatural character of the Bible, while satisfying their moral sense by rejecting its most immoral dogma.

Among the evangelicals, only one voice, so far as I know, is heard to protest against eternal torture; and all honour is due to the Rev. Samuel Minton, for his rare courage in defying on this point the opinion of his "world," and braving the censure which has been duly inflicted on him. He seems to make "eternal" the equivalent of "irremediable" in some cases and of "everlasting" in others. He believes that the wicked will be literally destroyed, burnt up, consumed; the fact that the fire is eternal by no means implies, he remarks, that that which is cast into the fire should be likewise eternal, and that the fire is unquenchable does not prove that the chaff is unconsumable. "Eternal destruction" he explains as irreparable destruction, final and irreversible extinction. This theory should have more to recommend it to all who believe in the supernatural inspiration of the Bible, than the Broad Church explanation; it uses far less violence towards the words of Scripture, and, indeed, a very fair case may be made out for it from the Bible itself.

It is scarcely necessary to add to this small list of dissentients from orthodox Christianity, the Unitarian body; I do not suppose that there is such a phenomenon in existence as a Unitarian Christian who believes in an eternal hell.

With these small exceptions the mass of Christians hold this dogma, but for the most part carelessly and uncomprehendingly. Many are ashamed of it even while duteously confessing it, and gabble over the sentences in their creed which acknowledge it in a very perfunctory manner. People of this kind "do not like to talk about hell, it is better to think of heaven." Some Christians, however, hold it strongly, and proclaim their belief boldly; the members of the Evangelical Alliance actually make the profession of it a condition of admittance into their body, while many High Church divines think that a sharp declaration of their belief in it is needed by loyalty towards God and "charity to the souls of men." I wish I could believe that all who profess this dogma did not realize it, and only accepted it because their fathers and mothers taught it to them. But what can one say to such statements as the following, quoted from Father Furniss by W. R. Greg in his splendid "Enigmas of Life:" I take it as a specimen of Roman Catholic authorized teaching. Children are asked: "How will your body be when the devil has been striking it every moment for a hundred million years without stopping?" A girl of eighteen is described as dressed in fire; "she wears a bonnet of fire. It is pressed down all over her head; it burns her head; it burns into the skull; it scorches the bone of the skull and makes it smoke." A boy is boiled: "Listen! there is a sound just like that of a kettle boiling.... The blood is boiling in the scalded veins of that boy. The brain is boiling and bubbling in his head. The marrow is boiling in his bones." Nay, even the poor little babies are not exempt from torture: one is in a red hot oven, "hear how it screams to come out; see how it turns and twists about in the fire.... You can see on the face of this little child"—the fair pure innocent baby-face—"what you see on the faces of all in hell—despair, desperate and horrible." Surely this man realized what he taught, but then he was that half-human being—a priest.

Dr. Pusey, too, has a word to say about hell: "Gather in mind all that is most loathsome, most revolting—the most treacherous, malicious, coarse, brutal, inventive, fiendish cruelty, unsoftened by any remains of human feeling, such as thou couldst not endure for a single hour.... hear those yells of blaspheming, concentrated hate as they echo along the lurid vault of hell."

Protestantism chimes in, and Spurgeon speaks of hell: "Wilt thou think it is easy to lie down in hell, with the breath of the Eternal fanning the flames? Wilt thou delight thyself to think that God will invent torments for thee, sinner?" "When the damned jingle the burning irons of their torment, they shall say, 'for ever;' when they howl, echo cries, 'for ever.'"

I may allude, to conclude my quotations, to a description of hell which I myself heard from an eminent prelate of the English Church, one who is a scholar and a gentleman, a man of moderate views in Church matters, by no means a zealot in an ordinary way. In preaching to a country congregation composed mainly of young men and girls, he warned them specially against sins of the flesh, and threatened them with the consequent punishment in hell. Then, in language which I cannot reproduce, for I should not dare to sully my pages by repeating what I then listened to in horrified amazement, there ensued a description drawn out in careful particulars of the state of the suffering body in hell, so sickening in its details that it must suffice to say of it that it was a description founded on the condition of a corpse flung out on a dungheap and left there to putrefy, with the additional horror of creeping, slowly-burning flames; and this state of things was to go on, as he impressed on them with terrible energy, for ever and ever, "decaying but ever renewing."

I should almost ask pardon of tender-hearted men and women for laying before them language so abominable; but I urge on all who are offended by it that this is the teaching given to our sons and daughters in the present day. Father Furniss, Dr. Pusey, Mr. Spurgeon, an English Bishop, surely these are honoured names, and in quoting them I quote from the teaching of Christendom. Nor mine the fault if the language be unfit for printing. I quote, because if we only assert, Christians are quick to say, "you are misrepresenting our beliefs," and I quote from writers of the present day only, that none may accuse me of hurling at Christians reproaches for a doctrine they have outgrown or softened down. Still, I own that it seems scarcely credible that a man should believe this and remain sane; nay, should preach this, and walk calmly home from his Church with God's sunshine smiling on the beautiful world, and after preaching it should sit down to a comfortable dinner and very likely a quiet pipe, as though hell did not exist, and its awful misery and fierce despair.

It is said that there is no reason that we should not be contented in heaven while others suffer in hell, since we know how much misery there is in this world and yet enjoy ourselves in spite of the knowledge. I say, deliberately, of every one who does realise the misery of this world and remains indifferent to it, who enjoys his own share of the good things of this life, without helping his brother, who does not stretch out his hand to lift the fallen, or raise his voice on behalf of the down-trodden and oppressed, that that man is living a life which is the very antithesis of a Divine life—a life which has in it no beauty and no nobility, but is selfish, despicable, and mean. And is this the life which we are to regard as the model of heavenly beauty? Is the power to lead this life for ever to be our reward for self-devotion and self-sacrifice here on earth? Is a supreme selfishness to crown unselfishness at last? But this is the life which is to be the lot of the righteous in heaven. Snatched from a world in flames, caught up in the air to meet their descending Lord, his saints are to return with him to the heaven whence he came; there, crowned with golden crowns, they are to spend eternity, hymning the Lamb who saved them to the music of golden harps, harps whose melody is echoed by the curses and the wailings of the lost; for below is a far different scene, for there the sinners are "tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and the presence of the Lamb; and the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever, and they have no rest day nor night."

It is worth while to gaze for a moment at the scene of future felicity; there is the throne of God and rejoicing crowds: "Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets," so goes out the command, and they rejoice because "God has avenged them on her," and again they said "Alleluia, and her smoke rose up for ever and ever." Truly God must harden the hearts of his saints in heaven as of old he hardened Pharaoh's heart, if they are to rejoice over the anguished multitude below, and to bear to live amid the lurid smoke ascending from the burning bodies of the lost. To me the idea is so unutterably loathsome that I marvel how Christians endure to retain such language in their sacred books, for I would note that the awful picture drawn above is not of my doing; it is not the scoffing caricature of an unbeliever, it is heaven as described by St. John the divine. If this heaven is true I do not hesitate to say that it is the duty of every human being to reject it utterly and to refuse to enter it. We might even appeal to Christians by the example of their own Jesus, who could not be content to remain in heaven himself while men went to hell, but came down to redeem them from endless suffering. Yet they, who ought to imitate him, who do, many of them, lead beautiful lives of self-devotion and compassion, are suddenly, on death, to lose all this which makes them "partakers of the Divine Nature," and are to be content to win happiness for themselves, careless that millions of their brethren are in woe unspeakable. They are to reverse the aim of their past lives, they are to become selfish instead of loving, hard instead of selfless, indifferent instead of loving, hard instead of tender. Which is the better reproduction of the "mind of Christ," the good Samaritan tending the wounded man, or the stern Inquisitor gloating over the fire which consumes heretics to the greater glory of God? Yet the latter is the ideal of heavenly virtue. Never will they who truly love man be content to snatch at bliss for themselves while others suffer, or endure to be crowned with glory while they are crowned with thorns. Better, far better, to suffer in hell and share the pains of the lost, than to have a heart so hard, a nature so degraded, as to enjoy the bliss of heaven, rejoicing over, or even disregarding, the woes of hell.

But there is worse than physical torture in the picture of hell; pain is not its darkest aspect. Of all the thoughts with which the heart of man has outraged the Eternal Righteousness, there is none so appalling, none so blasphemous, as that which declares that even one soul, made by the Supreme Good, shall remain during all eternity, under the power of sin. Divines have wearied themselves in describing the horrors of the Christian hell; but it is not the furnace of flames, not the undying worm, not the fire which never may be quenched, that revolt us most; hideous as are these images, they are not the worst terror of hell. Who does not know how St. Francis, believing himself ordained to be lost everlastingly, fell on his knees and cried, "O my God, if I am indeed doomed to hate thee during eternity, at least suffer me to love thee while I live here." To the righteous heart the agony of hell is a far worse one than physical torture could inflict: it is the existence of men and women who might have been saints, shut out from hope of holiness for evermore; God's children, the work of his hands, gnashing their teeth at a Father who has cast them down for ever from the life he might have given; it is Love everlastingly hated; good everlastingly trampled under foot; God everlastingly baffled and defied; worst of all, it is a room in the Father's house where his children may hunger and thirst after righteousness, but never, never, can be filled.