Eternal Torment by R. F. Cottrell

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 5, 1867

Eternal Torment.

By R. F. Cottrell

The doctrine of the immortality of the soul has probably made more infidels than any other one thing which has been taught as Christian doctrine. Connect this doctrine with the Bible teaching of a real punishment in the literal fire to which the earth is reserved, 2 Pet. iii, and the thought is too overwhelmingly terrible for any sane mind to believe.

This doctrine of the Devil, that man is destined never to die, is embraced by modern infidels, instead of the old doctrine of eternal unconsciousness after death, and from this stand-point the Bible is condemned, taking for granted that the prevailing doctrine of immortality is taught in it. The following extracts from a spiritualistic unbeliever, will show how the doctrine of eternal torment looks, viewed from that stand-point.

“We say, therefore, that the doctrine of the eternity of future punishment is not believed as an intellectually-conceived truth, because that is a metaphysical impossibility. But more: we affirm, in spite of the general belief in it publicly professed, that it is actually held by hardly any one as a practical, vivid belief even within the limits wherein, as an intellectual conception, it is possible. When intellect and imagination do not fail, heart and conscience do, with sickened faintness and convulsive protest. In his direful poem on the Last Day, Young makes one of the condemned vainly beg of God to grant

‘This one, this slender, almost no, request: When I have wept a thousand lives away, When torment is grown weary of its prey, When I have raved of anguished years in fire Ten thousand thousands, let me then expire.’

“Such a thought, when confronted with any generous, holy, sentiment, or with any worthy conception of the Divine character, is practically incredible. The men all around us in whose church-creed such a doctrine is written down do not truly believe it. ‘They delude themselves,’ as Martineau well says, ‘with the mere fancy and image of a belief. The death of a friend who departs from life in heresy affects them in the same way as the loss of another whose creed was unimpeachable; while the theoretic difference is infinite, the practical is virtually nothing.’ Who that had a child, parent, wife, brother, or other precious friend, condemned to be roasted to death by a slow fire, would not be frantic with agony? But there are in the world literally millions on millions, some of whose nearest and dearest ones have died under circumstances which, by their professed creeds, can leave no doubt that they must roast in the fires of hell in anguish unutterably fiercer, and for eternity, and yet they go about as smilingly, engage in the battle for money, in the race for fame, in all the vain shows and frivolous pleasures of life, as eagerly and gayly as others. How often do we see the literal truth of this exemplified! It is clear they do not believe in the dogma to whose technical terms they formally subscribe.”

“A small portion of its professors do undeniably believe the doctrine so far as it can be sanely believed; and accordingly the world is to them robed in a sable shroud, and life is an awful mockery, under a flashing surface of sports concealing a bottomless pit of horror. Every observing person has probably known some few in his life who, in a degree, really believed the common notions concerning hell, and out of whom, consequently, all geniality, all bounding impulses, all magnanimous generosities, were crushed, and their countenances wore the perpetual livery of mourning, despair, and misanthropy. We will quote the confessions of two persons who may stand as representatives of the class of sincere believers in the doctrine. The first is a celebrated French preacher of a century and a half ago, the other a very eminent American divine of the present day. Saurin says, in his great sermon on Hell, ‘I sink under the weight of this subject, and I find in the thought a mortal poison which diffuseth itself into every period of my life, rendering society tiresome, nourishment insipid, pleasure disgustful, and life itself a cruel bitter.’ Albert Barnes writes, ‘In the distress and anguish of my own spirit, I confess I see not one ray to disclose to me the reason why man should 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. It is all dark—dark—dark to my soul; and I cannot disguise it.’” . . . . . .

“Again: it is a fatal objection to the doctrine in question that if it be true it must destroy the happiness of the saved and fill all Heaven with sympathetic woe. Jesus teaches that ‘there is joy in Heaven over every sinner that repenteth.’ By a moral necessity, then, there is sorrow in Heaven over the wretched, lost, soul. . . . . The good cannot be happy in Heaven if they are to see the ascending smoke and hear the resounding shrieks of a hell full of their brethren, the children of a common humanity, among whom are many of their own nearest relatives, and dearest friends.”

“True, a long list of Christian writers may be cited as maintaining that this is to be a principal element in the felicity of the redeemed, gloating over the tortures of the damned, singing the song of praise with redoubled emphasis as they see their parents, their children, their former bosom companions, writhing and howling in the fell extremities of torture. Thomas Aquinas says, ‘That the saints may enjoy their beatitude and the grace of God more richly, a perfect sight of the punishment of the damned is granted to them.’ Especially did the Puritans seem to revel in this idea, that ‘the joys of the blessed were to be deepened and sharpened by constant contrast with the sufferings of the damned.’ One of them thus expresses the delectable thought:—‘The sight of hell torments will exalt the happiness of the saints forever, as a sense of the opposite misery always increases the relish of any pleasure.’ But perhaps Hopkins caps the climax of the diabolical pyramid of these representations, saying of the wicked, ‘The smoke of their torment shall ascend up in the sight of the blessed forever and ever, and serve, as a most clear glass always before their eyes, to give them a bright and most affecting view. This display of the Divine character will be most entertaining to all who love God, will give them the highest and most ineffable pleasure. Should the fire of this eternal punishment cease, it

would in a great measure obscure the light of Heaven and put an end to a great part of the happiness and glory of the blessed.’ That is to say, in plain terms, the saints on entering their final state of bliss in Heaven, are converted into a set of unmitigated fiends, out-satanating Satan, finding their chief delight in forever comparing their own enjoyments with the pangs of the damned, extracting morsels of surpassing relish from every convulsion or shriek of anguish they see or hear. It is all an exquisite piece of gratuitous horror arbitrarily devised to meet a logical exigency of the theory its contrivers held. When charged that the knowledge of the infinite woe of their friends in hell must greatly affect the saints, the stern old theologians, unwilling to recede an inch from their dogmas, had the amazing hardihood to declare that, so far from it, on the contrary their wills would so blend with God’s that the contemplation of this suffering would be a source of ecstasy to them. It is doubly a bare assumption of the most daring character, first assuming, by an unparalleled blasphemy, that God himself will take delight in the pangs of his creatures, and secondly assuming, by a violation of the laws of human nature and of every principle of morals, that the elect will do so too. In this world a man actuated by such a spirit would be styled a devil. On entering Heaven, what magic shall work such a demoniacal change in him? There is not a word, direct or indirect, in the Scriptures to warrant the dreadful notion; nor is there any reasonable explanation or moral justification of it given by any of its advocates, or indeed conceivable. The monstrous hypothesis cannot be true.”

The learned author of these extracts knew very well that there is no proof of this monstrous doctrine in the Scriptures, and he might have known that the doctrine of the immortality of the soul—the false assumption upon which eternal conscious misery is built—is neither supported by the Bible nor philosophy, but by the pride of the human heart which loves to be exalted with the idea of natural immortality. But for this doctrine and device of the Devil, the Bible would have set the matter of future punishment in such a light that every rational mind must approve of the justice and mercy of God. The Bible doctrine of life through Christ, and death to those who cannot be re-claimed, must commend itself to every reflecting, justice-loving, person, and free the throne of God from such blasphemous imputations as are contained in the quotations in the above extracts.

R. F. COTTRELL.