Making Void the Scriptures.
SAYS the Nashville Christian Advocate: "Whoever has felt the shame of detected meanness or crime has felt hell fire. It is the bitterest drop in the cup of a true penitent." This is a specimen of the theology which vitiates the Scripture and makes it mean anything except what it says; but like most false theories, it furnishes the matter for its own overthrow. According to the above quotation, it is the penitent who suffers hell fire, and not the very wicked. Of certain of the wicked we are told in the Bible that they are "past feeling," and have their "conscience seared with a hot iron," and it is a well-known fact that a long-continued course of sin tends to deaden all sensibility. The one who has gone but a little way in sin feels very acutely the shame of detection, and his conscience upbraids him although he be not detected. But the longer he continues his evil practices, the less does he feel the stings of conscience, until at last he becomes so hardened that even open exposure and rebuke produce no feeling of shame. Therefore, according to the Advocate's theory, the man who has sinned but little suffers the torments of hell fire the most intensely, while the one who is steeped in sin escapes with no punishment at all! It is true that at the last, men who are now reckless will have their sins presented before them in so vivid a manner that they will feel remorse to the fullest extent, and this lashing of an awakened conscience may form a large portion of that "tribulation and anguish" which is to be rendered to "every soul of man that doeth evil;" but notwithstanding this, the fact remains that "the wages of sin is death," and that this death is to be brought about by means of fire. The sin is an actual fact; so likewise will be the fire into which the wicked are to depart, and also the death which will follow. There is no more reason for saying that the word "death" is used in a figurative sense than there is in using "sin" in the same manner. Either the Bible means what it says or it means nothing. That it means what it says when it declares that "the day cometh that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble; and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch," is plainly shown by Peter when he says that the turning of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes was "an ensample unto those that after should live ungodly." 2 Pet. 2:6. Whoever claims that the fire that is spoken of in the Bible as consuming the wicked is simply remorse of conscience, must also claim that literal fire and brimstone were not rained upon the cities of the plain, and that the hardened wretches of Sodom simply had their consciences awakened, and that Lot was driven out, lest perchance his attention should be called to some sin in his past life, and thereby he be made to endure the pangs of hell fire! This sort of "philosophy and vain deceit" is getting to be very common. It is infidelity dressed in the garb of religion, and is tenfold more dangerous than the bold infidelity which openly denies the entire Bible.