MISCELLANEOUS EXTRACTS ON HELL.
By Edwin C. Stiles
[IN last week's Review, we gave an article from the Independent, in which the writer said, that we needed to hear again the voice of an Edwards, Bellamy, Taylor, &c., on this subject. The reader will find below specimens from some of them.—ED.] In Sermons, Vol. iv, p. 287, and onward, Pres. Edwards says: “The woes of sinners in hell will not be a cause of grief to the saints in heaven, but of rejoicing. This rejoicing will be the fruit of an amiable disposition, and a perfect holiness and conformity to Christ. At the Judgment you may be ready to fly to some godly friend, but you will see them unconcerned for you, with joy ascending to meet their Lord, and not the less joyful for the horror in which they see you. When they hear you groan and gnash your teeth, these things will not move them to pity you. After your godly parents shall have seen you lie in hell millions of ages, in torment day and night, they will not begin to pity you then; they will praise God that his justice appears in the eternity of your misery.” Pages 260–1. “But to help your conception, imagine yourselves to be cast into a fiery oven, all of a glowing heat, or into the midst of a glowing brick-kiln, or a great furnace; imagine also that your body were to be there for a quarter of an162hour, full of fire, as full within and without as a bright coal of fire, all the while full of quick sense, how long would that quarter of an hour seem to you? If it were measured by a glass, how long would the glass seem to be running? But what would be the effect on your soul, if you must endure the torment twenty-four hours? O then how would your heart sink if you knew you must endure it forever and ever! That after millions of ages your torment would be no nearer an end than when it began. But your torment in hell will be immensely greater than this illustration represents!!” The above is a specimen of five sermons from him on this subject. “Professor Finny,” says Blain, “slanders God far worse by saying that the torment will eternally increase!” Newton's Works, V. vi, London edition, 1787. “Imagine such a state of misery you may, but you can never seriously believe it, nor reconcile it to God and goodness.” Blain says, “Catholics may keep ignorant enough still to believe in their purgatory. But a great reason of this continued belief is, that their hell is almost infinitely better than the Protestant hell; as their popes and priests can pray all out of it; while from the Protestant hell, divines say the Almighty himself can deliver none!” Dr. J. Watts was a more reasonable man, and says in his work on the “World to Come,” p. 161, “Nor do I think we ought usually, when we speak concerning creatures, to affirm positively that their existence shall be equal to the blessed God, especially with regard to the duration of their punishment. If the blessed God should at any time, in consistence with his perfections, release these wretched creatures from their acute pains in hell, either with a design of the utter destruction of their being, by annihilation; or to put them into some world upon a new foot of trial, I think I ought joyfully to accept this appointment of God, and add my joys and praises to all the songs of the heavenly world, in the day of such a glorious release of those prisoners.” On p. 191 he says, “Dr. Thomas Burnet published a treatise in Latin, against the eternity of punishment; and in it advised ministers, whatsoever they concluded, whether the nature of punishment was eternal or not, that they ought to use the ‘common doctrine’ in their preaching; especially as those sinners of a lower rank would ‘run headlong into vice,’ and could only be restrained by ‘fear of punishment.’” And Dr. B. further adds to the clergy, that “If any should translate these sentiments into English, I shall think he does it with an evil design, and to a bad purpose.” Would that men would write all their wicked doctrines in Latin, and preach the truth to those whom they style sinners of a lower rank. How true it is, as Mr. Blain remarks, “The heathen reason better. In Siam a priest came to our missionary and asked how long his God tormented men in a future state; and when he replied, ‘Forever,’ he answered, ‘Our god torments the worst of men only one thousand years, so we will not have your American God here in Siam!’ Death not life, p. 116. A few more horrors of this doctrine may be found in Dr. Beecher's “Conflict of Ages,” pp. 190, 191. “Who can describe the gloom of him who looks on such a prospect? How dark to him appears the history of man! He looks with pity on the children that pass him in the streets. The more violent manifestations of this depravity seem to be the unfoldings of a corrupt nature, given to them by God, before any knowledge, choice or consent of their own. Mercy now seems to be no mercy, and he who once delighted to speak of the love of Christ, is obliged to close his lips in silence, for the original wrong of giving man such a nature, seems so great that no subsequent acts can atone for the deed. In this state of mind he who once delighted to pray, kneels and rises again, because he cannot sincerely worship the only God he sees. His distress is not on his own account. He feels that God has redeemed and regenerated him; but this gives him no relief. He feels as if he could not be bribed by the offer of all the honors of the universe, to pretend to worship or praise a God whose character he cannot defend. Never before has he felt so deeply a longing after a God of a spotless character. Never has he so deeply felt that the whole light and joy of the universe are in him, and that when his character is darkened, all worlds are filled with gloom. In contrast with this it would be appropriate to place the experience of one who retains all the radical facts as to human depravity, and the system that grows out of it, but passes from the deep gloom of the last experience, into the sunshine of divine glory, by discovering a mode in which these facts can be so adjusted as to harmonize with the principles of honor and right in God.” If Dr. Beecher has discovered a mode of adjustment to harmonize such a doctrine with principles of honor and right in God, others have been less fortunate; one at least, in the person of Rev. A. Barnes. See Practical Sermons, pp. 123-125. “That the immortal mind should be allowed to jeopard its infinite welfare, and that trifles should be allowed to draw it away from its God, and virtue, and heaven; 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 purposed to save all; that, in a word, God, who claims to be worthy of the confidence of the universe, and to be a Being of infinite benevolence, should make such a world as this—full of sinners and sufferers—and that when the atonement had been made, he did not save all the race, and put an end to sin and woe forever; I have read to some extent what wise and good men have written. I have looked at their theories and explanations. I have endeavored to weigh their arguments; for 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 the reason why sin came into the world; why the earth is strewed with the dead and the dying; and why men 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, nor have I an explanation to offer, a thought to suggest, which would be a relief to you. I trust others, as they profess to do, understand this better than I, and that they have not the anguish of spirit which I have. But I confess, when I look upon a world of woe, filled with hosts to suffer forever—when I look upon friends, and 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 alone can save them, and yet he does not do it—I am struck dumb—it is all dark, dark, dark to my soul, and I cannot disguise it.” J. Blain says: “A pious minister lately told me this fact in his experience. ‘The first I ever heard of a God, was by my mother’s telling me, when two years old, that there was a God, and if I was bad he would burn me forever in such a fire as I saw on the hearth. My reply was, If God does so he is a bad man.’ He added, ‘I grew up an infidel, till I heard the doctrine of immortality through Christ alone.’” The sad fact is, that under this doctrine of “immortal-soul-ism,” children grow up with a horror of their Maker, and think as little of him and the future as possible! Prof. Finney says, “It agitates our hearts as storms do the mighty ocean; and if any are strangers to such difficulties, they are to be pitied for ignorance, or a want of sympathy, which seems to be among the first elements of our social nature.” It also led Prof. Stuart to remark the soul-chilling sentence, “Perhaps God may, in mercy, extinguish our social susceptibilities in heaven!” Edwards, it seems, did not think so. Such doctrine as this dishonors God. Satan, though he delights in sorrow, does not torment “creatures of his own creating and preserving”—Truly unto the froward, God shows himself froward, and to the pure he is pure. But it must not be forgotten that the men who trafic in such merchandise as the above, are the D. D’s, Presidents of Theology, “the great men of the earth, the merchants of Babylon, that great harlot, who has corrupted the whole earth with her fornication; and while we cannot help lamenting the miseries and agonies which this heresy has caused its own preachers and leaders, who, like Mr. Barnes, have written commentaries in its defense; how must the heart feel for thousands upon thousands of illiterate and simple creatures, who still look up to such men as their oracles, and seem to think of them: ‘These be the gods, O Israel, which led thee out of the land of Egypt.’ These are the blind guides who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel. And the mass of the people and professors of religion love to have it so, and breathe out nothing but contempt and wrath upon the messengers of the Lord, who would present the truth in its purity and loveliness. Shall not the land mourn for this? Behold the day is at hand that shall bring a “howling among the shepherds, and a wailing shall be heard among the principal of the flock, for the Lord will spoil their pasture, and the shepherds shall find no way of escape!” EDWIN. C. STILES.
Portland, Me.