Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1881-06-11
CHRISTIAN EsuHAroLoeY.

lGH Hdu D6tH IGtdiHON Al taO 1CNAoSo
version of the New Testament. About
the same time another Christian minister
delivered a public discourse, maintaining
the thesis that Christianity is one OF the
main pillars OF civilization. These two
incidents have mutual bearing for the
history of the doctrine of hell is in great
part the history of Christianity, and it is
worth while to consider to what extent
that doctrine has aided the progress Of
civilization. The history of the doctrine
of eternal punishment is a singular one, for
while OF all the dogmas of all the churches
it is the one which has been least precisely
defined and most strongly controverted,
it is Of all the dognas of all the churches
that which has been most positively and
ruthlessly enjoined. How the Sheol or
underground limbo of the ancient Hebrews
was gradually exchanged for the Gehenna
fire of which the scavenger furnaces OF
the Valley of Hinnom supplied the SYM
bolism how the figurative language
and the realistic imaginations OF the
Jews combined to erect a material
hell out of such references; how
the patristic writer's contrived to mingle
the imagery of the Greek myth of Tar
tarus with Egyptian, Hebrew and Budd-
hist doctrines, and out of this mixture
produced the hell which has done duty
ever since it is not necessary to relate in
any detail. But it is necessary to point
out that the evidences of Christ's teaching
on this head are more vague and misty
than any other of the Christian evidences,
and that in fact there is less warrant for
the dogma of everlasting punishment than
for any other dogma extant.
A distinguished author has called the
discussion over the ultimate fate of the
soul .'a whirlpool of interminable contro-
"versy, roaring in endless circles over a
clark and bottomless abyss" The litera-
ture of eschatology is bewildering in its
extent. DR.. Abbott, in his appendix to
Ayers History of the Doctrine of Flu
"ture Life" gives classified catalogue of
upwards of five thousand works relating to
it. From Tertullian to Jonathan Edwards,
however, and from Jonathan Edwards
down to Mr.. Sturgeon, the doctrine of a
hell of literal fire has been preached, with
or without scriptural sanction, and with or
without that sanction the generations of
men have been prosecuted and tortured
and slain with every circumstance of
hideous cruelty, by the tens, by the hun
dreds, by the thousands, by the scores of
thousands, in vindication of hypothesis
which blasphemes the majesty of the Eter-
nal One by presenting Him as fierce fiend,
and which requires that Heaven should be
peopled with wretches unfit for anything
but humiliation. For fifteen centuries
this horrible doctrine set its mark on
Europe in blood and fire, and when our
ancestors colonized the New World they
brought with them their orthodox hell, and
forthwith proceeded to thrust into it all who
failed to conform to their narrow and bar
barous views.
Yet as we have said, the churches have
been much more cautious about defining their
archaeological doctrines than in enforcing
the most extreme view of them. Neander
indeed observes that only fragments of the
dogma are to be found in scripture. Many
learned divines have undertaken to prove
from scripture that not even such frag
ments of it can be found there. 1t is an
have the most to say about these subjects
were admitted to the canon under protest
An eminent orthodox writer observes that
in nearly every passage in which it is at
tempted to find the eternal misery of the
lost, there is less or greater difficulty
sin settling the text, or in reaching the
conviction that We read as the author
"wrote." The Encyclopedia britannica
observes on the same subject that sin
"every age the popular opinion has been
both more extravagant and more dog
matte than the expressed formulas of the
''creed. It is, indeed. difficult to determine
"what, at any one time, the mind of the
"church has been" But however difficult
it may have been to determine the mind of
the church, there has never been any hest
tation on the part of the church to
prosecute. 1t has not been at all certain
what its own professed belief on the ques.
ton was. Whenever it has been pressed
for an explanation it has had recourse to
evasion. But for all this doubt it was de-
cided enough to send men and women to
the rack and the thumbscrews and the
iron boots and all the hideous varieties of
medieval torture, ending with death by
slow fire at the stake.
The history of religious terrorism, as
Lecky calls it, is the history of this horri-
BILE doctrine of hell, and its shadow hangs
in midnight blackness over nearly the
whole Christian record. Was the stake
81 one of the pillars of civilization The
stake was for fifteen hundred years the
ultimate argument of the church against
dissent, doubt, inquiry, reason, intellectual
development. Well might Huxley declare
of the theory of evolution that one of its
greatest merits is the fact that it occu-
'pies position Of complete and irrecon-
"cilable antagonism to that vigorous and
consistent enemy of the highest intel.
''lectual, moral, and social life of man.
"kind-the Catholic Church" For that
church, and principally through the dog
ma of he'll, has terrorized over mankind,
has brutalized them, has retarded instead
of assisting civilization. An immense deal
of nonsense has been written about the
services of the church to civilization during
the dark ages. The truth is that the dark
ages were more due to the paralyzing infu-
ence Of the church than to any other cause.
The consequences of Monastacism upon Eu.
rope were distinctly evil, while the perse.
cutting policy of Rome everywhere fostered
the most cruel and ferocious tendencies,
and everywhere tended to keep alive in
mems breasts the savage and blood
~ 70 - xvb,ob Iloo~,,