The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1896-05-16

of our brethren here especially re-
ferred to, but IN the minds of many
other so called evangelical Chris
tians. 1t cannot be forgotten that
the religious dogmas of today have
emerged from line of very forbid
ding antecedents. Like all other
long continued histories our religious
ideas have revolving ancestry. We
may, as we think, trace our ideas of
shell" to the New Testament, but the
line of ascent does not terminate in
those pages. Greek and Roman, and
far back of them other myths, have
had far more to do in shaping the
superstitious ideas of fiery under
world of alternating flame and dark
ness than the New Testament has.
Theologians have read into the New
Testament this revolving doctrine
from external sources. The words
"Gehenna," blades" and "Tartaros"
and the more ancient Sheol, all of
which are rendered by the English
word "hell," betray foreign source.
They are not Christian conceptions
in any sense whatever, and yet the
translators of the Bible have some
times rendered them by this English
word "hell." If the dogma be
divine revelation" then did the
Greeks and Romans, and the Brah-
minis and all the other ancient sava-
gerry of the world receive the revela-
ton before Christ did. 1t is incredi-
BILE that the Prophet of Nazareth
should have taken up and adopted
the most inconceivable cruelty of
the human imagination as among
the possibilities of wise and just
providence. 1t was said of Christ
that ''he should see of the travail of
his soul and be satisfied" Is it pos
sible that the compassionate Christ
could look upon the spectacle of
countless souls in hopeless agony
and be satisfied? Could even our
common humanity be satisfied be-
fore such scene? Could Columbus
be satisfied if the convicts of our
penitentiary should be tortured even
for a day in the flaming buildingsa
And if the agony could be continued
for month what would our city do?
It would run mad with its very
frenzy, if all the pulpits of Ohio
should proclaim it just punish
ment. If the clergy believing this
dogma of endless punishment could
realize what single week of suffer
ing in flame could mean they would
all be in mad house before next
Saturday night. 1t is the impossi-
bility of realizing it that keeps it
even in nominal existence. One of
our friends says he never had any
difficulty in believing it. He must
be sadly lacking in some part of the
endowment common to mankind.
IL man should come and tell us
that in the Indian Territory there
has been for centuries prison where
the authorities have tortured thous.
ands of criminals for years in the
most excruciating ways and that not
to do them any good, and that these
authorities are the very perfection of
justice and mercy, think we would
have difficulty in believing it. And
any man who stands up in a pulpit
and says that that procedure was the
ideal of perfection and ought to be
made perpetual, would be adjudged
insane by any court in Christendom.
1t is the remoteness and indescrib-
able horribleness of this dogma of
endless suffering that paralyzes men
SO they can think it credible. No
man ever believed it who was not
first theologically paralyzed. 1t
comes from an age when men thought
that God was an infinite ferocity, be-
fore the people attached the moral
idea to their conceptions of God.
John Calyin's Deity was an awful
Deity, and so was Jonathan Edwards
Deity. l cannot imagine human be-
ings worshiping him. They might
fear him, but fear is not worship.
That dreadful shadow hung darkly
over New England century ago. 1t
fingers in some places yet, but it is
dissolving in better thought of God.
1t will be happy relief to the relig-
ious sense of Christendom when it
shall utterly disappear, and in its
place shall be established the faith
that God is just and merciful, too;
that his retributions are remedial and
not destructive; that love has its Sc
verities, and that punishment is a
furtherance instead of an arrest of
the divine economy.
And more than this; the Christian
conception of Gods purposes will be