The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1904-03-21
DECLARES BELIEF
IN ETERNAL HELL
Rev. John M. Fulton Gives His
Views on the Doctrine of
Future Punishment.

Old fashioned, orthodox hell, minus
the birthstone and the pitchforks, is
approved by DIR. John M. Fulton, pas
| tor of the Central Presbyterian church
mo hell on earth" for DR.. Fulton; no
purgatory; no dannati ton on the re-
fermatory plan.
Emphasizing his warnings by an oc-
| casional glance at the innocent young
faces of his boy choir, DR.. Fulton laid
down, last night, at the evening sery-
! ice, his conviction that hell should be
'made more prominent than heaven in
Christian teachings; that hell is sol
emn fact, and not a picturesque ale
CORY; that hell exists actually some
where in the universe-he did not know
where; that human souls will not see
| hell till after death; that hell is a
place of misery, of grief of 'gnashing
of the teeth that this suffering is
none the less acute, none the less un-
| utterable. because it does not follow
physical torments; that hell is eternal,
/ that the misery of the damned contin-
ues sfor ever and ever and for ever
without hope of the slightest mitiga-
ton, through human faith or divine
mercy, without hope of surcease after
any number of milIeniums, even with
out hope of gradual and yet ultimate
humiliation.
| Two strong texts from st. Matthew
introduced DR.. Fulton's statement OF
What Believe About He'll"
| Depart from me, We cursed he
read, into everlasting fire, prepared
for the devil and his angels.
| "Ye serpents, We generation of VI
| pers, how can We escape the damnation
| of hell 2"
| Hell, said DR.. Fulton, is not preached
as it used to be; it does not brighten
people now as it used to frighten them.
1t is no longer an inspiration for paint
ers or for poets. We can scarcely real
tize that people in the streets used to
meet the solemn brooding Dante and
exclaim, as he passed by, "Eccovi!
This man has been in hell"
Devil Is RidcuIed Nowadays.
! Nowadays we speak of the devil only
! to make fun of him. In no age has
I there been so great merry making
upon the subject of hell.
| But is this something to be glad or
| sad about? Is it good for man, is 1t
[ good for religion, to exhibit such skep-
| ticism about hell, or to poke fun at the
devil?
/ Yet, despite this attitude Of indif-
ference, the thought of hell is as deep
| ly rooted in the human soul as are
| the Rocky mountains ON the American
continent There exists now, as there
| always will exist, the thought of hell,
| the thought of future punishment
Most people at the bottom of their
hearts believe in he'll.
| For my part" said DR.. Fulton, y
| have not dropped hell out of my be-
| lief or out of my vocabulary. On our
| streets, too. if I am to trust my ears,
/ we meet many men, and many boys,
| that also believe in hell If they don't
| believe in it, why do they tell so many
i people to go there? ~a
81 do not regard hell as merely theo-
| logical driftwood that has been reject
| ed by the sound thinking of the pres
| ent day, but rather as dislocated doc
trine that needs to be restated and re-
| affirmed. The old-fashioned hell was
repellant and faulty in conception and
| Interpretation, but no theological Jug
Cling can turn it into paradise. Sound
! thinking, sound morals, sound Biblical
| exegesis, demand that this great doc
trine be reasserted as a bedrock truth
| of religion.
| Need a More Robust Faith.
| eve need robustness and rugged
ness of faith that will not shrink at
| retributive justice. If Shakespeare
makes Hamlet say, I am pigeon
hearted and lack gall because he
avenged not the murder of his father
surely we are pigeon hearted and lack
gall if he finch from the thought of
| Gods avenging the tremendous sin and
1 WiokQdnQCS Of the world.
| "HelI-what is to be said in proof OF
| it, as to the geography of 1t, as to the
| essence of It, as to the subjects OF 1T,
| as to the duration Of it, and as to the
escape from it-these shall furnish
subject matter for our discussion this
| evening.
"As to proof, reason demands a hell
The human mind looks for a balance
of rewards and expects a hell in justice
and fair play. Even the pagans ex-
pressed this conviction in their say
| ing, The mills of the gods grind slow
| ly, but they grind exceeding fine We
cannot bring ourselves to think of Pt-
late and OF Judas being in Paradise.
We cannot conceive OF Charles TX
dwelling in heaven with the very HUI
| guenots he massaered. But we can I'M
| derstand the spirit of the epitaph said
| to have been written upon Tom Paine
sTom Paine's dead; here he lies
| Nobody laughs and nobody cries.
| But where he's gone and how he fares,
Nobody knows and nobody cares"
Indeed, if 1 were to preach there is
no hell, / might as well preach that
there is no saltwater prison, no hang
mans moose.
"Our moral conscience is another
proof We all feel it to be right that
/ the little hands of Lady Macbeth
| should never again become white after
she has shed the kings blood
Bible Teaches 1t.
''But 1 believe in hell principally be-
causes it is the clear teaching of the
| Bible. The Bible, in fact, tells more
about future retribution than about
future reward Jesus emphasized the
idea of hell as none had done before
! him. He made people feel it was a
fearful thing to die in sin. He called
| to their minds the worm that dieth
| not, the gnashing of teeth the lake
that burneth with fire and birthstone.
paul has described his belief in hell
/ He'll is the ground swell and undertow
| of all his teaching. He never slipped
! Possibly there will be day Of judg-
| ment.'
Then John, the latest writer of the
| New Testament-did he discover that
| a mistake had been made? that hell
| was Pigment of the imagination that
would better be dropped out Of our re-
lligion? Read the Bible and you'll never