The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1913-05-17
half months give every one chance
to make his Easter duty.
The Attitudes of Three Glasses in
Relation to 1t.

We have in every commonwealth
three classes of men: (I Those to
whom the police are nuisance; (2)
Those to whom the police are a help;
and 60 Those to whom the police
are superf1uous. But even the best
citizens will be glad of the existence
of the police force for sake of those
who need, or are helped by it, if not
for themselves; and not one of them
will feel that the presence Of the po-
liceman round the corner is a ref1ec-
ton on his own honesty, or in any
way a degradation to him.
There is not much difficulty in the
application of this analogy. Turning
to the department of religious moral
ity we have similar division of man
kind into two marked classes-the
good by habit, and the wicked by
habit; and between them the third
or versatile class, who want on the
whole to be good but are liable to
incidental failure. To the habitually
good man the doctrine of hell, though
true, is superf1uous-a fact with which
he has no personal concern. To the
wickedly disposed hell is positively
necessary, for it comes first as a
means of lettering him from crime;
but if this fails, it stands to reason
that he should not be allowed to out
rage the divine laws of right and duty
with impunity.
To the middle class form the
general run of mankind, and from
which no human being, unless con-
firmed in grace, can safely venture to
exclude himself-hel is an undoubted
help in times of weakness. This idea
is embodied in the Exercises of st.
Ignatius in an admirable way. st.
Ignatius, taking for granted that the
exercitant is man of general good
dispositions, explains the object of
the meditation on hell as follows:
THAT should the love of God ever
fail to keep me in the path of virtue,
at least the fear of hell may come
to my aid and prevent me from fall
| ing into sin''-a sort of last desperate
resort when other inducements fail.
Now it cannot sanely be said that
there is anything degrading in this.
1t is merely recognition of the
weakness of human nature, and its
proneness, in spite of the highest
| ideals, to fail sometimes dismally in
the realization of them. A man who
cannot contemplate this possibility in
his own case must be singularly
blessed in temperament and charac.
ter; but his very complacency on this
account is likely to prepare the way
for painful surprise-the very cock
sureness of his virtue constituting the
danger.
| Or else he must be a man under a
singular delusion as to his own prob
ity, and needing an amount of seri-
Gus introspection in order to realize
his unconscious weaknesses and
faults. Therefore, it seems to me
that any man, however idealistic in
his conceptions and in his conduct
has reason to feel grateful that there
lies before him, as last resort, the
fact of a future retribution for sin, to
impress his mind in moments Of
weakness when the stress of tempta
ton obscures or obliterates or takes
the cogency out Of his higher mo
tives.
With regard to the wickedly dis
posed, there is no use mincing mat
tiers. Their whole attitude in life is
a wrong one, and hell is the only
remedy for it. We say nothing here
of the really puzzling difficulty as
to how far and in what way hell is 9
remedy. But as it is clear that 8
man who breaks the laws of his coun
try must be taken in hand and pun
ished by Imprisonment, fine or death
so the man who breaks the laws Of
his God must be handed over to retri
butive justice in some way or othe1
and the actual way instituted b!
God is the punishment of hell
If the crime were committed frs
and the punishment invented for j
afterwards, the criminal might have
cause to complain. But as the char
ter of punishment is proclaimed side
by side with the charter of duty, there
is no grievance; and even the wicked
man himself must acknowledge tina
his treatment is such as he deserves
But the point on which we particu
larly wish to insist is this-that thu
doctrine of hell is not thing to b,
resented as if it were something un
worthy, or degrading, or insulting t.
the dignity and moral worth of man
So far as a man is all that he ough
to be, hell lies outside his horizon
The doctrine was never meant TO
! him at all, and has nothing to do witt
him.
J He'll begins to loom on the horizon
only as a concomitant of sin, and a
; corollary of it; and if there be an
: degradation connected with the case
this degradation is not to be sough
in the doctrine but in the man hin
self. He put himself in that categor
for whom hell was invented and 70
whom it becomes a practical que'
} ton; and the remedy does not lie i
} getting rid of the doctrine, but i
getting rid of the sin. AS soon as ST
/ is gone, all connection with hell
: gone.
: AS to the question whether hell
1 doctrine worthy of God, the gel
] eral answer is contained in what "