Year: 1876

nets nest.


PROF. SWING, Of Chicago, spoke to
a very large audience, last Sabbath,
assembled in McVicker's Theatre, his
theme being, "ReWdrds and Punish
ments.' AS gentleman of excellent
culture, Of the most upright life, and
clothed upon, in a large measure,
with the spirit Of independence in
religious thought and expression, he
has no superior in this age. The sub
ject of last Sabbath is an exceedingly
important one, and one upon which
more thought is bestowed by all men
than any other within the scope of
religious inquiry. We have thought,
therefore that it would not be amiss
to quote quite extensively from this
sermon and lay it before our read
crs:


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asked you to believe that society
cannot endure politics or a religion
of unbounded license or forgiveness
or love, and neither can it prosper
under an idea Of punishment exccs-
sivc, unavoidable, mysterious. Let
us think Of the second proposition.
In speaking Of punishment as valu-
able element in religion did not
mean the perdition defined by Dante
or Milton or by the church. The
word should indicate the just punish
ment of sin here and hereafter. The
old idea may have done good in its
day, but it is no longer capable of
usefulness. There is form of pun
ishment that defeats the ends of JUS
tice. When bloody despot occupies
a throne, Nero or Torquemada,
dealing out the most cruel tortures
for the least Offense, the result never
comes in the form of noble, reformed
citizens, but it the form of either as
sassins, or sycOphants, or broken
The lash of the slave-driver never
made men, but broke down the spirit
of those who might have become
men. AS, according to Mr.. Buckle,
the inhabitants of earthquake lands
in South America build no good
houses, and spring up and rush forth
from their mud huts on any alarm in
the night, and Mt last become the chill
dren OF cowardice, so a political des-
potism like the inquisition or the en-
pire of old Russia in the days of the
knout and Siberia never made noble
citizens, but either men of dark trea-
son or of broken hearts. Punishment,
in order to be useful as to the Offend
er and as to the spectator, must be
just. 1t must be such that one may
escape it by simply doing his duty.
This is the idea of punishment that
becomes useful in the home and state.
Hence this is the only doctrine of hell
that can hold true or be useful in re-
ligion. The idea of q hell in which n
soul must burn eternally on account
of the sin of n man of whom il never
perhaps so much as heard, the idea of
torment that should take eternal
possession of a mind that had not
been baptised, the idea that God will
pursue with infinite wrath forever
the sonl that did not see God as clear
ly in the days Of the food as Chalmers
or Knox saw him in the Christian era,
the idea Of "a punishment that con-
demns the ''mere moralist' to the an
gpish that should descend upon mur-
derers and hypocrites, is a view of
punishment that made trembling
slaves Of the Catholics and Protestants
who once held it, and makes infidels
of those who in our century must
choose between il and unbclief. Few
things have injured Christianity SO
much as the fact that the church has
tried to carry along through our age
a hell that had i'm il not the least ele-
ment of justice. Out of the discrim-
ination of right and wrong we have
declared that great characters are
made. The PERCEPTION of the good
and the true has always educated man
more than has the perception of the
beautiful. In the face of this most
obvious fact of human nature the
church has too long and too widely
placed before man heaven into
which mean men could pass by cere-
mony and hell from which perhaps
moral men and kind men and some
infants could not possibly escape.
Representing for the whole world the
ideas of right and wrong, the Chris
tian church should long since have
hastened TO throw aside definitions of
heaven and hell that instead of teach
ing the ideas of rewards and punish
ments made eternal happiness and
eternal sorrow turn upon contingent
cies incredible or monstrous.








gion of unbounded love aud permit
it to tear open the sealed book and
erase the awful destiny of the unjust.
This wicked world and good world
cannot part with the religion that re-
wards here and hereafter the faithful
and that Furnishes here and hereafter
the wicked. We need heaven easy
of access to those who seek il by the
obedience Of God, and we need sor-
row Of wide open gates for those
who trample under foot that jewel OF
earth and heaven called the right
| Out of the right every state draws its
valhc, each man his honor, each child
| its protection, each home its peace
and hence over those who trample
the right under foot, there must be
seen rising storm of punishment.
The great ruin sin has wrought in
the world of government, point ont
what 1t is doing in the individual
soul. A nation is only soul so en-
larged that its life covers centuries
its cradle becomes not a little bed
which mother can rock with her
foot but a peninsula like Greece or a
vast domain like Asia or Old Rome
A nation is a man u thousand years
old whose cradle and grave cover q
continent. In the fate of nations read
the destiny of the wicked soul. All
the tottering ruins where lizards
sleep and owls hoot only tell us whal
sorrows overlook the Herods, the ri.
lates. the Aspasias and Borgias whcr
the blaze Of their sin had burnt
out the fuel of these brief years. Al
history of nations and individuals.th tn.
written history of the past, the un
written memoirs of men and women
of many just dead or dying, tell u
that the angel of love and joy doe
not fly across the universe any NOR,
surely than flies the dark figurce O.
Nemesis, that daughter of night, car
rying in one hand . sconrge, in thu