Eternal Punishment

Minneapolis Times

Children have a naive way of stating things which sometimes puts them in a new and startling light.

A little four-year-old was one day explaining the doctrine of eternal punishment to a playmate whose religious advantages had not been so great as her own.

"Do you know what God does with the bad people?" she asked.

"No."

"Well, He doesn't burn them, but He gives them to the bad man, and he burns them."

Could anything bring out more clearly the weakness, the utter absurdity, of the old-time orthodox faith in fire and brimstone?

It pictures a Father, who is all-loving and all-powerful, who voluntarily hands over his disobedient children to the Prince of Darkness to be eternally tormented. It implies an understanding, a partnership, between the Deity and the devil. The one plays the role of the would-be philanthropist, the other, the role of the wicked partner, who seems to have been thought as indispensable in the theologic world as in the business world. The one selects victims, the other persecutes them. The one is a despot, the other a scape-goat who relieves the former of the odium of personal vengeance. The father would not wish to be known to torture his own children, but he passes them on to an agent who is not above the work.

On the whole, as pictured in the orthodox religion of earlier times, the Arch Fiend is rather more a manly character than Jehovah.

What a travesty upon Fatherhood! What an impious interpretation of Divinity!

The infamous doctrine is a relic of those crude, barbaric times in which it originated. It could never have been tolerated in modern times, save by inheritance. It was transmitted from generation to generation, shielded by the halo of religion, and was accepted without question. If any one were tempted to doubt, they fell back upon the theory that faith in God required them to believe that He would somehow subvert the nature of things, and that that which seemed to our frail human sympathies cruel and unjust, would by celestial necromancy become tender and merciful. With this somewhat inconclusive argument they were comforted, and shouted hallelujahs over that salvation which saved themselves and doomed their neighbors.

Happily, however, the idea has not to be very seriously combated in this day and age of the world. It is practically exploded. The doctrine of fire and brimstone is fast fading away before the doctrine of Divine love.

Minneapolis Times.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Article

Do the Signs Follow?

August 31, 1899

Contents

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit