Article October 12, 1912 Issue

It is frequently said in some quarters that hell is not...

Herbert M. Beck

Fort Smith (Ark.) Booster

It is frequently said in some quarters that hell is not preached nor believed in so much now as it was some years ago. Most of the ministers of this city expressed their views on the subject of "Hell" in last Sunday's Times-Record, and the unity of these opinions would indicate that a belief in hell is still strongly unheld by the popular churches. The one and only opinion expressed which did not favor fire and brimstone [Herbert M. Beck, Christian Science committee on publication for Arkansas] is given below (The Booster is not acquainted with the place in question and knows nothing about it. It reprints this opinion) : —

"Hell is certainly not a literal place of fire and brimstone. It is of the same order as its reputed chief occupant, who is known to be 'a liar, and the father of it.' No man makes his own hell entirely, but it is the result of wrong human thinking. It results, first, from fear that there is a law of evil; or, second, from the false belief that there is pleasure in sin. Hell is neither God-created nor God-permitted. 'Sin makes its own hell, and goodness its own heaven' (Science and Health, p. 196).

"Sin is not geographical, therefore hell is not geographical, but represents a condition of mortal thought only. It begins when sin begins and lasts so long as the sin lasts. A man may be in hell just as much before death as after death. To know the divine truth as Jesus pointed it out, makes man free because it insures right thinking, involves the understanding of God as the only power, dissolves and destroys sin, sickness, death, and hell, and so reveals the primal man in God's image and likeness—never condemned and never lost—who, therefore, must forever live and move and have his being in the kingdom of harmony—the kingdom of heaven.

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