HELL 
 
 AND ITS PROBLEMS 
 
 % 
 
 J. GODFREY RAUPERT, 
 K. S. G. 
 
 CONTENTS: 
 
 I. The Christian Doctrine of Hell. 
 
 II. Some Popular 1 Objections and Difficulties Considered. 
 
 i. The Goodness of God. 
 
 ii. The Justice of God. 
 
 iii. Why should Death be supposed to terminate 
 the Time of our Probation ? 
 
 ► . 
 
 iv. Why does not God de'stroy the finally impeni¬ 
 tent Soul? 
 
 v. Will not the Thought of Hell render impos- ■ 
 sible the Happiness of Heaven? 
 
 vi. Why does God create beings whose future 
 Misery He must be able to forsee*? 
 
 III. The Personality of the Devil. 
 
 IV. Manifestations of an Evil Spirit-World. 
 
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HELL AND ITS PROBLEMS 
 
H. B. Laudenbach, 
 
 Censor Librorum. 
 
 imprimatur: 
 
 ^ D. J. Dougherty, 
 
 Bishop of Buffalo. 
 
 Buffalo, N. Y., 
 
 November 8, 1917. 
 
 <©bStat, 
 
 Eduardus Myers, 
 
 Censor Deputatus. 
 
 imprimatur: 
 
 Hh Edm. Can. SURMONT, 
 
 Vicarius Generalis. 
 
 Westmonasterii, 
 die 7 Junii 1912. 
 
HELL AND ITS 
 PROBLEMS 
 
 BY 
 
 J. GODFREY RAUPERT, K. S. G. 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 "THE SUPREME PROBLEM,” "MODERN SPIRITISM,” 
 "THE DANGERS OF SPIRITISM,” Etc. 
 
 FIRST AMERICAN EDITION 
 
 BUFFALO: 
 
 CATHOLIC UNION STORE, 
 682 MAIN STREET. 
 
 1917 
 
Copyright, 1917, by J. Godfrey Raupert, K. S. G. 
 Copyrighted in Great Britain. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Preface 7 
 
 i. The Christian Doctrine of Hell. 9 
 
 ii. Some Popular Objections and Difficulties 
 
 Considered. 27 
 
 i. The Goodness of God. 27 
 
 ii. The Justice of God. 37 
 
 iii. Why should Death be supposed to ter¬ 
 
 minate the Time of our Probation? 48 
 
 iv. Why does not God destroy the finally im¬ 
 
 penitent Soul? 63 
 
 v. Will not the Thought of Hell render im¬ 
 
 possible the Happiness of Heaven? 68 
 
 vi. Why does God create beings whose fu¬ 
 
 ture Misery He must be able to fore¬ 
 see? 74 
 
 iii. The Personality of the Devil. 82 
 
 iv. Manifestations of an Evil Spirit-World. 94 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2018 with funding from 
 Boston Library Consortium Member Libraries , 
 
 https://archive.org/details/hellitsproblemsOOraup 
 
PREFACE 
 
 T HE publication of this little treatise is prompted 
 by several considerations. Experience and obser¬ 
 vation have convinced me that the orthodox doc¬ 
 trine of Hell presents to many serious and thoughtful 
 minds one of the greatest stumbling-blocks in the way 
 of a whole-hearted and intelligent acceptance of the 
 truths of the Christian Creed. I am equally convinced 
 that, in view of the immovable foundation upon which 
 the doctrine rests, the compromise offered by modern 
 liberal theology, and indeed all attempts to explain the 
 doctrine away, are but calculated to increase the intel¬ 
 lectual and moral difficulty a thousand-fold. 
 
 To very many persons the better philosophical and 
 theological works, fairly and adequately dealing with the 
 subject, are either unknown, or are, by reason of their 
 technical form, and for other obvious reasons, of little 
 service. 
 
 Comparatively few are acquainted with the unex¬ 
 pected disclosures of modern psychical science, and the 
 light which these are calculated to throw upon the mys¬ 
 teries enveloping the future life. They are, therefore, 
 scarcely in a position to think the matter out clearly and 
 dispassionately, and to weigh the considerations which 
 can, in fairness, be urged in favor of the truth of the 
 doctrine, from the human point of view. 
 
 Having personally experienced the full force of the 
 moral difficulty which belief in the orthodox doctrine of 
 Hell involves, and having given a good deal of study 
 and time to the matter, I felt that a short statement of 
 the views arrived at, and of what really careful think¬ 
 ers have written on the subject, might prove suggestive 
 and helpful to other perplexed and troubled minds. 
 
 7 
 
8 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 The subject obviously is one which does not readily 
 lend itself to popular treatment, and the ideas expressed 
 are therefore necssarily somewhat crude and fragmentary 
 in their form and character. They may, nevertheless, 
 induce some, who, for one reason or another, have re¬ 
 jected the doctrine—and, as is so often the case, other 
 fundamental doctrines with it—to study the subject with 
 greater care, and to reconsider their conclusions. They 
 will, at any rate, help them to see that there are better 
 and more solid grounds for believing the doctrine than is 
 commonly supposed. 
 
 The first issue of this volume was published under 
 a pseudonym some years ago at the suggestion of a 
 learned theologian. In its present form it has undergone 
 but slight alterations, a few thoughts only having been 
 modified and several further considerations and quota¬ 
 tions added. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF HELL. 
 
 I T IS admitted by all really fair and unbiassed minds 
 that the orthodox doctrine of Hell is a vital and neces¬ 
 sary part of the Christian Revelation. The scrip¬ 
 tural and historical evidence in its favor is so exception¬ 
 ally clear and conclusive, that there can be no reasonable 
 ground for doubt or choice in the matter. Nor is there 
 any legitimate way of effecting an honorable compromise 
 with modern rationalistic thought and interpretation. 
 The doctrine is not only taught by Christ Himself in the 
 plainest and most unmistakable terms of which human 
 language is capable, but it underlies and is implied in the 
 entire system of thought developed in the New Testa¬ 
 ment, and may be said to be its very basis and founda¬ 
 tion. Without the conception of a future and permanent 
 state of punishment, consequent upon a life of sin and re¬ 
 bellion against God, the Christian scheme of Redemption 
 has neither consistency nor coherence, and its most cen¬ 
 tral doctrines become unreasonable and incomprehensible. 
 
 This fact is, and should be, clear to all honest students 
 of this great subject, whose judgment has not been per- 
 .* verted by sophistical reasoning, and who are determined 
 to be loyal to fact and to truth. For it does not really 
 matter whether the subject be studied in the original 
 Greek of the New Testament, or in one of the more mod¬ 
 ern English versions of the Bible: whether allowance be 
 made for the language of illustration and metaphor, or 
 for the most recent discoveries of the higher critic. It 
 is not a question of particular words of phrases or ex¬ 
 pressions, but of great ideas and principles: of an ele¬ 
 ment which is intimately bound up with the entire 
 thought-structure of the Sacred Writings, and which per¬ 
 vades and permeates its every part. 
 
 9 
 
10 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF HELL. 
 
 It is instructive and significant to observe that this 
 transparent fact has never been questioned by the sceptic 
 and the unbeliever, however strongly he may have op¬ 
 posed the doctrine itself on moral grounds. “It has been 
 reserved for the accommodating, shallow Christians of 
 modern days, who wish to reject it without abandoning 
 their belief in Christianity, to throw dust in other peo¬ 
 ple’s eyes, as well as their own, by obscuring what is 
 really a very simple matter with ingenious—though it 
 may be unconscious—sophistries.” 
 
 But it may be doubted whether any permanent ser¬ 
 vice has thus been rendered to the cause of Christianity 
 and of truth. Such literary tricks may impress the su¬ 
 perficial few; they have little, if any, weight with really 
 logical and consistent thinkers. Their worthlessness is 
 bound to be detected sooner or later. For it is impos¬ 
 sible, by any method or artifice, to get rid of the plain 
 and striking statements of Holy Writ. Such words as are 
 employed by Christ Himself in St. Matthew XXV. 41, 46; 
 in St. Mark III. 29; and IX. 47, 48; Rev. XIV. 10, 11; and 
 XXI. 8 remain, as the late Sir James Stephen rightly said, 
 “the most terrific words which have ever been spoken in 
 the ears of man” and they will retain their force and im¬ 
 port however ingenious the attempt may be to empty 
 them of their meaning. In such a matter as this it is 
 surely a dangerous thing for the mind to seek refuge in 
 a false security, and to allow the impression to take 
 root that, by ignoring the unwelcome truth, it has ceased 
 to exist for us, or that we have escaped the responsibili¬ 
 ties which its recognition entails. Our duty is rather to 
 face it bravely and, God helping us, to seek for safe and 
 legitimate and God-appointed means of escape. 
 
 It is assumed by very many intelligent persons that 
 the orthodox conception of Hell is inconsistent with rea¬ 
 son and with cultivated thought, and that it has been re¬ 
 jected by a large number of really thoughtful theologians. 
 Loose statements to this effect are frequently made from 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF HELL. 
 
 11 
 
 Protestant pulpits, and they are apt to seriously impress 
 the modern mind. But a greater error cannot be con¬ 
 ceived. The most cultured and enlightened amongst Cath¬ 
 olic and Protestant theologians, of both ancient and mod¬ 
 ern times, have explicitly stated it as their most earnest 
 conviction that the doctrine is a vital and integral part 
 of the New Testament teaching, and that the only safe 
 and honest thing is to acknowledge the fact. 
 
 St. Augustine, one of the greatest and most learned 
 fathers of the Christian Church, says: “What a thing 
 it is to account eternal punishment to be a fire of long 
 duration (merely), and eternal life to be without end, 
 since Christ comprised both, in that very same place, in 
 one and the same sentence, saying: ‘These shall go into 
 eternal punishment, but the just into life everlasting.’ If 
 both are eternal, either both must be understood to be 
 lasting with an end, or both perpetual without end. For 
 like is related to like: on the one side eternal punishment, 
 on the other, eternal life. But to say in one and the same 
 sentence life eternal shall be without end, punishment 
 eternal and Hell have an end, were too absurd; whence, 
 since the eternal life of the saints shall be without end, 
 punishment, eternal too, shall doubtless have no end to 
 those whose it shall be.” 1 
 
 Passaglia, a renowned theologian, and a man well 
 qualified to speak with authority on this subject, well ob¬ 
 served: “Either St. John and Isaiah used terms expres¬ 
 sive of eternal duration, or else there is no such term to 
 be found.” 
 
 “Every form of words employed in Scripture to de¬ 
 scribe everlastingness,” wrote Dr. Angus, “our Lord and 
 His Apostles employ to describe the state of those who 
 die in sin and disbelief.” Or, as Mr. Oxenham, a Roman 
 Catholic writer, expresses it: “The most uncompromis¬ 
 ing revelation of this awful truth, which no rationalizing 
 
 1 “De Civitate JDei,” xxi. 23. 
 
12 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF HELL. 
 
 sophistry can effectually obscure, issued from the lips of 
 the Incarnate Word Himself.” 
 
 In a sermon on “the Spirits in Prison,” the late Dr. 
 Vaughan, Master of the Temple, a learned and liberal 
 theologian, said: “I cannot get rid of three words—cer¬ 
 tainly not of the three things meant by them—from my 
 Bible. I may write 'Hell,’ ‘Hades,’ in one place, and ‘Ge¬ 
 henna,’ in another. I may write ‘damnation’ into ‘con¬ 
 demnation,’ because wicked men have made the old form 
 a profanity, and I may turn ‘everlasting’ into ‘eternal,’ 
 if I can thereby better express the idea of duration of 
 being, without involving the idea of succession of time. 
 But what then? Are the things gone because you have re¬ 
 christened them?” 
 
 Such are the views of some really careful and learned 
 thinkers on this great subject who, we may suppose, were 
 fully alive to the moral difficulties which their conclusions 
 involved. Numerous others might be quoted were it not 
 that this volume is to be of limited size and is not to 
 assume the form of a theological treatise. But if this be 
 so, what are we to say of those modern pseudo-theologians 
 who, to please the spirit of the age, attack the very cen¬ 
 tral stronghold of the Faith, even at the risk of discredit¬ 
 ing Christianity itself, and of loosening its hold upon the 
 human mind. There is, as has been rightly said, nothing 
 so contemptible as scepticism masquerading in a surplice. 
 There is nothing so offensive and grotesque as the picture 
 of the modern critic apologizing for his belief, and ac¬ 
 commodating its central verities to the rationalizing ten¬ 
 dencies of the age in which he lives. It is a very striking 
 instance of the salt losing its savour, of the blind lead¬ 
 ing the blind: of Revealed Truth, instead of restraining 
 and modifying human thought and action, humbly adapt¬ 
 ing itself to the supposed claims of human reason. 
 
 And it must be clear that the moral perils involved 
 in such an attitude of mind are of exceptional magnitude, 
 and that they are of necessity far-reaching in their influ- 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF HELL. 
 
 13 
 
 ence upon conduct and character. Fear of punishment, it 
 is true, is not the best and highest motive for right-doing; 
 but it is a very powerful motive nevertheless, and, with 
 certain orders of mind, the only influence which is active 
 in restraining and controlling the moral life. 
 
 “The Passion and Hell,” wrote the late Father F. W. 
 Faber, “are the two great foundations out of which men 
 learn a profound hatred of sin; they are the two well¬ 
 heads of sacred fear; they are two revelations of God 
 most necessary to complete a true idea of Him.” 1 
 
 The truth of these assertions may be called in ques¬ 
 tion by some modern philosophers who speak of man as 
 he exists in their own imagination and who have formu¬ 
 lated a Christianity after their own hearts; they will not 
 be denied by those who have stood face to face with the 
 great problems of social and moral evil, and who know 
 from practical experience what man really is. 
 
 Any such authoritative denial of the doctrine of Hell, 
 moreover, is bound to be disastrous to earnest faith in 
 the central verities of the Christian religion. In the 
 Christian scheme of Redemption one doctrine depends up¬ 
 on the other, one implies and explains the other, and the 
 bond which unites them cannot be severed without loosen¬ 
 ing each separate link, and without rendering the whole 
 scheme illogical and unreasonable. The doctrine of Hell 
 *is a necessary part of this scheme, and a denial of it is 
 almost always followed by denial of some other impor¬ 
 tant doctrine connected with the Incarnation and Re¬ 
 demption of Christ. It inevitably leads to what is termed 
 “advanced” and “liberal” views, and what is this but an¬ 
 other name for disbelief, or rejection, of truths which the 
 natural human reason cannot square with its dictates and 
 surmises, and against which the unaided intellect rebels. 
 
 The religious movements of the present day, and the 
 normal attitude of numbers of intelligent persons toward 
 
 1 “Spiritual Conferences.” 
 
14 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF HELL. 
 
 the Historic Faith are surely striking evidence in support 
 of this statement. To hold orthodox views—in other 
 words, to believe what God has manifestly revealed even 
 though the mind may not be able to grasp it fully, has 
 come to be regarded as a sign of imperfect education, or 
 of inferior intellect, and there are scores of people who 
 would think it nothing short of a personal insult were one 
 to regard them as still believing in the existence of the 
 orthodox Hell. 
 
 Some of them, of course, have never been taught to 
 think logically and accurately, and merely echo the pre¬ 
 dominating views of the multitude. Some have no clear 
 notion of what the doctrine of Hell really teaches, and 
 direct their attack not so much against the doctrine it¬ 
 self, as against some popular and unwarrantable exposi¬ 
 tion of it. Some have been carried away by the postu¬ 
 lates of their natural reason, and by a supposed con¬ 
 flict between the ascertained facts of modern science and 
 Revealed Religion. The greater number by far are the 
 victims of half-instructed and sceptical religious teachers, 
 who lack the courage necessary for withstanding the 
 stream of modern tendencies, and who are perhaps 
 vaguely conscious that they would be of but small repu¬ 
 tation did they not advance with that stream. But the 
 result is the same in either case. It is doubt and distrust 
 of the essential truths of Revelation, and an attitude of 
 mind which amounts to a practical rejection of them. The 
 disappearance of Hell, by a logical process of thought 
 and inference, transforms the entire conception of the 
 nature of sin and its consequences. A modified and more 
 “rational” notion of sin invalidates the doctrine of the 
 Atonement and Redemption, and the re-adjustment of 
 that doctrine again throws doubt upon the nature and 
 divinity of Christ. Thus, step by step, the subtle work 
 of destruction goes on, and is only completed when the 
 supernatural element of Christianity has disappeared, 
 and the disclosures of Christ respecting human duty and 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF HELL. 
 
 15 
 
 human destiny have either been explained away, or have 
 been adapted to the claims of unilluminated human rea¬ 
 son. 
 
 It is sometimes assumed, and in many instances even 
 boldly asserted, that science, so far as it can be expected 
 to express an opinion on such a subject, of necessity pro¬ 
 nounces against the doctrine of Hell, and that the latter 
 stands in violent antagonism to the ascertained laws of 
 nature and of life. But this impression, too, has no foun¬ 
 dation whatever in fact. On the contrary the modern 
 doctrine of the conservation and correlation of forces tes¬ 
 tifies in favor of the existence of Hell, and, granting an¬ 
 other life, indeed almost postulates it as a physical neces¬ 
 sity. There are eminent scientific men who, reasoning 
 from the reign of ascertained law in the physical uni¬ 
 verse, have inferred the reign of unchanging law in the 
 spiritual universe, and have thus found reasonable 
 grounds, on scientific principles, for defending and main¬ 
 taining the Christian doctrine of Hell. Some years ago, 
 an eminent biologist gave expression to his views on this 
 point in the following words: “Now, any being to whom 
 has been given that wonderful power will, with all the 
 consequent responsibilities of a state of probation, must 
 be able to fail as well as to succeed—the very term ‘proba¬ 
 tion’ implies a risk of failure. What are we to deem 
 •probable as to the consequences of such failure? Reason 
 unaided can tell us very little of the soul after death. 
 Certainly we have no evidence that it will then be able 
 to undo what it has done during life, but rather the con¬ 
 trary. The doctrine of the persistence of force does not 
 favor such a view and there is nothing which contra¬ 
 dicts the Church’s assertion that the state in which the 
 soul finds itself at the close of life’s trial cannot be re¬ 
 versed. If so, the man who dies in a state of aversion 
 from the highest light and the supreme good must 
 remain in such a state with all its inevitable conse¬ 
 quences.” 
 
16 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF HELL. 
 
 “Some will say those consequences need not be eternal. 
 But if the cause should be unchangeable, how can the 
 consequences change? Moreover, we are contemplating 
 what relates to eternity, when time shall have ceased to 
 be.” 
 
 The learned authors 1 of that deeply interesting 
 work “The Unseen Universe” wrote as follows: “To some 
 extent, no doubt, Christ’s description of the universal 
 Gehenna must be regarded as figurative, but yet we do 
 not think that the sayings of Christ, with regard to the 
 unseen world, ought to be looked upon as nothing more 
 than pure figures of speech. We feel sure that the prin¬ 
 ciple of continuity cries out against such an interpre¬ 
 tation—may they not rather be descriptions of what takes 
 place in the unseen universe, brought home to our minds 
 by means of perfectly true comparisons with the pro¬ 
 cesses and things of this present universe which they most 
 resemble? Thus the Christian Gehenna bears to the un¬ 
 seen universe precisely the same relation as the Ge¬ 
 henna of the Jews did to the city of Jerusalem. And 
 just as the fire was always kept up, and the worm ever 
 active in the one, so are we forced to contemplate an en¬ 
 during process in the other. For we cannot easily agree 
 with those who would limit the existence of evil to the 
 present world. We know now that the matter of the 
 whole of the visible universe is of a piece with that which 
 we recognize here, and the beings of other worlds must 
 be subject to accidental occurrences from their relation 
 with the outer universe in the same way as we are. But 
 if there be accident, must there not be pain and death? 
 Now, these are naturally associated in our minds with 
 the presence of moral evil. We are thus drawn, if not 
 absolutely forced, to surmise that the dark thread known 
 as evil is one which is very deeply woven into that gar¬ 
 ment of God which is called the universe. In fine, just 
 
 1 Profs. P. G. Tait and B. Stewart. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF HELL 
 
 17 
 
 as the arguments of this chapter lead us to regard the 
 whole universe as eternal, so in like manner are we led 
 to regard evil as eternal, and therefore we cannot easily 
 imagine the universe without its Gehenna, where the 
 worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched. The process 
 at all events would seem to be most probably an endur¬ 
 ing one.” 
 
 In a striking work on “The Natural History of Hell,” 
 an American writer 1 says: “Every phenomenon is the 
 result of preceding causes, and becomes itself the cause 
 of other occurrences, and this obtains both in the moral 
 and physical world. If the consequences of every act 
 cling to us for all time, then the consequence of our 
 wrong-doing can be no exception. The wrong-doer will 
 go down through all the endless cycles of eternity chained 
 to his doom, not by the arbitrary sentence of a capricious 
 judge, but by the adamantine links of cause and effect, 
 working in strict accord with laws whose action knows no 
 pity and no mitigation. Compared with such links the 
 iron chains which bound the vulture-gnawed Prometheus 
 to his rock are but as cords of silk and ropes of sand. 
 From such a doom there is no escape but by a miracle. 
 That the intellect and moral sensibilities may be rendered 
 more delicate and more acute is within the range of our 
 knowledge and experience. Some men seem to be under 
 the influence of a moral anaesthetic, and do not feel the 
 keen pain which results from knowing that they have 
 done ill. But let the moral sense be awakened, and an 
 increased knowledge attained of the evil results of their 
 actions, and then the intellectual torture becomes fearful. 
 As is well known to medical men, cases often arise in 
 which the nervous system becomes supersensitive, and 
 the prick of a pin, or the slightest touch gives exquisite 
 pain. Let us imagine that, after a career of crime, the 
 moral and intellectual sensibilities of the evil-doer should 
 
 1 Philipson. 
 
18 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF HELL 
 
 be rendered intensely acute, can we imagine a more ter¬ 
 rible Hell than that to which he would thus be consigned? 
 If these sufferings are the normal result of natural laws, 
 then, so long as these laws maintain their sway, there 
 is no escape, and can be no pardon. Pardon—that is 
 release from misery—can only come by a suspension of 
 these laws, or, in other words, by a miracle.” 
 
 “Thus far, then, science leads us and no farther. 
 When she has pronounced our doom she shows no way 
 of pardon or escape; and he who relies upon natural 
 laws and the general beneficence of the Creator, must 
 see that in this there is no promise of mitigation. If 
 left to Nature, and to Nature’s laws, we can only sit 
 down in the dust and cry, ‘Woe is me’!” 
 
 The testimony of many other thoughtful minds might 
 be adduced in order to demonstrate the fact that disbe¬ 
 lief of the orthodox doctrine of Hell is not, as it some¬ 
 times supposed, the characteristic of really deep and 
 searching thinkers, but, on the contrary, rather an evi¬ 
 dence of superficial reflection and of hasty generaliza¬ 
 tion. The pride of the half-educated, as one has well 
 said, always discovers a short cut to unbelief. 
 
 In the course of an elaborate discussion of a kindred 
 subject The Spectator not very long ago remarked: “It 
 certainly cannot be shown that either progressive purifi¬ 
 cation or progressive degradation necessarily comes to 
 an end * * * nor have we the smallest vestige of evi¬ 
 dence that the downward progress of the will is a termin¬ 
 able process, and comes to any natural end. It may do so 
 if immortality depends only on the union with God. But 
 there is certainly a sort of antagonism to God, which ap¬ 
 pears to be progressive, as well as the union with Him, 
 and antagonism means conscious existence no less than 
 love means conscious existence. All we can say is, that 
 if a man be what Mr. Gladstone terms immortalisable, 
 there is no final reason (unless it be God’s mercy) why 
 he should not be immortalisable in one direction as well 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF HELL 
 
 19 
 
 as in the other; and that, while a good deal of our moral 
 and spiritual experience tends to show the durability of 
 remorse, and the persistence of the growing incapacity 
 to turn back after a certain point in the downward stage 
 is reached, we have only the vaguest hope to rely on for 
 our anticipation that all suffering must finally end.” 
 
 “This, at least, is true,” says another learned writer 
 on the subject, “that we can find in the study of observed 
 spiritual and moral phenomena, and in the comparison 
 of indisputable laws of God’s creation, an indication, such 
 as prompts the watcher of the skies to expect the ap¬ 
 pearance of a new planet, that an eternal doom of evil 
 must be awaiting sin just beyond the grave.” 
 
 Again, the doctrine of Hell is declared to be in con¬ 
 flict with the testimony of our normal moral instincts. 
 This is perhaps the most popular objection of all, and is 
 one which is supposed to settle the matter finally. But 
 this objection, too, has no foundation in fact. There is 
 such a thing, of course, as an artificial conscience, a way 
 of silencing the natural voice of the soul by sophistry 
 and reasoning. Our moral nature can, with a certain 
 kind of manipulation, be made to witness falsely. But 
 the unperverted instinct of man, his normal natural con¬ 
 science, unquestionably testifies in favor of some grievous 
 punishment consequent upon sin and final impenitence. 
 
 • Africa —The ancient Egyptians taught and believed 
 that the souls of the sinful must appear before the judg¬ 
 ment seat of Osiris to be condemned to successive incar¬ 
 nations in the bodies of animals. 
 
 A similar belief is held by the Libyans, the Ethiopians 
 and the various negro races of modern Africa. The 
 wicked souls pass into the hands of the wicked spirit in 
 his dark habitation, or wander about in the air or in the 
 forest full of malice and restlessness. 
 
 Asia —As regards the Asiatic races, the Ancient Per¬ 
 sians already taught that the souls of the godless pass 
 into the power of the evil spirit. 
 
20 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF HELL 
 
 According to the belief of the Indians the soul ap¬ 
 pears before the judge of the dead immediately upon 
 leaving its body. The soul of the wicked goes to Hell, 
 there to be tormented in various ways. The ancient 
 Chinese teach that the souls of the wicked join the com¬ 
 pany of evil spirits, or wander about in various forms 
 in graveyards and other places. The Japanese, too, ex¬ 
 clude all sinful souls from heaven. 
 
 America and South Sea Islands —The Greenland¬ 
 ers believe that the souls of the wicked are condemned 
 to a deep subterranean region which is without warmth 
 and light and where they are full of fear and terror. 
 
 The Mexicans hold that the wicked go to the lower 
 regions where various places exist for various crimes. 
 
 According to the belief of the Peruvians the souls of 
 wicked men are banished to a place in the centre of the 
 earth where there is no rest, but sickness and trouble of 
 various kinds. 
 
 The North American Indians, too, have a conception 
 of Hell, where the wicked must eat bitter fruits, or are 
 cast into a deep well in which fire is burning. 
 
 Many of the South Sea Islanders believe that the 
 wicked go to a dark country where the sun never shines 
 and where there is only muddy water. 
 
 Europe —The Hell of the old Germanic races was a 
 deep precipice where the old envious serpent had her be¬ 
 ing and was incessantly gnawing at the roots of the 
 tree of life, in perpetual enmity with the spirit of God. 
 They believe that in this Hell murderers and perjurers 
 were torturd for ever. 
 
 The proper place of punishment of the old Greeks 
 and Romans was Tartarus. We know from classic 
 sources what the nature of its terrors was. Similar to 
 what we read in Virgil and Ovid are the expressions 
 used by the Greek poets: Homer, Pindar, Euripides, 
 Sophocles, Aristophanes, and by philosophers such as 
 Pythagoras, Socrates, Aristotle, Plato. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF HELL 
 
 21 
 
 By the latter we have that famous sentence (Phaedon, 
 p. 114): 
 
 “Those whose condition, by reason of the heinousness 
 of their crimes, are seen to be incurable, a well-deserved 
 fate hurls into Tartarus, which they never leave again.” 
 
 In this unanimous testimony of both cultivated and 
 uncultivated races and nations w r e have the universal 
 instinctive convictions of mankind expressed. And it 
 seems to me that whatever allowance we may have to 
 make with respect to the particular form in which this 
 belief expresses itself, it is impossible to assume that, in 
 the matter of the belief itself, all these races and na¬ 
 tions should have been allowed to fall into error. 
 
 But this “voice of nature” clearly is not in agreement 
 with the voice of “enlightened” modern reason! 
 
 On the other hand, we have to recognize the fact 
 that by far the larger majority of mankind are not re¬ 
 strained from evil action and from self-indulgence by 
 the love of God and of good, but by the fear of pun¬ 
 ishment, vaguely felt by the conscience to be certain and 
 inevitable. It is this motive alone which rules and regu¬ 
 lates the wills and affections of those whose normal ten¬ 
 dencies are altogether downwards, and who cannot be 
 said to be restrained by any secondary law governing the 
 social life. They may not be able to define the mysteri¬ 
 ous power which is thus working in their moral nature; 
 they may even be inclined to deny its existence; but it is 
 there, nevertheless, and is apt at certain times to make 
 itself most practically and unpleasantly felt. 
 
 The false liberalism of the age has given rise to the 
 notion that the fear of punishment is one of the lower 
 and unworthier motives which lead men to do right and 
 to pursue and cultivate high and spiritual ideals rather 
 than ignoble and earthly ones. And human vanity has 
 readily adopted this notion as a kind of truism, dem¬ 
 onstrating, as it is supposed to do, that we have left 
 childish and savage things behind us and have reached 
 
22 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF HELL 
 
 a more exalted stage in our moral evolution. But it 
 seems to me that a subtle self-deception lies behind this 
 popular notion. A superficial study even of human life 
 and human character constantly exhibits its fallacy. It 
 is most certainly not love of God that restrains even 
 refined and cultivated men from an indulgence of their 
 passions and from entering upon crooked and forbidden 
 paths in the various relationships of life. What does 
 restrain them is the sense and fear of punishment—in 
 the form of dishonor and loss of social prestige in the 
 temporal order, and of dimly-discerned perhaps, but 
 nevertheless conceivably serious consequences in the spir¬ 
 itual order. 
 
 The recognition of this fact may be humiliating to 
 our pride and self-conceit; but its importance will be 
 recognized by all those who take the matter seriously and 
 who are determined to see things as they really are. 
 
 And, admitting this fact, what is the revealed doctrine 
 of Hell, but a confirmation of these vague instincts and 
 promptings of nature—the warning voice of God speak¬ 
 ing here and now in emphatic and unmistakable terms. 
 
 “Menace as well as promise,” wrote Mr. Gladstone, 
 “menace for those whom promise could not melt or move, 
 formed an essential part of the provision for working 
 out the redemption of the world. 
 
 “So far as my knowledge and experience go, we are 
 in danger of losing this subject out of sight and out of 
 mind. I am not now speaking of everlasting punish¬ 
 ments in particular, but of all and any punishment; and 
 can it be right, can it be warrantable that the Pulpit 
 and the Press should advisedly fall short of the standard 
 established by the Holy Scriptures, and not less uni¬ 
 formly by the earliest and most artless period of horta¬ 
 tory Christian teaching? Is it not altogether undeniable 
 that these authorities did so handle the subject of this 
 penal element, in the frequency of mention and in the 
 manner of handling, that in their Christian system it had 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF HELL 
 
 23 
 
 a place as truly operative, as clear, palpable, and impres¬ 
 sive, as the more attractive doctrines of redeeming love? 
 I sometimes fear that we have lived into a period of in¬ 
 timidation in this great matter. That broad and simple 
 promulgation of the new scheme which is known as the 
 Sermon on the Mount was closed with the awful pres¬ 
 entation of the house built upon the sand.” 
 
 With these wise words, based on an accurate knowl¬ 
 edge of the Scriptures, and, of course, on the many-sided 
 experiences of a life affording unique opportunities of in¬ 
 sight into human character, I most thoroughly agree. 
 
 It cannot be accidental, surely, that Holy Scripture 
 contains far more warnings of Hell than promises of 
 Heaven. He Who searches the hearts and reins knows 
 what truth is best calculated to stay and direct the weak 
 and frail mind of man. I feel confident that when the 
 secret history of each saved soul comes hereafter to be 
 revealed, it will be found that the fear of Hell has 
 saved more souls from Hell than the promises of Heaven. 
 Although fear is not the highest motive to virtue, it is 
 the most common one nevertheless, and, in the critical 
 moment of life, the most powerful one beyond doubt. 
 
 But from whatever point of view we may be disposed 
 to regard the matter it is certain beyond all possible 
 doubt that the doctrine of Hell—of Eternal Punishment— 
 is both explicitly and implicitly taught by Christ and by 
 the Apostles, and by all the Saints and Martyrs, and the 
 really great theologians after their time, and that it is 
 one of the very corner-stones upon which the Christian 
 system of Redemption and Restoration reposes. And, 
 admitting this fact, it is surely an unpardonable offense 
 on the part of some modern teachers, often for the sake 
 of notoriety, to waver and hesitate in fully declaring this 
 truth, or so to veil and obscure it as to empty it of its 
 full moral weight and import. In the face of the mo¬ 
 mentous interests at stake such a mode of action is not 
 charity, but cruelty and unfaithfulness. For, “if in- 
 
24 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF HELL 
 
 deed so terrible a doom awaits the finally impenitent, 
 the surest guarantee for escaping it hereafter is not to 
 forget it now. If the doctrine of eternal punishment be 
 a revealed verity it is treason to God and treachery to 
 men to withhold or disguise it, or tamper with it, be¬ 
 cause we may choose to think it better to leave them in 
 ignorance of what He has taught it better to reveal. 
 
 “To presume upon overriding the express declarations 
 of the Lord Himself, delivered upon His own authority, is 
 surely to break up Revealed Religion in its very ground¬ 
 work, and to substitute for it a flimsy speculation, spun, 
 like the spider’s web, by the private spirit, and about as 
 little capable as that web of bearing the strain by which 
 the false is to be severed from the true.” 1 
 
 One fact most certainly remains: The doctrine of 
 Hell may be rejected—its truth cannot be disproved, and 
 the disquieting thought remains that is is conceivable. 
 It may well be that the difficulty does not lie in the doc¬ 
 trine itself, but in the limitation of the natural intellect, 
 which cannot reason conclusively respecting the things of 
 the supernatural order. 
 
 But, if the doctrine be true, unbelief will be seen to 
 be a far more perilous thing than at first sight appears. 
 The denial may in itself seem trivial; but, by the conse¬ 
 quences of it, we may forfeit the means of attaining sal¬ 
 vation, since we thus put ourselves outside the reach of 
 Christ’s method of redemption. Those, therefore, who 
 deny it should have a very high degree of instinctive 
 certainty or they are guilty of fearful levity. A man 
 intending to commit suicide may change his mind when 
 he is in the water, but he may for all that be unable to 
 catch hold of the rope which is held out to him, and he 
 may perish. The consequences would be the same as 
 in the case of the man who will not catch hold of the 
 rope. Rightly, therefore, does Diderot say: “A sensible 
 
 1 W. E. Gladstone. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF HELL 
 
 25 
 
 man will act in life as though there was a Hell so long 
 as a fragment of doubt as to the existence of Hell re¬ 
 mains in his mind.” And the Christian Church, if she 
 is to fulfill her mission and the central aim of her insti¬ 
 tution, has no alternative but to proclaim the truth as her 
 Divine Founder committed it to her. Her duty is to con¬ 
 trol human thought and speculation, not to be controlled 
 and influenced by them. She cannot modify any one of 
 her doctrines, “or tamper with the exactness of its ex¬ 
 pression even though by doing so she would win half 
 the world. Her mission is to convert the nations to the 
 truth, not to adapt the truth to them, and every attempt 
 to do so must be fatal alike to the cause of truth and to 
 the souls it is designed to serve.” 1 
 
 It should be borne in mind that our inability to fully 
 understand the doctrine of Hell, or to reconcile it with 
 our imperfect and limited conception of justice and of 
 right, cannot possibly constitute an argument against its 
 truth. We might with equally good reason reject every 
 other doctrine of the Christian religion. The most im¬ 
 portant and central of them escape full intellectual ap¬ 
 prehension. We see at best but as “through a glass 
 darkly .” 2 Indeed, we would expect that beings like 
 ourselves whose nature is limited and is under the “false 
 #eemings” of the senses would have but an imperfect 
 apprehension of the truths of a divine Revelation. There 
 would always be the difficulty of expressing divine and 
 eternal things in human and changeable, and consequent¬ 
 ly inadequate, terms. 
 
 And “let it be observed * * * that we are not bound 
 to be able to solve all difficulties which may be urged 
 against a thesis which from other sources is abundantly 
 proved. Even in matters of physical science no one ex- 
 
 1 Rev. H. G. S. Bowden’s Preface to “Revealed Religion,” by F. 
 
 Hettinger, D. D. 
 
 2 I Corinth, xiii., 12. 
 
26 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF HELL 
 
 pects this. There are difficulties against the law of grav¬ 
 itation itself which cannot be solved, yet no one thinks 
 of doubting the existence of the law. Revelation has its 
 difficulties, but so has existence itself. Revelation has 
 its mysteries, but so has rationalism. Meanwhile, the 
 certainties which we rightly hold must be held devoutly, 
 and the difficulties may well wait their fuller solution in 
 the light of a brighter day.” 
 
SOME POPULAR OBJECTIONS AND DIFFI¬ 
 CULTIES CONSIDERED. 
 
 I. 
 
 The Goodness of God. 
 
 W E ARE constantly told in the present day that 
 the sins and failures of our moral life are 
 chiefly due to our education and our social en¬ 
 vironment. There is, it is said, strictly speaking, no 
 such thing as deliberate sin. Transgression of the moral 
 law is not so much an act of rebellion against God, as 
 a fault of temperament, and an innate lack of that 
 strength of character which is known to exercise con¬ 
 trol over the desires and tendencies of our lower nature. 
 And God is too good to punish man for what is after 
 all only due to his natural and inherited weakness. In 
 the progressive development of the race the higher side 
 of our nature is slowly but steadily being evolved, and 
 when it shall have attained its fuller development, and 
 •conquered human weakness and ignorance, sin and vice, 
 too, and the miseries which flow from them, will dis¬ 
 appear from the earth. 
 
 This is the fashionable modern philosophy of life 
 which, as most of us know, is professed by vast numbers 
 of intelligent and cultivated persons. It is attractive 
 because of its seeming reasonableness, and it has the 
 advantage that it solves some of the most difficult prob¬ 
 lems which have ever perplexed the human mind. It 
 certainly disposes, in the simplest and most “natural” 
 way possible, of the claims of the Christian religion, and 
 abolishes its unattractive and seemingly unreasonable 
 creed. 
 
 27 
 
28 
 
 THE GOODNESS OF GOD 
 
 This philosophy has one serious disadvantage, how¬ 
 ever. It is emphatically contradicted by all we know 
 of God and of His mode of action within the natural 
 sphere of life. We certainly have no evidence whatever 
 there that, because of His goodness, He makes allow¬ 
 ance for our innate tendencies, or for the weaknesses and 
 frailties of our nature. On the contrary, we know the 
 very opposite to be the case. We know for certain that 
 He is quite capable of hurting us severely, and even per¬ 
 manently, and that He rigidly and unerringly punishes sin. 
 
 In the natural sphere, disobedience to the laws of the 
 physical life is invariably followed by bodily suffering 
 and pain. Indulgence in forbidden joys and pleasures 
 brings with it consequences which may be of the most 
 far reaching character. They may effectually hinder 
 and paralyze a useful career, or embitter each single joy 
 of a long life. 
 
 In the same way transgressions of the moral law are 
 followed by remorse, by mental sufferings which are in¬ 
 finitely greater sometimes than those endured by the 
 body. There is, we are told, nothing so terrible as the 
 torture of an evil conscience, even though it may be pos¬ 
 sible to hide such an experience beneath a calm external 
 demeanor. Murderers have been known to deliver them¬ 
 selves up to justice, after years of moral agony, solely 
 to escape the tortures of a conscience stricken with re¬ 
 morse. We all admit that, by reason of our moral frail¬ 
 ty, the pains and sorrows of our life are greater by far 
 than its pleasures and joys. 
 
 From the standpoint of our imperfect knowledge 
 such suffering may seem severe and out of proportion to 
 the character of the offence. We say: The transgression 
 or the fault was due to our ignorance, or perhaps to our 
 peculiar temperament; the transgressor was scarcely re¬ 
 sponsible. But there must surely be another side to 
 the matter, since the self-evident fact remains that, in 
 spite of His goodness, and in spite of our ignorance and 
 
THE GOODNESS OF GOD 
 
 29 
 
 our temperament, God certainly does punish. Our per¬ 
 sonal responsibility must, as a matter of fact, be infi¬ 
 nitely greater than we commonly suppose. Our moral 
 intuitions certainly would seem to support this view. 
 Conscience, in its normal manifestations, incessantly and 
 emphatically witnesses to our responsibility. In lan¬ 
 guage and promptings which we may not be able to de¬ 
 fine and analyze, but which are nevertheless audible to 
 the inner ear, it never ceases to remind us that, what¬ 
 ever our temperament, moral transgression is an act of 
 the will, and that, in spite of certain natural tendencies, 
 we are absolutely free, and may, if we will, resist the 
 evil and do the good. And reason itself surely points 
 to the trustworthiness of this innate faculty, since it is 
 impossible to account for its origin except by assuming 
 the existence of a higher moral order with which it is 
 in correspondence. 
 
 In any case, although we cannot always reconcile 
 God’s goodness with His ways of punishment, we do not, 
 on that account, doubt His goodness, or deny the fact of 
 His punishment. We admit both, however great the 
 problem may be which they present, because for both 
 ^ there is abundant and satisfactory evidence. We con¬ 
 stantly confess that God is good even though He punishes 
 severely in the sphere of the natural life 
 
 Now, if we can, in a measure, reconcile God’s good¬ 
 ness with His severity here and now, why should we not 
 be able, with fuller knowledge and enlarged faculties, 
 to do so hereafter? Our difficulty may be entirely due 
 to our ignorance, and to our imperfect, and therefore mis¬ 
 taken, conception of things. “It is possible,” says a mod¬ 
 ern writer, “that could we understand what eternity 
 really is, the notion of the reversal of the soul’s condition 
 might be seen to involve an absurdity. Moreover, such 
 a change does not appear to us reconcilable with justice, 
 for any temporal retribution however prolonged, would, 
 if succeeded by eternal happiness, place all men practi- 
 
30 
 
 THE GOODNESS OF GOD 
 
 cally on a level. For centuries upon centuries vanish in¬ 
 to nothingness when compared with eternity. Science, 
 at least, lends no support to the belief that a change can 
 take place in the consequences of any action once per¬ 
 formed. It is not inexorable severity, and the continu¬ 
 ance of chastisement, but mercy and forgiveness which 
 the aspects of Nature and their scientific study render 
 difficult of belief.” 
 
 “Retributive justice,” wrote Cardinal Newman, “is 
 the very attribute under which God is primarily brought 
 before us in the teaching of our natural conscience.” 1 
 
 “We know only too well that pain and agony exist 
 here. What ground can we have for denying the pos¬ 
 sibility of their existence hereafter? Any unnecessary 
 and useless suffering cannot, of course, co-exist with a 
 good God. But who can pretend to know God’s ultimate 
 end in creation? That His purposes cannot contradict 
 our clear ethical perceptions is certain, but there may 
 be useful and benevolent ends subserved by suffering 
 which we cannot fathom, and there may be divine pur¬ 
 poses which, without contradicting, transcend even good¬ 
 ness, and which our faculties are quite unable to con¬ 
 ceive of.” 2 
 
 In any case we recognize God’s goodness even though 
 we cannot understand, and fully reconcile it with His 
 methods of punishment. We know for certain that God 
 is not incapable of hurting us even though He is good. 
 And if this be so here, why not there? The higher prob¬ 
 ability is, that laws, similar to those which we know to 
 be in operation in the natural sphere, are in operation in 
 the supernatural sphere also. 
 
 Again it must be borne in mind that Hell is primarily 
 not of God’s creation, but of man’s: no arbitrary infliction 
 of a vengeful Deity, but a law working in the inmost 
 
 1 Grammar of Assent. 
 
 2 “Nineteenth Century.” 
 
THE GOODNESS OF GOD 
 
 31 
 
 depths of our moral nature. “Hell is a law. Just as 
 it is a law that pent-up water, when its weight and force 
 have reached a certain point, breaks its barriers and 
 sweeps down upon the region below it, so it is a law 
 that sin or unrighteousness or wilful aversion from God, 
 if it reach the boundary, death, unreformed, will go on 
 for ever so, and will bring eternal separation from God, 
 and separation in a spiritual nature means misery .” 1 
 
 It is evident that in the world of the inner life 
 subtle and highly complex forces are incessantly at work. 
 Thoughts, aims and desires are silently but unerringly 
 moulding the character. The experiences of life, success 
 or failure, troubles or joys and the manner in which we 
 accept or reject them, are imperceptibly educating the 
 heart and training the affections; self-discipline and self- 
 control, exercised or neglected, are either strengthening 
 or weakening the powers of the will; pure or impure de¬ 
 sires and influences, checked or indulged in, are dispos¬ 
 ing and inclining the moral nature this way or that. 
 The outer life, with its never-ceasing action upon the 
 inner man, is gradually but steadily creating a distinct 
 personality, the essential characteristics of which may not 
 b* clearly known to ourselves, but must necessarily be 
 known to God. 
 
 The modern study of the sub-conscious man has 
 thrown much light upon these matters and has shown 
 how very inaccurate our judgment of the true human 
 personality may be sometimes. We know, for instance, 
 that the manifestly cultured and refined man who, in his 
 outward relations to other men, is a paragon of virtue 
 may, so far as his real inner nature is concerned, be a 
 debased sensualist, and a villainous thief and ruffian. 
 
 The best of men know how extremely difficult it is to 
 effectually bring their inner nature into conformity with 
 their moral convictions and the laws of the spiritual life. 
 
 1 Dublin Review (1881), vol. v., p. 130. 
 
32 
 
 THE GOODNESS OF GOD 
 
 Few persons probably even entertain the thought that 
 there is the possibility of their growing morally worse 
 and of their becoming more and more estranged from 
 God—diverted from the pursuit of the true end of life. 
 And yet they may be steadily degenerating, evil taking 
 imperceptibly a firmer and more permanent hold upon 
 them, their very lack of resistance to the downward ten¬ 
 dencies of life sweeping them away from God. 
 
 Does not experience constantly teach us how com¬ 
 pletely the man, who exclusively pursues worldly inter¬ 
 ests, in the course of time becomes the slave of those 
 interests? He would seem to lose the very faculty of 
 apprehending higher and spiritual realities. The life of 
 his soul becomes paralyzed. His heart becomes chilled. 
 He becomes insensible to spiritual influences, to the claims 
 of that other world which his reason all the while tells 
 him to be the true end and aim of life. His inner light 
 becomes dulled, his inner ear closed, so that he sometimes 
 ends in denying the very existence of that other world. 
 And, in a sense, it has no doubt ceased to exist for him 
 since he stands, in the matter of his moral life, wholly 
 outside it and apart from it. But in such a case it is 
 surely not God but his own weak will, and his persistently 
 misdirected aim of life, which are shutting him out from 
 the kingdom of Heaven. It is the law of sin and of 
 death which is working the ruin and destruction of his 
 soul. “Sow a thought,” says an old adage, “and reap 
 an action; sow an action and reap a character; sow a 
 character and reap an eternity.” 
 
 If such a man be hereafter excluded from a state of 
 being with which he is in no sense in moral correspond¬ 
 ence, and for the enjoyment of which he possesses no 
 single faculty, can he in fairness call the goodness of God 
 in question? 
 
 Again it is urged by our opponents that love is de¬ 
 clared to be the chief note in the Gospel-Message. God’s 
 love for man is great. He desires his happiness. The 
 
THE GOODNESS OF GOD 
 
 33 
 
 coming of Christ, His life of suffering and humiliation 
 and His final sacrifice are evidence of this. How are we 
 to reconcile the thought of Hell with such a love? Does 
 not the latter notion of necessity exclude the former? 
 Can we conceive of a God of love ultimately turning his 
 back upon any man, however sinful, and of abandoning 
 him to his fate? 
 
 It is in some such form as this that the difficulty is 
 apt to be stated. And at first sight it seems a formid¬ 
 able difficulty no doubt. A little reflection, however, 
 shows it to be a shallow and superficial method of rea¬ 
 soning. 
 
 From the principles governing the actions of men in 
 the present life the objection stated cannot be said to re¬ 
 ceive a shadow of support. The. chief or ruler of a state 
 desires the happiness and well-being of his subjects. He 
 puts himself and his ministers to an infinite amount of 
 trouble to secure them. But he does not on that ac¬ 
 count hesitate to punish the transgressor, to deprive him, 
 in some instances, of his liberty, and even to punish per¬ 
 manently—to deprive him of life itself. 
 
 It never occurs to a single mind to question the good¬ 
 ness of a ruler because he condemns a man to death. 
 The mind sees no incongruity between the first quality or 
 characteristic and the latter action. 
 
 A good parent punishes his child and, in certain in¬ 
 stances, even severely. There are cases on record in 
 which an excellent father has finally abandoned and cast 
 off a hopeless and degenerate son. The normal mind has 
 no difficulty whatever in reconciling the two—the thought 
 of the excellency of the father and of the casting off of 
 the son. 
 
 Where then is the difficulty in God acting in a similar 
 fashion in His moral universe, especially when we bear 
 in mind that His knowledge of human character and of the 
 measure of individual responsibility is full and accur¬ 
 ate ai?d that His judgment cannot in any case be at fault? 
 
34 
 
 THE GOODNESS OP GOD 
 
 Can we justly say that He ceases to be good because 
 the creature which He has endowed with free will per¬ 
 sistently and determinedly misuses that will and, to the 
 very last moment of its life, lives in open defiance of His 
 known laws? 
 
 God’s love for man is great, no doubt; but equally 
 great surely must be His zeal for the moral world-order 
 —the ultimate purpose for which the universe exists. 
 He must hate any disturbance of it, and the maintenance 
 of this world-order clearly cannot be achieved without 
 laws guarding it and punishing offenders. But all the 
 experience of life proves that the mere declaration of the 
 law is useless. Men disobey it in spite of the sense of 
 duty, the movings of conscience, social obligations and 
 self-respect. 
 
 By far the larger number of thoughtful men, although 
 they may not believe in the orthodox Hell, believe in some 
 kind of Purgatory, in some sort of punishment for sin 
 committed in the body. Yet how comparatively little in¬ 
 fluence has this belief upon their moral life, how few 
 saints does it produce, how ineffectual is it in restrain¬ 
 ing them from indulging their appetites and their pas¬ 
 sions ! 
 
 It is the authoritatively declared eternal consequence 
 of the breaking of the law which braces up the will and 
 which calls the forces of the higher nature into activity. 
 
 Do we not know that looseness of morals results 
 wherever the belief in a future life of reward and punish¬ 
 ment has disappeared? And those who attempt to get 
 rid of the doctrine of Hell are for the most part those who 
 have also got rid of the idea of sin. 
 
 It is certainly a curious thing and worthy of note that 
 to the martyrs and the saints who live very close to 
 God, Christ’s teaching respecting Hell and the punishment 
 of sin, has never presented any moral or intellectual diffi¬ 
 culty. It has never caused them to love God less, to be 
 
THE GOODNESS OP GOD 
 
 35 
 
 less willing to die for Him, or to entertain less noble or 
 elevating ideas of His character. 
 
 It is chiefly to the easy-going man of the world, to 
 the child of the modern age, who often does not himself 
 know what he really believes, that these difficulties oc¬ 
 cur. It is he who waxes eloquent as to the unreason¬ 
 ableness of the doctrine. 
 
 When the aged Polycarp, the disciple of St. John, was 
 put to the torture, he said to his torturers: “You threaten 
 me with a fire which only burns for an hour and is then 
 extinguished. You do not know the fire of the judgment 
 to come and of eternal punishment reserved for the 
 wicked.” 
 
 One thing we may surely regard as certain: A correct 
 estimate of the truths of the supernatural order cannot 
 be formed by the natural human reason, least of all by 
 the reason which is not in some sense in rapport with 
 God and with that other-world-order. 
 
 “The natural (or sensual) man receiveth (or per- 
 ceiveth) not the things of the Spirit of God . 1 They 
 are foolishness to him. A higher light is needed in order 
 * to perceive them; that light is the gift of God and it is 
 by that light alone, responded to by a certain soul-cul¬ 
 ture and soul-development, that he can see rightly and 
 judge justly.” “Everything grows clear,” said Pasteur, 
 “in the reflections from the Infinite. The more I know, 
 the more nearly is my faith that of the Breton peasant. 
 Could I but know all, I would have the faith of the Breton 
 peasant woman.” 
 
 His intellect, in rapport with God, evidently did not 
 urge those objections which some other intellects are 
 urging against this and other revealed truths! 
 
 Difficulties, of course, remain and must always remain. 
 It could not well be otherwise since we cannot see as God 
 sees. But it is certain that the goodness of God, as 
 
 1 1 , Cor. II, 14. 
 
36 
 
 THE GOODNESS OF GOD 
 
 exhibited in the facts of life, cannot be urged in contra¬ 
 diction of the doctrine of Hell. On the contrary, His 
 present method of dealing with men is a most powerful 
 argument in its favor. It is sentiment, not thoughtful 
 reflection, that disputes this. “The great mystery is/’ as 
 Cardinal Newman said, “not that evil should have no 
 end, but that it had a beginning.” 1 
 
 It is surely imperfect and distorted vision, then, which 
 only recognizes the goodness of God, but pretends to see 
 nothing of the other and severe aspects of His nature. 
 It is folly and wilful blindness to deny that they exist. 
 “I understand not,” wrote Mr. Ruskin, “the most danger¬ 
 ous, because most attractive form of modern infidelity, 
 which, pretending to exalt the beneficence of the Deity, 
 degrades it into a reckless infinitude of mercy and blind 
 obliteration of the work of sin: and which does this 
 chiefly by dwelling on the manifold appearances of God’s 
 kindness on the face of creation. Such kindness is, in¬ 
 deed, everywhere and always visible, but not alone. 
 Wrath and threatening are invariably mingled with the 
 love, and in the utmost solitudes of Nature, the exist¬ 
 ence of Hell seems to me as legibly declared by a thousand 
 spiritual utterances as that of Heaven. It is well for 
 us to dwell with thankfulness on the unfolding of the 
 flower, and the falling of the dew, and the sleep of the 
 green fields in the sunshine; but the blasted trunk, the 
 barren rock, the moaning of the bleak winds, the roar of 
 the black, perilous, merciless whirlpools of the mountain 
 streams, the solemn solitudes of moors and seas, the con¬ 
 tinual fading of all beauty into darkness, and of all 
 strength into dust—have these no language for us? We 
 may seek to escape their teaching by reasonings touch¬ 
 ing the good which is wrought out of all evil, but it is 
 vain sophistry. The good succeeds to the evil, as day 
 succeeds the night, but so also the evil to the good. Geri- 
 
 1 Grammar of Assent, p. 415. 
 
THE JUSTICE OF GOD 
 
 37 
 
 zim and Ebal, birth and death, light and darkness, Heaven 
 and Hell, divide the existence of man and his futurity. . . 
 The love of God is, however, always shown by the pre¬ 
 dominance or greater sum of good in the end, but never 
 by the annihilation of evil. The modern doubts of eter¬ 
 nal punishment are not so much the consequence of ben¬ 
 evolence as of feeble powers of reasoning. Every one 
 admits that God brings good out of finite evil. Why not, 
 therefore, infinite good out of infinite evil.” 1 
 
 II. 
 
 The Justice of God. 
 
 The world asks: How can a just God inflict unceas¬ 
 ing punishment for a temporal offence, even though it 
 be of the most heinous character? How can He punish 
 finite sin infinitely? Punishment is a remedial measure 
 in its ultimate aim. It is inflicted with a view to the 
 improvement and restoration of the offender, not to his 
 permanent suffering and misery. A convict, undergo¬ 
 ing a long term of imprisonment for a grave offence, 
 may obtain some alleviation and indulgence upon giving 
 evidence of an improved moral condition. There are 
 agencies at work for still further helping and improv¬ 
 ing him upon his restoration to the life of the world. 
 The feeling entertained towards him is at all times that 
 of pity and compassion. Even the death penalty is in¬ 
 flicted with the greatest possible reluctance, and as a 
 deterrent measure rather than from any other motive. 
 There are numbers of intelligent persons who, although 
 abhorring the crime of murder, strongly condemn that 
 penalty on moral grounds, seeing that by it the true end 
 
 1 “The Stones of Venice,” Part III., pp. 138-139. 
 
38 
 
 THE JUSTICE OF GOD 
 
 of punishment is not attained. It is under any circum¬ 
 stances felt to be an extreme and severe measure, in it¬ 
 self calculated to fully atone for the crime committed 
 and, in a sense, to restore the offender to God’s favor. 
 
 And is God less just and merciful than man? Is it 
 reasonable to suppose that He will unceasingly punish 
 for an offence for which man would only punish for a 
 season? Might not such punishment with right be 
 called unjust and unreasonable? Is it not cruel and vin¬ 
 dictive? 
 
 Such is the world’s familiar method of reasoning, 
 and, at first sight, we find it difficult to dispute its sound¬ 
 ness and the common-sense which apparently dictates it. 
 
 But a very brief process of reflection surely discloses 
 the fatal flaw in the argument. 
 
 We have, in the first place, to call to mind once 
 more, that the punishment of sin is not so much God’s 
 arbitrary act, as a fundamental law of the moral uni¬ 
 verse: the result of certain circumstances—a final and 
 necessary link in the chain of cause and effect. It is 
 the inevitable consequence of our moral freedom. 
 
 We must, in the second place, remember that it is 
 ultimately not a question of particular acts or deeds, but 
 of a character, of a certain definite moral state and condi¬ 
 tion, of a soul rendering itself by its own wilful and per¬ 
 sistent attitude and action incapable of union with God. 
 We probably attach mistaken ideas to the words finite 
 and infinite. We call the passing act of sin a finite act, 
 and cannot perceive how it can, under any circumstances, 
 carry with it infinite punishment. But it is, after all, not 
 the act of sin which brings about the punishment, but the 
 moral character which lies behind it, and of which it is 
 the outward manifestation. 
 
 The Catholic Church, moreover, teaches (and I imag¬ 
 ine that all intelligent Protestant theologians would en¬ 
 dorse this teaching) that it is mortal sin that incurs 
 the punishment of Hell. And by mortal sin is not meant 
 
THE JUSTICE OF GOD 
 
 39 
 
 some act of transgression, committed through the weak¬ 
 ness and frailty of our human nature, or even an in¬ 
 different and careless state of moral life, but sin com¬ 
 mitted with full knowledge and consent; or a state of 
 life in wickedly active opposition to the known will and 
 law of God. By mortal sin is understood that deliberate 
 and wilful transgression of law which is committed 1.) 
 in an important and serious matter; 2.) with full and 
 clear knowledge of the responsibility and consequences 
 involved and 3.) with every opportunity of making an 
 absolutely free choice. 
 
 In other words, it means an act, or an attitude of 
 mind and will productive of or expressed in this act, 
 which severs the bond of union existing between the Cre¬ 
 ator and the creature and which renders any reuniting 
 of the bond impossible, since the creature is in rebellion 
 against the Creator and has, of his own free choice, 
 turned his back upon Him. So far then as a man has sin¬ 
 ned against God, in full view of the punishment incurred, 
 he may surely in reason be said to deserve that punish¬ 
 ment. 
 
 But have we not a certain analogy to the divine law 
 of punishment in our own human and imperfect modes of 
 measuring out punishment? It is not, and cannot be, a 
 question of time. A single act, such as a theft or a 
 murder or a forgery, is committed in a moment of time, 
 yet the punishment inflicted may extend over many 
 years. The law does not determine the amount of pun¬ 
 ishment by the time occupied in committing the offence, 
 but by the nature of the offence, and the moral state and 
 character to which it points. A judge weighs all the 
 evidence which is before him; he considers the entire 
 life-history of the offender. A single act occupying per¬ 
 haps five minutes for its execution but indicating a cor¬ 
 rupt nature, may thus involve a life-long punishment, 
 and may wreck the entire earthly career of the offender. 
 
 In the sphere of our present life, therefore, there is 
 
40 
 
 THE JUSTICE OF GOD 
 
 undoubtedly such a thing as permanent punishment for 
 a mere temporal offence. A certain law of fitness, to 
 which we yield instinctive obedience, seems to be at 
 work, and to lie at the root of the matter. Thus, a low 
 moral character is universally felt to be unfit for a cer¬ 
 tain higher moral condition and environment. It has 
 no affinity with them, and is excluded from them, not al¬ 
 ways by any arbitrary act of man, but by common con¬ 
 sent. 
 
 Now, if this be so here, in this present life, where 
 change is still possible, and where a transformation can 
 still be effected, how is it to be there where a terminus of 
 life is reached, where the character is no longer capable 
 of change, and where it is a question of a permanent 
 moral state and condition? 
 
 In any case, it will be admitted that, in our present 
 life, these laws are at work, and that we cannot possibly 
 escape or evade them. We do not fully understand them 
 ourselves and, from our standpoint, they may even ap¬ 
 pear to us sometimes unfair and unjust. But it is cer¬ 
 tain that they continue in operation, nevertheless, and in 
 spite of our views and opinions. Is it, then, unreasonable 
 to conclude that similar fixed laws are in operation in 
 the life beyond, and that there, too, we shall not be 
 able to evade or escape them? 
 
 Some of these laws the Christian Revelation only 
 hints at; of others it speaks in clear and unmistakable 
 terms. We do not like them; they appear to us unfair 
 and unjust, and they offend our sense of the proportion 
 of things. But they may be just laws for all that, and it 
 is conceivable that we shall recognize them to be such 
 when we have passed away from the life of the body, 
 and are in actual touch with the other sphere of exist¬ 
 ence. Judging from our knowledge of the present state 
 of things we may, at any rate, regard it as certain that 
 they will continue in operation whether we understand 
 them fully and approve of them or not. 
 
THE JUSTICE OF GOD 
 
 41 
 
 Any rightly-instructed Christian believes that a spir¬ 
 itual condition, initiated or induced by a life of moral de¬ 
 pravity and enmity against God, must continue unless 
 conversion and reconciliation take place. There must be 
 a very definite and deliberate change of mind respect¬ 
 ing God, expressing itself in confession of sin and re¬ 
 pentance. The all-important question, therefore, is: Is 
 a change of mind possible after death? 
 
 Christianity says: No! Its Founder declared over 
 and over again that forgiveness and restoration are pos¬ 
 sible only in this present life. His offer of mercy was 
 always and distinctly limited. He never ceased urging 
 the need of an immediate change of mind, since there was 
 a time when that change would be no longer possible, and 
 when the door of Heaven would be shut. 
 
 One would have to quote the greater part of the New 
 Testament, were one to attempt to produce scriptural 
 confiijpiation of this statement. 
 
 Science says: No! Character is the ultimate and nec¬ 
 essary result of certain moral acts and states. It is 
 the gradual and progressive building-up of a distinct 
 organism, and it is no more possible to change the form 
 which it finally assumes than to undo the separate acts 
 which were instrumental in its construction. 
 
 Human experience, moreover, confirms the verdict of 
 science. A character, it is well known, is not apt to 
 change much after a certain age and point of evolution 
 have been reached. It is admittedly a difficult, if not 
 an impossible thing, to undo the subtle spiritual effect 
 of a certain long-continued attitude of the mind. 
 
 Now we have seen that a man remaining impenitent 
 after an act of sin, perhaps repeating it, and thereby 
 hastening the soul’s downward course, declares enmity 
 against God. His normal moral attitude is an attitude 
 of opposition and rebellion. We admit that in this 
 state he is unfit for the presence of God—out of touch 
 and affinity with the sphere of the pure and the holy. 
 
42 
 
 THE JUSTICE OF GOD 
 
 But, if a change be impossible after death, and death 
 overtake him while in this state of opposition and re¬ 
 bellion, how is he to escape? What is to become of 
 him? Where is he to go? He must, in that state of 
 rebellion, appear before God. The time of probation and 
 education is over. He is in a sphere where time is no 
 more, where it is no longer a question of acts and atti¬ 
 tudes of mind that can be undone and repented of, but 
 of a character, of a spiritual state which is the crown 
 and ultimate result of all the acts and mental attitudes 
 of many years. 
 
 Can we not here trace some faint outline of the great 
 truth? Do not some of our difficulties melt away? Are 
 they as great as they appear at first sight? 
 
 Even the late Dean Farrar exclaimed: “I believe 
 that without holiness no man can see the Lord, and 
 that no sinner can be pardoned or accepted till he has 
 repented, and till his free will is in unison with the will 
 of God, and I cannot tell whether some souls may not 
 resist God for ever, and therefore may not be for ever 
 shut out from His presence.” 1 
 
 Again the term, Eternal Punishment, may be an im¬ 
 perfect and inadequate term: it may not nearly convey 
 the truth as it actually is. It may be a term conveying 
 the nearest possible equivalent to a state or condition of 
 which we cannot, with our present limitations, form an 
 accurate idea. Language, capable only of expressing 
 and explaining finite things can scarcely be expected to 
 adequately express the infinite. May not the difficulty 
 therefore be in the term rather than in the idea and prin¬ 
 ciple which underlie it, and which the term is meant to 
 convey? May it not be due to the fact that our power of 
 thought is limited, and that our understandings are finite 
 and therefore imperfect? 
 
 And it is surely untrue to maintain that the ultimate 
 
 1 “Eternal Hope.” 
 
THE JUSTICE OF GOD 
 
 43 
 
 aim of all human punishment is remedial. A simple ap¬ 
 plication of this theory will display its fallacy. 
 
 Let us suppose that a judge could only punish with 
 a view to the improvement of the offender. All crim¬ 
 inals might then be divided into two classes. Those in 
 the first class would have no difficulty in proving to the 
 judge their incorrigibility and hopeless moral condition; 
 the others their sincere regret and repentance. The aim 
 of any kind of punishment would thus entirely disap¬ 
 pear, and the accused would have to be discharged. But 
 what are the facts of the case? Punishment falls again 
 and again upon the wholly depraved in character, in 
 whom it has never been known to produce the slightest 
 change or improvement. A person may commit a certain 
 offence over and over again, he may already have spent 
 the best part of his life inside a gaol, and both judge 
 and jury may know full well that no additional pain 
 and punishment will change his character. Yet they con¬ 
 tinue to punish, simply because the social and moral or¬ 
 der demand it. It is felt to be necessary that certain 
 acts of sin and transgression should be met by a cer¬ 
 tain measure of suffering and punishment. 
 
 In the same way human justice punishes the man who 
 is already thoroughly penitent, and who is not in the 
 least likely to repeat his offence. It punishes those who, 
 for other reasons, may be already incapable of doing 
 further mischief. But, whatever motives and ends may 
 be assigned to such punishments, whether they be inflicted 
 to act as a deterrent, or in some way to bring about the 
 improvement of society in general, it is certain that un¬ 
 derlying them is a kind of moral necessity which all men 
 acknowledge, and to which they unhesitatingly submit. 
 
 And what is this moral necessity but an application 
 of that law of expiation which is most certainly a marked 
 constituent of our complex moral nature! 
 
 Sin clearly is a disturbance of the world-order. It 
 is an element entering as a disturbing agent into the har- 
 
44 
 
 THE JUSTICE OF GOD 
 
 mony of the cosmos. It is fraught with injury to the 
 individual and to society, quite apart from its super¬ 
 natural aspect—its essential nature and effect from God’s 
 point of view. 
 
 And, while one aim of punishment is no doubt the 
 improvement and restoration of the offender, another and 
 far higher aim is the restoration of the disturbed world- 
 order—expiation of the offence or sin committed. We 
 have this fully and most clearly illustrated in the mys¬ 
 terious and sometimes quite incomprehensible movements 
 of the human conscience. 
 
 Numerous instances are on record in which a criminal, 
 whose offence has remained undetected, and whose men¬ 
 tal and moral suffering—often continued over a long 
 period of years—may have brought him ample punish¬ 
 ment, cannot find rest until his offence is acknowledged, 
 and his punishment an official and public one. 
 
 It might well be urged that his mental tortures and 
 his remorse have already improved him as well as pun¬ 
 ished him. He not only deeply regrets his sin, but he 
 has made deliberate efforts to atone for it by a better 
 and more careful life. He may have become a better 
 man; yet he can find no rest. His moral nature clamors 
 for expiation. He is only satisfied when by some public 
 admission and pronouncement the disturbed moral order 
 has been restored. 
 
 But most men know that all acts of sin against God 
 and man cause wretchedness and moral disquietude until 
 they are expiated in one way or another. In sensitive 
 natures punishment is desired and even craved for, al¬ 
 though there may be no danger of the facts of the case 
 ever becoming known. And if such punishment is se¬ 
 cured there is no question of any desire for moral im¬ 
 provement; it is a matter of expiation pure and simple. 
 
 I cannot help feeling that a great many foolish things 
 are said and written on this subject in our days. A 
 simple analysis of the manifestations of one’s own con- 
 
THE JUSTICE OF GOD 
 
 45 
 
 science reveals the truth about the matter. And I am 
 convinced that there would be much more happiness in 
 life if people recognized this truth and, if instead of 
 craftily evading it, they obeyed the law of expiation and 
 endured voluntary suffering for sin deliberately com¬ 
 mitted. 
 
 It is perhaps from this point of view that we come 
 to form right ideas of some of the recorded mortifica¬ 
 tions of the saints. 
 
 Of course this manifestation of conscience—the desire 
 for expiation—may vary greatly in different natures. 
 Mistaken training may lessen or almost efface it. In 
 elevated natures it may attain to a high degree of de¬ 
 velopment. Its roots, however, are in all mankind. 
 Hence the practice of sacrifice by all primitive as well 
 as civilized races and nations. 
 
 Now, is it conceivable, nay is it not highly probable, 
 that in the same way a moral necessity, not clearly dis¬ 
 cerned by us in our present state, but intimately bound 
 up with the entire order of the spiritual universe, under¬ 
 lies the law of punishment acting in the other world? 
 May it not be that, “could we understand what eternity 
 really is, the notion of the reversal of the soul’s condi¬ 
 tion might be seen to involve an absurdity?” At all 
 events, it is surely a mistake to assert, in view of what 
 has been stated, that the idea of a permanent condi¬ 
 tion of punishment violates our moral intuitions, and 
 that we have no analogy at all in our human methods of 
 punishment? And it is surely a perilous thing to deny 
 its possibility simply because it does not appear to fit in 
 with the dictates of our limited and finite reason and 
 with our human notions of justice. 
 
 But the further question has been asked: Why cannot 
 a just and merciful God arrange His punishment in such 
 a way as to compel the reformation of the offender? 
 Why can He and does He not act upon his moral nature 
 in such a drastic and coercive fashion as to render sub- 
 
46 
 
 THE JUSTICE OF GOD 
 
 mission and repentance and consequent union with Him¬ 
 self inevitable? 
 
 This thought, however, brings us face to face with 
 that greatest of all the mysteries of our human nature— 
 our free will. It is next to the gift of conscious life 
 itself the most wonderful faculty which we possess and 
 clearly involves the gravest possible responsibility. 
 
 But, looking away from philosophic and scientific 
 speculation and regarding the matter from the stand¬ 
 point of experience, it is evident that our wills are free, 
 and that in the moral order God invites and impels but 
 never compels. The motives for a right action or de¬ 
 cision are put before the will, but the ultimate decision 
 is to be man’s, not God’s. We are free and conscious 
 agents, not automata. 
 
 On the other hand, admitting that God is the author 
 of the moral law, it cannot surely be a matter of in¬ 
 difference to Him whether men obey it or deliberately 
 break it. 
 
 Now a reformation such as the above question sug¬ 
 gests would be a compulsory reformation, and there¬ 
 fore inconsistent with our moral freedom. But true 
 moral improvement pre-supposes moral freedom and ex¬ 
 cludes compulsion. The choice, made by reason of moral 
 coercion, would not be a free choice. It could not pos¬ 
 sibly be a test of character and of the general bent of 
 the mind. Heaven and the enjoyment of spiritual 
 things must ever be impossible to a nature that has been 
 forced into them. Real moral improvement and repent¬ 
 ance cannot be associated with the notion of compulsion. 
 
 Hence the possibility remains of the sinner rebelling 
 against punishment and resisting all God’s efforts with 
 a view to his improvement and remaining unimproved. 
 The possibility remains of his deliberately exercising his 
 will in opposition to God. 
 
 Now what is God to do with such incorrigibles? He 
 must either continue to punish, which is eternal punish- 
 
THE JUSTICE OF GOD 
 
 47 
 
 ment, or He must finally receive the hopeless case into 
 Heaven, which means the triumph of sin—rebellious man 
 defeating God and His ultimate purpose in the moral 
 universe. It will be seen upon reflection that no other 
 conclusion is possible, so long as we admit the freedom 
 of the will. 
 
 In the moral order remedial punishment, of course, 
 exists, but necessarily only in a temporal sense—while 
 the soul is still swayed by conflicting motives, and conse¬ 
 quently still capable of change. This must of necessity 
 cease when the character is finally fixed, and when, in 
 the case of the sinner, a definite turning-away from God 
 has taken place. The exceeding severity of some of God’s 
 temporal punishments surely involves the thought of an 
 infinitely greater punishment to come. The latter alone 
 rationally explains the former. For what other pos¬ 
 sible end could God be said to punish so severely? Is not 
 the peril of permanent unhappiness an all-sufficient end? 
 
 But the secret of eternal punishment and its justice 
 is probably only fully solved in an accurate knowledge 
 of the real nature and effect of sin. In our present state 
 we can have no adequate conception as to the manner in 
 which it affects the soul’s life, and shapes its destiny. 
 We only see it in its outward manifestations, in its gen¬ 
 eral effect upon character. We cannot trace its more 
 subtle inward operations. In all probability pride—that 
 most terrible of all human vices—lies at the root of the 
 whole matter. We have in the experience of life some 
 intimation of what pride can do in the human soul. It 
 is the source and root of almost every other evil and vice. 
 
 “Obstinacy in evil during life,” says a mystic writer, 
 “is often caused by pride which refuses to yield and to 
 avow mistakes. Moreover, man is under the influence 
 of matter which throws a veil over his spiritual percep¬ 
 tions, and fascinates him with false seemings. ' When 
 this veil drops away from him his mind is suddenly flood¬ 
 ed with light, and he is sobered from the intoxication.” 
 
48 WHY SHOULD DEATH TERMINATE OUR PROBATION? 
 
 The terms in which sin is spoken of in the New Testa¬ 
 ment admit of no compromise, and certainly lead us to 
 infer that our conceptions of its nature and effects are 
 most imperfect and inadequate. Christ declared sin to 
 be the death of the soul. He pronounced no sacrifice to 
 be too great in the effort to escape it and to overcome it. 
 It was better, He said, that we should pluck out our eyes 
 than that they should lead us into sin. The Apostles 
 echoed these thoughts. The early martyrs experienced 
 their truth, and had an intense conviction of the reality of 
 Hell and its punishments. Whenever men have grown 
 in spiritual understanding and discernment, and have by 
 prayer and subjugation of the lower self cultivated the 
 higher self, they have also changed their view as to the 
 real nature and consequence of sin. Is it unreasonable 
 to conclude that such a changed view is, after all, the 
 correct one? 
 
 “Immediately after death,” declares another mystic, 
 “that natural language which lies in every man is re¬ 
 vealed to him, and he reads at once his whole life, with 
 its acts and omissions, in its character. The account is 
 engraven on his heart in figures of fire, and woe to him 
 whose demerits weigh down the balance, who has died 
 unrepentant in his sins, untrusting in God, and unbeliev¬ 
 ing in his Redeemer.” 
 
 III. 
 
 Why Should Death Be Supposed to Terminate the 
 Time of Our Probation? 
 
 This is a question which has recently been asked with 
 much Seriousness, and which has, in innumerable in¬ 
 stances, received a favorable answer from the Pulpit. 
 Such an answer is probably felt to offer the only pos- 
 
WHY SHOULD DEATH TERMINATE OUR PROBATION? 49 
 
 sible compromise between the clear statements of the 
 New Testament and the claims of “enlightened” reason, 
 and it crtainly opens an acceptable way of escape out 
 of a great difficulty. It thus becomes possible for a 
 modern “liberal” Christian to adhere to the teaching 
 of Holy Scripture respecting the punishment of Hell and 
 at the same time to empty that teaching of its meaning 
 by prolonging man’s time of probation, and, consequently, 
 his chances of salvation and restoration, indefinitely. 
 
 It is but reasonable to assume, it is argued, that those 
 endless multitudes who have never had an opportunity in 
 this life of fully understanding and accepting the Gospel 
 message, and of whom it may safely be said that they 
 would have accepted it had they clearly understood it, 
 will have that opportunity given them in the life to 
 come. Is it conceivable that these multitudes will be 
 cast away without any such further probation? In 
 view of the experiences of life, and of the difficulties 
 under which men are known to labor with respect to spir¬ 
 itual matters, does not the very thought offend our moral 
 sense and our reason? In a thousand instances is not 
 life far too short to admit of anything like a completed 
 moral education and probation? Are not thousands cut 
 down in the very flower of their life, when the best 
 powers of their souls and minds are but beginning to 
 unfold themselves, and when the character may be said 
 to be only in the process of formation? 
 
 Is it not more than probable, too, that with the in¬ 
 crease of light, shed upon the soul in the other state, a 
 change will pass over the soul’s vision, and that a 
 greater and more powerful impulse will be given to spir¬ 
 itual effort and endeavor? When men who have lived 
 evil lives here on earth shall have come to see more 
 clearly what consequences their deeds involve, are they 
 not much more likely to repent, and thus, in the course of 
 time, to be restored to God’s favor? 
 
 The majority of us are familiar with popular ques- 
 
50 WHY SHOULD DEATH TERMINATE OUR PROBATION? 
 
 tions and statements of this character. They may be 
 said to be in everybody’s mouth. They have every ap¬ 
 pearance of plausibility and reasonableness, and their 
 acceptance certainly tends to relieve the human spirit of 
 a weight of which it is only too conscious. 
 
 But ought we not to distrust them for that very rea¬ 
 son? Is the human mind, in its natural state, a safe 
 guide in matters pertaining to the supernatural order? 
 Is man likely unaidedly to discern and accept a truth 
 which is constantly opposing itself to his normal desires 
 and inclinations? Is he not much more likely to make 
 every effort to get rid of it? Reflection has shown us 
 that he is unquestionably mistaken in the matter of his 
 notions respecting sin, that his views in this direction 
 are false and distorted, and that his philosophy is con¬ 
 structed upon his lower dictates and promptings. Is it 
 not more than probable that, in this matter, too, he is 
 mistaken, and that in his contention he is but echoing 
 his own lower desires? Would he not be altogether the 
 gainer if it could be shown that his soul’s probation was 
 to be prolonged beyond the term of his natural life? 
 Might it not then be justifiable for him to take a much 
 less serious view of life, and, without ceasing to be a 
 Christian in thought, extract from life an infinitely 
 greater measure of enjoyment? 
 
 Christian thinkers have cause to be on their guard 
 against these supposed dictates of human reason. There 
 is about them the savor of that false kind of philosophy 
 which is the constant product of the mind whose judg¬ 
 ments the falling away from God has darkened and per¬ 
 verted. 
 
 When we come to an examination of the contention 
 itself, we are at once met by one great and insuperable 
 difficulty. “Not a single passage can be cited, either 
 from the Old Testament or from the New, which even 
 hints at a continued or second probation after death. 
 “Those which may be quoted as bearing on the continued 
 
WHY SHOULD DEATH TERMINATE OUR PROBATION? 51 
 
 cleansing and perfecting of the elect * * * do not speak 
 of them as still on their trial.” This is a fact which 
 is admitted by all careful students of this subject who 
 approach it with an open mind, and it is one which 
 any intelligent person may easily verify for himself. 
 The idea, in short, is not contained in the Sacred Scrip¬ 
 tures, unless, indeed, it be extracted from an expression 
 here and there, made to yield such a meaning by a 
 strained and artificial interpretation. Such exegetical 
 tricks, however, can scarcely satisfy honest minds. 
 Fairly interpreted, all Christ’s statements respecting the 
 period of man’s probation can have but one meaning, and 
 that points clearly and emphatically in the opposite di¬ 
 rection. 
 
 And is it conceivable that, if it were otherwise, our 
 Lord would have been silent on the subject, knowing, as 
 He must have known, the moral difficulties which the 
 doctrine involves, and the opposition which it was bound 
 to encounter? Is it at all likely that, rather than dis¬ 
 close such an important truth to us, He should have 
 taken pains to hide it, and to deliberately mislead us? 
 It is unreasonable, if not irreverent, even to entertain 
 such a thought, and to attempt to reconcile it with all 
 the other utterances so clearly pointing the opposite way. 
 The impossibility of such a compromise becomes appar¬ 
 ent immediately we examine these utterances with the 
 thought of a continued probation after death in the 
 mind. 
 
 And can we forget that most solemn parable of Dives 
 and Lazarus, uttered by Christ Himself for the express 
 purpose, it would appear, of warning us “that this pres¬ 
 ent life is the time of trial, and that after death it will 
 be too late to change.” 
 
 It is possible, of course, to pervert reason, and to 
 empty the simplest human language of its plain and self- 
 evident meaning—some modern rationalizing theologians 
 are expert hands at this kind of work—but do men of 
 
52 WHY SHOULD DEATH TERMINATE OUR PROBATION? 
 
 common sense and of unperverted judgment discover a 
 way of compromise? Can they reconcile the belief in 
 continued probation after death with the lesson and warn¬ 
 ing conveyed in this one parable? 
 
 And how does the matter really look from the 
 standpoint of fact and human experience? In contem¬ 
 plating the human mind we have to distinguish, and do 
 distinguish, between two conditions: between a state of 
 development and a state of maturity. A condition of 
 development must some time or other reach its end; it 
 cannot go on indefinitely. In a certain sense man’s edu¬ 
 cation, in the temporal sphere, may perhaps be said to 
 go on indefinitely, and to continue during the whole of 
 life; but this is true only in respect of the intellectual 
 side of his nature. He is apt to widen his views, and to 
 change his mind, as he gathers additional experience and 
 knowledge. But it is not so in the moral sphere. There 
 the process of change and improvement is, for the most 
 part, limited to the period of development, and a state of 
 maturity is reached after a time. At a certain age, or 
 after certain moral experiences of life, the character is 
 apt to become definitely fixed, and by it the soul’s life 
 in this world is determined. We speak of a man as hav¬ 
 ing a strong or a weak character, and our conception is 
 that of a point reached, of a definite moral state and con¬ 
 dition attained. Indeed the intellectual difficulty would 
 seem to lie altogether the other way. We experience it in 
 the effort to conceive of a great moral change taking 
 place after a certain age and condition of development 
 have been reached: after a man’s character is formed . 
 
 And what ultimately determines and shapes character 
 one way or the other is, of course, the mind’s attitude to¬ 
 ward the supernatural—spiritual principles and interests 
 cultivated or neglected, life and conduct regulated accord¬ 
 ing to God’s will and law, or according to conventional 
 standards and worldly maxims. 
 
 The educational process of earth must necessarily 
 
WHY SHOULD DEATH TERMINATE OUR PROBATION? 53 
 
 either form a natural man, or it must form a spiritual 
 man. 
 
 Now admitting, as we must admit, that death is in any 
 case some kind of terminus, since the soul’s environment 
 i3 completely changed, what reason have we for suppos¬ 
 ing that God will bring further and extraordinary influ¬ 
 ences to bear upon that soul in its separated state? 
 
 Scripture, as we have seen, lends no support to any 
 such supposition. The observations of life, on the other 
 hand, point to a tendency to fixedness of character which 
 neither pain nor mental or moral suffering, nor the 
 agonies of death itself would seem to affect in some in¬ 
 stances. The will has resisted the invitation to re¬ 
 pentance coming from without; it has resisted the ad¬ 
 monitions of conscience coming from within. It has con¬ 
 sequently missed the very aim and purpose of life. But 
 what meaning and rationale would there be in life if a 
 reversal of this process could be conceived to be com¬ 
 mencing immediately after death? In that case why was 
 man put through the painful experience of earth-life at 
 all? If a probation be possible in the separated state, 
 why was he not born into that state; why did it not 
 commence immediately upon his creation? 
 
 But, putting aside for a moment the question of the 
 possibility or impossibility of a change of mind after 
 death, can there be a true test of the will in the separated 
 state? 
 
 Could any response of man to external invitation or 
 internal monition be of the same moral value as a re¬ 
 sponse made in the body and amidst the earthly environ¬ 
 ment? A test of will surely can only be conceived to 
 exist where two conflicting attractions exist. But, in the 
 other state, the earthly life and its fascinations will have 
 ceased to be; the bodily senses will no longer be alluring 
 the will; all mundane attractions will have passed away. 
 The spiritual end will be seen to be the only rational 
 end of life and the only end now possible. Can a God- 
 
54 WHY SHOULD DEATH TERMINATE OUR PROBATION? 
 
 ward decision under such conditions be of any moral 
 value? Could it be said to be a free choice of the will? 
 Can it be called a choice at all? Is it not more than prob¬ 
 able that any such choice would be reversed could the 
 soul by any chance regain possession of its body, and 
 suffer the attractions of the old environment? 
 
 It is a fact well known to all students of psychic 
 phenomena that spirits claiming to be the unhappy and 
 disappointed souls of the dead, seek communication with 
 the living and endeavor to incorporate themselves in some 
 body, so that they may re-live their old earth-life. The 
 objective reality of these communications can no longer 
 be denied. Have we in some of these phenomena, occur¬ 
 ring spontaneously, a confirmation of the truth of the 
 doctrine we are considering? Is the other world itself 
 bearing witness to the truth of Christ’s teaching in an 
 age of flippant unbelief and apostasy? 
 
 In any case it will be admitted that there can be no 
 merit and no evidence of good-will in choosing God where 
 no other attractions exist to draw the soul. An accept¬ 
 ance, on the part of the world-loving soul, of conditions 
 which leave no possible alternative would be of the nature 
 of a forced surrender. It could not be an exercise of 
 free-will. And a change of mind, under such circum¬ 
 stances, could neither bring happiness, nor could it pro¬ 
 duce a true spiritual development. All purification is 
 progressive and consists in a resistance to adverse and 
 opposing conditions. It is effected by the constant ac¬ 
 tion of the free will, clearly recognizing and heartily 
 and consistently embracing and cultivating the higher 
 good. But man, being created a composite being, such 
 a process becomes unthinkable in the separated state. 
 
 Some people seem to imagine that the act of dying 
 has in it some peculiar sanctifying virtue, but what is 
 there in physical death that should lead us to suppose 
 this? It is but a casting aside of the soul’s outer gar¬ 
 ment, its removal from its earthly environment. Physi- 
 
WHY SHOULD DEATH TERMINATE OUR PROBATION? 55 
 
 cal death, terminating the temporal state and the sea¬ 
 son of admitting of a change of mind and disposition, of 
 undoing unkindly deeds and unsaying hard words, is, 
 from the standpoint of our present knowledge, far more 
 likely to end the time of probation than to prolong it. 
 The soul, removed from its earthly tenement, and the 
 natural sphere of its operations, is certainly, so far as 
 we know, no longer in a position to undo the past even if 
 it would. It has ceased to be in touch with it and its 
 separate events, while their moral results which have 
 gone to form the character, are permanent and abiding 
 realities. 
 
 But, admitting for a moment the possibility of a 
 moral change after death, have we any good ground for 
 supposing that additional light and knowledge are likely 
 to effect it? Do we not already know far more than we 
 practise? The devils believe and tremble, but are not 
 thereby softened or sanctified. In what imaginable way 
 can truth be so put as to reach the heart that has be¬ 
 come hardened? 
 
 It is instructive to note that even thoughtful ration¬ 
 alists, while waging war against the orthodox doctrine of 
 Hell and the belief in a future condition of misery, are 
 constrained, by their study of mans’ psychic nature, to 
 insist upon a state after death which amounts to much 
 the same thing. They fully recognize the law which is at 
 work and by the normal operations of which a condition 
 of soul is apt to be created which is scarcely likely to 
 be effected by additional influences brought to bear up¬ 
 on it. 
 
 In an article on “the Nature of Retribution” which 
 appeared in the “Light of Reason” some time ago, the 
 writer said: 
 
 “It is a well-known fact of daily life that the thing 
 we do for the first time with difficulty is done the tenth 
 or the hundredth time with ease, until at last the doing 
 of it is second nature. The nervous system becomes the 
 
56 WHY SHOULD DEATH TERMINATE OUR PROBATION? 
 
 willing partner of the moral life and, little by little, the 
 chains of an acquired tendency are bound round the vic¬ 
 tim, and ‘he that is unrighteous’ brings forth fruit after 
 his kind. 
 
 “This is true of the physical, the mental, and the 
 moral life. The disused limb becomes the atrophied 
 limb; the unused faculty means loss of that faculty; the 
 rein given to the passions today means loss of con¬ 
 trolling power tomorrow. 
 
 “We make the fight harder for ourselves and the con¬ 
 ditions harder to grapple with and overcome. As, one 
 by one, the cells of the physical organism die, they are 
 replaced by new ones fashioned in accordance with the 
 tenor of the mind and the habit of the life, so that in 
 our flesh we reap the consequence of our thought. As, 
 one by one, wrong choices are made, the evil thought or 
 the evil action tends to become less volitional and more 
 automatic, and our nervous system is no longer our ser¬ 
 vant, but our tyrant. Thus we become bound in the 
 chains of habit, and habit is only another name for 
 character, and character may be only another name for 
 retribution. 
 
 “It is a terrible thought. None of the hells invented 
 by theologic superstition is half so awful as this.” 
 
 “Let us remember,” says a writer already quoted, 
 “what is one of the tritest truisms in ethics, the essen¬ 
 tial tendency of habits to become inveterate. Every stu¬ 
 dent of Aristotle will be familiar with the principle, and 
 all experience confirms it. But there is no reason for 
 supposing that the laws of our moral being will be revo¬ 
 lutionized in a future state. Granting, therefore, for 
 argument’s sake, that the time of probation may be in¬ 
 definitely prolonged after death, what right have we to 
 assume that ‘he who is filthy will not be filthy still’? So 
 far as we have any data for judging, the contrary is far 
 more probable. * * * How can we be sure, to say the very 
 least that the will, which in this world remained ob- 
 
WHY SHOULD DEATH TERMINATE OUR PROBATION? 57 
 
 durate to the last, will certainly in the next world yield 
 to the gracious influence it had finally rejected here?” 
 
 Again it must be clear upon reflection, that if, in ac¬ 
 cordance with a law of God, man’s trial-time were pro¬ 
 longed indefinitely, additional agencies being constantly 
 brought to bear upon him, it would be within man’s 
 power to defy God. He would, in a sense, be compelling 
 God to endure his sin and to bear with the manifesta¬ 
 tion of his perverse and rebellious will. Such a law 
 would be putting God at the sinner’s mercy. The very 
 knowledge that a return to God is possible whenever he 
 should begin to weary of his deliberate opposition, would 
 tend to confirm a hardened nature in that opposition, 
 and would fill the spiritual universe with beings whose 
 ultimate destiny would be for ever trembling in the bal¬ 
 ance. 
 
 • 
 
 But such a state of being is unthinkable in a universe 
 of order where, for good or evil, all things created tend, 
 after a period of development, to reach some final and 
 fixed state of existence. 
 
 Again it might be asked: Is it not conceivable that 
 the pain, consequent upon the severity of the judgment 
 after death, will produce the requisite moral change? 
 This, however, is at best a purely gratuitous hypothesis. 
 
 Pain in itself has no converting power. Suffering 
 willingly endured has, to be sure, under the Gospel dis¬ 
 pensation, a salutary, what may be called a kind of sac¬ 
 ramental efficacy, derived from the passion of Christ. 
 But it works ex opere operantis only; its effect depends 
 wholly on the use that is made of it, and it does but 
 harden and brutalize those whom it fails to sanctify. 
 There is a terrible truth, which experience abundantly 
 bears out, in those inspired words, applicable alike to 
 the state of obstinate sinners in this life, and of those 
 who are finally confirmed in their evil will in the next: 
 “And they gnawed their tongues for pain, and blasphemed 
 
58 WHY SHOULD DEATH TERMINATE OUR PROBATION? 
 
 the God of Heaven because of their pain and their sores, 
 and repented not of their deeds.” 1 
 
 “A soldier’s life is a hard and painful one, but the 
 army is no school of saints. In this life bad men are 
 usually made worse by pain; why should we assume that 
 it will certainly transform them in the next? I am 
 speaking, be it remembered, of those who die uncon¬ 
 verted, not of the imperfect who die with the germs of 
 faith and repentance, however invisible to human sight, 
 already in their souls, and whose initial conversion is 
 perfected in the ‘willing agony’ of purgatorial chastise¬ 
 ment. And I repeat, that there is no ground whatever 
 for assuming that the discipline of pain, which only hard¬ 
 ened them on earth, will convert and purify them in the 
 world beyond the grave.” 2 
 
 Dr. Farrar, too, fully admitted this. He wrote: 
 “Do not think that repentance is an easy thing; and be 
 quite sure of this, that the longer it is delayed, the less 
 easy does it become, and the more terrible are the con- 
 squences, both here and hereafter, which the delay in¬ 
 volves. 3 
 
 “In Hell,” writes Baron von Hiigel, “the deliberate 
 active will is bad from the first and only various par¬ 
 tially deliberate wishes and tendencies are good, but can¬ 
 not be brought to fruition in a full virtuous determina¬ 
 tion of the dominant character of the soul and hence this 
 state has no end.” 4 
 
 How frequently is the permanence and fixedness of 
 character demonstrated in the phenomenon of what is 
 termed “death-bed repentance”? A death-bed repent¬ 
 ance may, of course, be perfectly sincere and effective, 
 but so far as human judgment can go, it often is not so. 
 All priests and ministers of religion know of instances in 
 
 1 Apocalypse, xvi. io-ii. 
 
 2 H. N. Orenham, pp. 59-60. 
 
 3 “Eternal Hope,” p. 152. 
 
 4 The Mystical Element of Religion. 
 
WHY SHOULD DEATH TERMINATE OUR PROBATION? 59 
 
 which the moral experiences, passed through during a 
 critical illness, and the admissions made, are disowned 
 when recovery unexpectedly takes place. How often is 
 the supposed penitent positively ashamed of the “weak¬ 
 ness” he has shown and returns to his former attitude 
 and mode of life? The character was too definitely 
 formed to admit of any appreciable change. I know of 
 a case in which the supposed penitent crossed the street 
 when he met the man to whom he had made a manifesta¬ 
 tion of conscience when he believed himself to be on his 
 death-bed! 
 
 But it is often urged (and this is perhaps one of the 
 most familiar difficulties) that the time alloted to us as 
 the period of our probation is too short; “that the long¬ 
 est and most eventful career does not give full play to the 
 latent capabilities of even a very ordinary character.” 
 This difficulty, however, could only be maintained if it 
 could be shown that the time of our life, given us for 
 our moral regeneration, is too short in proportion to our 
 capabilities and opportunities. And who will presume to 
 judge accurately in such a difficult matter? Who can 
 see as God sees? He who accurately knows our capabili¬ 
 ties, and who has appointed our time of probation, is 
 surely free to decide when it is to terminate for each one 
 of us. And it cannot be denied that, considering the 
 moral stimulus which it involves, it was necessary that 
 God, in His wisdom, should leave us in ignorance as to 
 the exact time of its termination. 
 
 Indeed the plea as to the shortness of time is a subtle 
 and perilous self-deception. There is a certain appear¬ 
 ance of reasonableness about it at first sight; but it van¬ 
 ishes when the matter is really carefully looked into and 
 the difficulty analyzed. It is not, let it be borne in 
 mind, a question of certain acts and things done or left 
 undone, but of a character formed —finally formed per¬ 
 haps in a moment of time. This moment may come 
 early in life, it my come late. No mortal man can tell 
 
60 WHY SHOULD DEATH TERMINATE OUR PROBATION? 
 
 when the decisive crisis in the soul’s life is reached from 
 God’s point of view. “He to whom a thousand years are 
 as one day can, if it so please Him, as infallibly test the 
 entire bent and purpose of the will by a single trial as 
 after a course prolonged through countless ages * * *” 
 If the period of probation is to be limited at all, it 
 matters nothing to the unerring judgment of the All¬ 
 wise at what precise point the term is fixed. He alone 
 can know what is in the heart of man. One thought, one 
 decision, one action sometimes sums up the complex 
 moral life extending over a course of years, and, so far 
 as we know, that thought or decision may fix the char¬ 
 acter. The probability, indeed, from our point of view, 
 is that it does so. And from this standpoint our time 
 of probation is really much longer than would seem 
 necessary. 
 
 In any case a change of mind while still in the body, 
 a turning of the will to God and a resolution to obey 
 His law and to live for Him, presents no difficulties. 
 It is a moral act, an attitude of the soul requiring for 
 its manifestation a mere fraction of time, and, by that 
 fraction of time rightly employed, the soul may secure 
 its escape. 
 
 No right-thinking man will be disposed to deny that 
 with the light, the opportunities and the aids vouchsafed 
 to him, he might at any given moment be a much better 
 man that he really is. Life, broadly speaking, is long 
 enough to enable a man to achieve his aims in the tem¬ 
 poral order. It is not too short to enable him to achieve 
 its end or purpose in the spiritual order. 
 
 In most instances it affords the necessary time, oppor¬ 
 tunity, and means for this purpose. Consider with what 
 intenseness and persistence young and old strive after 
 earthly distinctions and possessions. Think of the en¬ 
 ergy, the courage, the determination, the restless perse¬ 
 verance with which day by day, for thirty, forty or 
 fifty years, men pursue their temporal ideals, how inces- 
 
WHY SHOULD DEATH TERMINATE OUR PROBATION? 61 
 
 santly the one all-absorbing aim occupies the mind, how 
 they trample under foot all considerations of health and 
 personal well-being—how, to the very last hour of life, 
 the interest of their business or profession occupies their 
 thoughts. Can any sane man presume to say that a life, 
 so full of restless enterprise and achievement, is too short 
 to develop the powers of the soul, to rightly train and 
 direct the will and to seek the attainment of that “holi¬ 
 ness without which no man shall see the Lord”? 
 
 A hundredth part surely of the energy displayed would 
 be sufficient to achieve the all-important end. 
 
 But with all the means of grace persistently and con¬ 
 sistently neglected, with God and His claims ignored, de¬ 
 spised and forgotten, can man in reason claim forgive¬ 
 ness because of his brief opportunity and compel God to 
 let him achieve his end in spite of his neglect and rebel¬ 
 lion? Can the Creator of the world be accused of vin¬ 
 dictiveness and cruelty because He will not regulate 
 his actions or modify the operation of His laws according 
 to the caprice and humor of His creature? 
 
 It will furthermore be conceded that with the vast 
 majority of men the belief in a continued probation after 
 death diminishes the seriousness of life as the one trial 
 time for eternity. It tends to relax our moral energies. 
 “Release from the notion of eternal punishment would 
 be felt by the great mass as a release from the sense of 
 moral obligation; and, relying on the certainty that all 
 would be sure to be right at last, men would run the 
 risk of the intermediate punishment, whatever it might 
 be, and plunge into self-indulgence without hesitation.” 1 
 
 It cannot be sufficiently insisted that the fear of pun¬ 
 ishment plays an infinitely greater part in the evolution of 
 man’s moral life than is commonly supposed. We should 
 look upon the actual facts of life and upon man as he 
 
 1 “Essays, Historical and Theological,” by J. B. Mozley, D. D., 
 vol. ii., pp. 296, 298. 
 
62 WHY SHOULD DEATH TERMINATE OUR PROBATION? 
 
 really is; we are then scarcely likely to be led astray by 
 high-sounding phrases and by arguments so dear to the 
 modern mind. The exceptionally clear and uncompromis¬ 
 ing declarations of Holy Scripture on this subject could 
 not have been uttered without a very definite aim, and it 
 should not be forgotten that He Who knew what was in 
 man “has used language which, on the hypothesis of a 
 probation afer death, loses all, or nearly all, its force.” 
 “What mean those repeated warnings about the thief in 
 the night; the sudden return of the master of the house, 
 or of the bridegroom; the two men in one bed; the two 
 women at the mill; the two men in the field, of whom one 
 was taken and the other left; what mean those reiterated 
 exhortations of Christ and His Apostle to continual 
 watchfulness but that life is short, the time of death un¬ 
 certain, and there is no repentance in the grave?” 
 
 “How much,” wrote Mr. Gladstone, “do we know of 
 the lot of the perversely wicked? They disappear into 
 pain and sorrow; the veil drops upon them in that con¬ 
 dition. Every indication of a further change is withheld, 
 so that if it be designed it has not been made known, and 
 is nowhere incorporated with the divine teaching. What¬ 
 ever else pertains to this sad subject is withheld from our 
 too curious and unprofitable gaze. The specific and lim¬ 
 ited statements supplied to us are, after all, only expres¬ 
 sions, in particular form, of immovable and universal laws 
 —on the one hand, of the irrevocable union between suf¬ 
 fering and sin; on the other hand, of the perfection of 
 the Most High—both of them believed in full, but only 
 in part disclosed, and having elsewhere, it may be, their 
 plenary manifestation in that day of the restitution of 
 all things for which a groaning and travailing Creation 
 yearns.” 
 
WHY DOES NOT GOD DESTROY THE IMPENITENT? 63 
 
 IV. 
 
 Why does not God destroy the finally 
 impenitent Soul? 
 
 P UNISHMENT, it is urged, may be a moral neces¬ 
 sity. The divine law of justice may, in a way we 
 do not understand, demand its infliction. But 
 why should that punishment be unending? Why does 
 not God either allow the rebellious sinner’s conscious 
 life to terminate at death, or, after a punishment suffi¬ 
 cient to vindicate His moral law, terminate it after 
 death? A persistent refusal to strive after the true end 
 of life when that ends has been clearly perceived, may 
 conceivably leave no other alternative. The law is there 
 that “without holiness no man shall see the Lord.” The 
 very recognition by the sinner, on the other hand, of a 
 happiness which might have been won but which, in spite 
 of a thousand warnings, has been forfeited, might in it¬ 
 self be regarded as such a sufficient punishment. 
 
 And some such method of maintaining the moral order 
 of the universe, if not quite in accord with our moral feel¬ 
 ings and intuitions, would at least be reconcilable in some 
 degree with our sense of the just proportion of things and 
 with our reason—it would relieve the distressed mind 
 of that dreadful nightmare which is created by the belief 
 in a permanent state of unhappiness. 
 
 It is impossible not to sympathize with the thoughts 
 and feelings which have prompted this question. It 
 sounds like the despairing cry of a soul finding itself 
 face to face with a terrible and unwelcome but never¬ 
 theless incontrovertible truth. It is another effort of the 
 human reason to find some way of escape out of an 
 overwhelming difficulty. But there is probably no theory 
 propounded in connection with this subject which rests 
 
64 WHY DOES NOT GOD DESTROY THE IMPENITENT? 
 
 upon a more unstable and impossible foundation. The 
 annihilation of the wicked at death or “after death is a 
 notion so purely artificial and gratuitous in itself, so 
 directly in the teeth of all scriptural and traditional 
 authority, and so violently opposed to the rudimentary in¬ 
 stincts of natural religion, that it is never likely to take 
 root and to spread. It is a mere clumsy attempt to cut 
 the knot of a difficulty which its authors cannot solve by 
 introducing another far more fatal one in its place.” 1 
 
 If we have a moral difficulty in conceiving of a God 
 who inflicts infinite punishment upon a soul rebelling 
 against His known laws, what are we to think of a God 
 who first punishes and then destroys? 
 
 Hell, after all, might be conceived of as a state of 
 suffering merely from the point of view of a higher 
 state of glory and delight; it might look different from 
 some other point of view. We have here on earth con¬ 
 ditions of pain and anguish which cannot be expected to 
 cease during life, but which we nevertheless consider in¬ 
 finitely preferable to death and extinction. But the 
 thought of punishment after death, followed by the soul’s 
 extinction, surely involves a moral difficulty which is in¬ 
 finitely greater than that which this theory is propounded 
 to solve. 
 
 At all events, it is certain that the idea of annihila¬ 
 tion, of the extinction of our conscious personality by 
 death or after death, is a conception contradicted both 
 by Christianity and by our elementary religious in¬ 
 stincts. It is because their witness to the contrary is 
 so clear and emphatic that the doctrine of Hell and of fu¬ 
 ture punishment awakens in us such serious thought, and 
 engages our interest at all. 
 
 The schoolmen argue that the animal soul, being pro¬ 
 duced by secondary causes at its first creation and there¬ 
 after by the process of generation, is mortal and perish- 
 
 1 “Catholic Eschatology and Universalism.” 
 
I 
 
 WHY DOES NOT GOD DESTROY THE IMPENITENT? 65 
 
 able. We read in Genesis: “And God said, Let the 
 earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, etc.” 
 
 The spiritual soul of man, on the other hand, was and 
 is produced by the direct creative energy of God and is 
 consequently, by its very nature, immortal and imper¬ 
 ishable. “And the Lord God * * * breathed into his 
 nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” 
 The distinction is clear and is expressed in those famil¬ 
 iar words of Ecclesiastes: “Then shall the dust return 
 to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return unto 
 God Who gave it.” 1 
 
 The spirit is immortal by reason of its origin and es¬ 
 sential nature, being independent of, and distinct from, 
 any element of a mortal and perishable character. 
 
 The materialistic philosophy, as is well known, has 
 done its best to discredit this reasoning by false methods 
 of argument and by mistaken inferences from scientific 
 facts. The most recent psychological research, however, 
 has established the fallacy of that philosophy, and no 
 thinker of note holds it today. Numerous experiments 
 have shown conclusively that while there is a certain 
 interdependence between mind and body, there are mani¬ 
 festations which demonstrate the former’s independence 
 of the latter under given conditions, and its spiritual 
 qualities and characteristics. A spiritualistic philos¬ 
 ophy consequently has taken the place of the materialistic 
 one. 
 
 And the universal consciousness of and belief in, a 
 future life, of course, confirm the accuracy of the schol¬ 
 astic reasoning. Nothing else could explain the origin 
 and persistence of that belief in all primitive races who 
 could not possibly have acquired it from contact with 
 Jewish or Christian teaching. Were the notion of the 
 possibility of annihilation at death or after death pos¬ 
 sible to human nature, the belief in future rewards and 
 
 1 Ch. xii., 7 . 
 
66 WHY DOES NOT GOD DESTROY THE IMPENITENT? 
 
 punishment could not, in view of man’s downward ten¬ 
 dencies and sensual cravings, have been preserved. The 
 development of primitive religions, expressing themselves 
 in sacrifice and expiatory rites for the benefit of the liv¬ 
 ing and the dead, would have been impossible and human 
 evolution would have taken an entirely different direction. 
 
 And the mysterious and complex manifestations of 
 the human conscience too confirm it. For when we an¬ 
 alyze these manifestations, so authoritative and persist¬ 
 ent in their nature, we come in the last instance to the 
 innate conviction of the life after death and the respon¬ 
 sibilities which it involves. 
 
 If the mind were capable of seriously entertaining 
 the conception of annihilation at death, the tortures of 
 a sin-stained conscience, the manifestations of remorse 
 and fear, in callous natures that have never come under 
 religious and educational influences, would be simply in¬ 
 comprehensible. They would be phenomena for which 
 there is positively no place in the universe and for 
 which we could assign no cause. For, even if early 
 training or “inherited tendency” could in some measure 
 be held responsible for such soul-experiences, neither 
 could be considered an adequate cause since men do con¬ 
 stantly and successfully reject or improve upon other 
 educational and moral principles which they have in¬ 
 herited or imbibed. 
 
 Other valid arguments, demonstrating the spirituality 
 of the human soul, might be adduced from the phenomena 
 of consciousness and free-will. 
 
 All true science therefore and accurate thought go 
 to demonstrate the indestructibility of the human spirit 
 and repudiate the notion of its annihilation at death. 
 
 It must be clear, moreover, that with the assumption 
 of man’s annihilation, consequent upon his rebellion 
 against his Creator, and his disobedience to His known 
 laws, anything like order would disappear from the 
 sphere of God’s divine government. If it were certain 
 
WHY DOES NOT GOD DESTROY THE IMPENITENT? 67 
 
 that God would hereafter annihilate the incorrigible sin¬ 
 ner, and that no punishment, strictly speaking, need be 
 feared, would there not cease to be any distinction be¬ 
 tween small and great sins as soon as a certain condi¬ 
 tion of soul had been reached? The sinner, convinced 
 that he has forfeited salvation, and that he will be 
 wiped out of existence, would probably continue in sin 
 and rebellion against God, and thus triumph over God. 
 Indeed he might be conceived as rejoicing at his success 
 in having conquered God. 
 
 The moral effect, therefore, of such a doctrine would 
 be simply disastrous. It would have anything but a con¬ 
 straining influence upon human life. There are natures 
 who, if they had nothing to fear but future extinction, 
 would go to any length in their career of vice and de¬ 
 fiance of moral laws. It is the vague sense of the pos¬ 
 sibility at least of the truth of the Christian doctrine 
 which keeps them within bounds, supported, as it un¬ 
 questionably is, by the witness of the individual con¬ 
 science, however faint and indistinct it may be in some 
 cases. 
 
 But, granting for a moment that the words cf Christ 
 admit of an interpretation favorable to this theory, how 
 would the matter look from the standpoint of the sinner? 
 In its logical inference would it not mean his victory over 
 God and the ultimate triumph of sin? Would not God 
 be putting it within the power of man to compel Him 
 to destroy a creature which He has created and con¬ 
 stituted for His glory? 
 
 In creating man, God surely desires man’s being; it 
 is therefore unreasonable to suppose that He can at the 
 same time desire his not being. We can believe that 
 man may, by a sinful life, place himself outside the 
 sphere of God’s love and mercy, but we cannot surely 
 suppose that he can, by any act of his own, place him¬ 
 self outside the sphere of God’s rule and government, and 
 thus evade his eternal destiny. The very thought in- 
 
68 WILL NOT HELL RENDER HEAVEN IMPOSSIBLE? 
 
 volves an absurdity, and limits the Creator’s power over 
 the creature. 
 
 And assuming that God, to vindicate His law, in¬ 
 flicted upon the sinner, incapable of union with Him, a 
 proportionate punishment in the present life, would it 
 not still be in the sinner’s power to terminate that pun¬ 
 ishment by suicide, and thus to outwit and defy God? 
 
 V. 
 
 Will not the Thought of Hell render impossible the 
 Happiness of Heaven? 
 
 I T IS contended that if Hell means misery and ruin for 
 the lost, Heaven cannot possibly mean peace and hap¬ 
 piness for the saved. Earthly bonds are scarcely 
 likely to be entirely severed by the change which we 
 call death. If our complex and undivided individuality 
 survives that shock, memory too is bound to survive it 
 in some form. And in Heaven memory will be occupied 
 with the thought of Hell. It will busy itself with the 
 destiny of the lost. Looking, as it is bound to look, 
 at the purely human aspect of the matter, it will awaken 
 feelings of grief and sorrow at the severity of their pun¬ 
 ishment, and the hopelessness of their lot. A husband 
 can thus be conceived to be mourning for his wife, a 
 mother for her children, a friend for his friend. Or¬ 
 dinary human sympathy, indeed, would produce this 
 feeling in any one of us on behalf of the lowest and most 
 degraded of our fellow-men. And with this sense of 
 separation, and of hopeless loss, how can there be real 
 and unalloyed happiness in Heaven? Would not mem¬ 
 ory, like a dark shadow, hover over the soul and destroy 
 anything like a real and deep joy? Under such sad 
 
WILL NOT HELL RENDER HEAVEN IMPOSSIBLE? 69 
 
 and sorrowful conditions would not the saintliest soul 
 weary of the very greatest bliss of Heaven? 
 
 It cannot be denied that the difficulty which is thus 
 apt to formulate itself is a very real and formidable 
 one. It is experienced by many thoughtful and right- 
 minded persons who fully accept the doctrine of Hell, 
 and, at first sight, it would seem to be almost unanswer¬ 
 able. 
 
 But, in fairly considering this objection, two impor¬ 
 tant considerations have to be borne in mind. The first 
 has already been pointed out, and is indeed one which 
 we have constantly to remember in weighing the mani¬ 
 fold difficulties surrounding this deeply important sub¬ 
 ject. Punishment and condemnation are not God’s ar¬ 
 bitrary act. They are the inevitable sequence of the 
 action of cause and effect, the necessary result of a 
 choice deliberately made and persistently adhered to in 
 full view of the inevitable consequences. They have 
 their foundation in the fundamental laws which govern 
 the moral universe. It is no mere figure of speech to 
 say that each man creates for himself his own Heaven 
 or his own Hell. Both states or conditions have their 
 beginning here and now. Time does not exist with 
 God. Throughout the entire period of his life on earth, 
 from the cradle to the grave, man is steadily gravitating 
 either the one way or the other. When he dies, there¬ 
 fore, his sentence is practically already pronounced. God 
 is not likely to put him within an environment with 
 which he has no affinity, and with the conditions of which 
 his moral nature is not in correspondence. The action 
 of this law may be distinctly traced in this present 
 world and, on the whole, it can scarcely be said to 
 offend our moral judgment. On the contrary, there is 
 a sense in which we acknowledge its righteousness, and 
 in which we apply it ourselves in the affairs of our social 
 and public life. Indeed, it is difficult to conceive how 
 any order in the affairs of life would be possible with- 
 
70 WILL NOT HELL RENDER HEAVEN IMPOSSIBLE? 
 
 out it. The criminal is not entrusted with the govern¬ 
 ment of the people, or with any high office, even though 
 he may possess all the intellectual gifts and endowments 
 necessary for such a post, and we may know his moral 
 state to be due to early neglect, or to some one overpow¬ 
 ering passion rather than to any distinctly evil disposi¬ 
 tion. It is no particular written law which excludes 
 him, but he excludes himself. He is out of harmony 
 with that moral sphere which is part of the high office in 
 question. And his occupation of it would be a violation 
 of that law of fitness, which is vaguely perhaps, but still 
 universally, perceived and acknowledged by mankind. 
 
 And in this sense we may certainly be said to recog¬ 
 nize the justice and fitness underlying the doctrine of 
 Hell already now. We have our intellectual difficulties, 
 it is true. We rebel against this conception of Hell 
 or the other. We scarcely know how to formulate what 
 we really think. Still, that vague sense of fitness is 
 there. It already now governs our moral being, and it 
 is engraved upon the very fibres of our minds! There 
 is, moreover, accompanying it, that deliberate inward 
 conviction, deeply impressed upon the Christian conscious¬ 
 ness, that, though there be the punishment of Hell, yet 
 the Judge of the earth will do right. 
 
 There are, of course, those who have played tricks 
 with their conscience, and for whom it is no longer a 
 divine witness, who have honestly ceased to believe in a 
 moral order in the world. There are, on the other hand, 
 those who, by cultivating a certain outward calm, suc¬ 
 ceed in hiding the disquietude of their troubled and tor¬ 
 tured minds both from themselves and from others. 
 The modern world has more ways than one of forgetting, 
 or of getting rid of, an inconvenient truth. Still, the 
 fact remains that thorough believers in Hell are on the 
 whole strangely calm and composed in the face of so mo¬ 
 mentous a truth involving such fearful issues, and, to 
 say the least, view the matter with comparative com- 
 
WILL NOT HELL RENDER HEAVEN IMPOSSIBLE? 
 
 71 
 
 
 placency and unconcern. Is it not because they are 
 morally sure that somehow justice will be found to un¬ 
 derlie all, and that no punishment will be inflicted upon 
 man which he has not deserved, and for which he is not 
 altogether responsible? 
 
 In the second place, we have to bear in mind that 
 our faculties are imperfect and limited—that we are un¬ 
 der the sway of the senses. We cannot see as God sees. 
 With our finite intellects we cannot hope to fully grasp 
 a doctrine which is part of a Divine Revelation and which 
 discloses the truths of the supernatural and timeless 
 world and order. We cannot even fully grasp a single 
 fact or ascertained law of science. The real secret under¬ 
 lying it escapes us. How can we expect to understand 
 the secrets of a sphere into which we have not yet en¬ 
 tered, and with which we are only in a measure in 
 correspondence? It may be essential to our well-being 
 that we should know that there is a Hell; it may not be 
 necessary that we should understand the “how,” or be 
 able to fit it in with our present conception of things. 
 It is almost certain that we would not fully understand 
 even if some more explicit communication had been made 
 to us. 
 
 Again, it is conceivable that the affections of earth 
 will experience a considerable change when we shall learn 
 to distinguish between divine and human love, and when 
 we see things in their right proportions. We love a 
 person here on earth, because of that person’s character 
 and apparent perfections. But we may be grievously 
 mistaken respecting them and may regard that as virtue 
 which, from the divine standpoint, is not virtue at all, 
 but self-love and selfishness. A perverted nature may, 
 as we all know, be incited to love even by vice. 
 
 We cannot, for instance, conceive of a saint loving 
 those whose inner nature is alienated from God, and 
 whose character, however attractive from the human 
 point of view, has no beauty or attractiveness from God’s 
 
72 WILL NOT HELL RENDER HEAVEN IMPOSSIBLE? 
 
 point of view. He could not love them any longer, 
 since God loves them no longer. Here on earth, we 
 cannot possibly form an accurate judgment of any char¬ 
 acter, and cannot, therefore, say that this person or the 
 other has reached a condition of soul which renders him 
 no longer worthy of esteem and love. We experience 
 a difficulty in conceiving of a fixed and final state of the 
 soul. We look upon every person as capable of improve¬ 
 ment, and here and now Christianity extends its arms of 
 mercy to the most debased and unworthy of men. It is 
 our duty, therefore, to exercise active love toward every 
 man, even though he may have forfeited all claim to our 
 respect. But the case will surely be very different in 
 the other world, and after the Judgment. Earthly love 
 there will have changed its character, and will have be¬ 
 come transformed. It will view all things in a wholly 
 different light, and from the standpoint of a wider knowl¬ 
 edge and a more perfect discernment. And it is surely 
 conceivable that, in the light of that perfect love, the 
 soul’s nature will experience such a radical transforma¬ 
 tion that the attachments and affections of earth will no 
 longer hinder its most perfect peace, and its enjoyment 
 of unalloyed happiness. 
 
 In any case it is, and must always be, a question of 
 “adaptation to environment.” There is a law of fitness 
 at work, the reasonableness of which all intelligent per¬ 
 sons acknowledge and in accordance with which they act. 
 The circumstance that thousands of our fellowmen are 
 at this moment languishing in life-long captivity, shut 
 away from all the joys of life, does not seriously dis¬ 
 turb our own happiness. Many a father rejoices that 
 he and the world have got rid of his reprobate son. 
 Many a wife has only known peace and happiness since 
 the law permanently separated her from her husband. 
 Both implicitly acknowledge the fitness of a law which 
 has insured their own happiness and they do not consider 
 that they are enjoying that happiness unfairly and un- 
 
WILL NOT HELL RENDER HEAVEN IMPOSSIBLE? 73 
 
 justly. Indeed, since aversion has taken the place of 
 affection, is not separation from the person referred to 
 the very condition of this happiness? 
 
 Again it is difficult for us to conceive of any happiness 
 for the sensual man, the brutal profligate, and the heart¬ 
 less money-grubber amidst the joys of Heaven, in the 
 company of the saints and the just. Imagine the man 
 whose every thought has been centered on horse-racing, 
 on sense-pleasure, in its manifold forms, who has crushed 
 out of his nature every higher prompting and considera¬ 
 tion, suddenly translated into the world of spiritual light 
 where God is all in all and where sensuous delights have 
 ceased to be! Would he himself be happy in such an 
 environment? Would the happiness of those who have 
 striven hard to secure Heaven be seriously disturbed be¬ 
 cause of his exclusion from them? Is it not necessarily 
 always a question of the law of fitness and of adaptation 
 to environment? Without holiness can any man see the 
 Lord? 
 
 These reflections and considerations may not help us 
 much. But they tend to remind us at least that a law of 
 order is at work in the moral universe and that the diffi¬ 
 culty referred to here may find its full and perfect solu¬ 
 tion in our better recognition of the justice and working 
 of that law. They may help us to see that our difficulty 
 is a purely subjective one which may conceivably vanish 
 when we see things from the standpoint of the other 
 world and are no longer misled by the “false seemings” 
 of the sense-world. 
 
74 WHY ARE BEINGS CREATED THAT WILL REBEL? 
 
 VI. 
 
 Why does God create Beings whose Future Misery He 
 
 must be able to foresee? 
 
 T HIS is perhaps the most weighty of all the objec¬ 
 tions which can be urged against the doctrine of 
 Eternal Punishment. 
 
 Sin, many are ready to admit, may in some unknown 
 and mysterious-way introduce an element into the moral 
 universe which disturbs its harmony and destroys its 
 beauty. From the standpoint of the other world, it may 
 be both just and reasonable that the author of the mis¬ 
 chief, having introduced it of his own free will, and with 
 full knowledge of the consequences, should be perma¬ 
 nently excluded from the sphere of the highest beauty 
 and the purest light. But this does not solve the real 
 difficulty of the matter. The fact remains, that how¬ 
 ever just and righteous the law which thus permanently 
 punishes the transgressor, the punishment is inflicted, and 
 it is terrible and seemingly cruel in its character. And 
 if the laws of the universe made the infliction of such a 
 punishment a moral necessity, was there a similar moral 
 necessity for calling man into being? Why was he cre¬ 
 ated at all, seeing that the end of his existence, in so 
 many instances, is suffering and anguish? Why does 
 not the Creator, being just and merciful, and foreseeing, 
 as of course He must be able to foresee, His creature’s 
 failure and fall, and consequently his permanent misery, 
 abstain from calling it into conscious life? Why does 
 He cause any man to pass through a probation, the issues 
 of which are already fully known to Him? What, in¬ 
 deed, is the object of imposing a probation at all? Is 
 it not an unnecessary and additional means of inflicting 
 pain and punishment, of awakening hopes which are des- 
 
WHY ARE BEINGS CREATED THAT WILL REBEL? 75 
 
 tined never to be fulfilled, and aspirations which are cer¬ 
 tain to be quenched in eternal misery and despair? 
 
 The mind is awed and overwhelmed in contemplating 
 these problems and difficulties, and yet they can scarcely 
 fail to suggest themselves. We know that they do sug¬ 
 gest themselves to many very thoughtful and devout 
 minds, and nothing is gained by treating them lightly, or 
 by perhaps ignoring them altogether. They have their 
 foundation in the very inmost depths of our moral nature, 
 and it is a relief to face them and to formulate them, 
 even if we cannot answer them to our satisfaction, or in 
 any measure unveil the mystery which prompts them. 
 
 But it will be admitted that the difficulty has thus been 
 stated in its most extreme and severe form and, in view¬ 
 ing it fairly and fully, one very important considera¬ 
 tion has to be borne in mind. It is no mere begging 
 the question to say that, from the constitution of our 
 nature, we cannot possibly expect to be able to solve 
 the ultimate mystery of the universe. Our intellects are 
 finite and limited, and we are distinctly conscious of this 
 limitation. We can thus never hope to understand why 
 man or anything was created, or, indeed, how God 
 comes to exist. We are certain that these things lie 
 beyond our ken. Now, clearly, any attempt to answer 
 the question under consideration in such a way as really 
 to satisfy the intellect involves these other questions as 
 to the central mystery of life and the purposes of crea¬ 
 tion. We cannot ask one without asking the other. To 
 answer that man was created to glorify God may sat¬ 
 isfy our religious feelings, but it cannot, and does not, 
 satisfy the craving for a deeper understanding. For 
 the further question might then, and without irrever¬ 
 ence, be asked: In what way is God’s glory increased by 
 our existence? 
 
 But man does exist, and is conscious of his existence 
 without being able to explain it. And God exists, and 
 the normal man is both morally and intellectually con- 
 
76 WHY ARE BEINGS CREATED THAT WILL REBEL? 
 
 vinced of His existence without being able to explain it. 
 And the same intuition which imparts the knowledge 
 that God is, also imparts the conviction that the origin 
 and mystery of His existence are unfathomable. There 
 is the distinct consciousness that, in this direction, no 
 progress can ever be made in our knowledge and percep¬ 
 tion—that in our present state we shall never penetrate 
 the mystery. It brings us face to face with our finite¬ 
 ness, which no increase of wisdom and learning, and no 
 deepening of our moral perceptions can remove. 
 
 Now the difficulty formulated at the head of this 
 chapter is surely of this order. To solve it would be to 
 solve the mystery of life, and to know as God knows—to 
 become possessed of superhuman faculties. We are not 
 evading the difficulty, therefore, when we acknowledge 
 our helplessness and ignorance in this matter, and the 
 conscious limitations of our mental nature. All we can 
 do is to reason from the known to the unknown, and to 
 discover, if we can, analogies between God’s method of 
 action as we know it in this present life, and His revealed 
 method of action respecting the life that is to be. 
 
 And what is God’s method of action in the visible uni¬ 
 verse? 
 
 A large number of mankind are born to a life of suf¬ 
 fering and pain, both physical and moral. In innumer¬ 
 able instances they bring with them into life the seeds 
 of terrible and incurable disease, which exclude the very 
 possibility of any kind of real enjoyment. In other in¬ 
 stances, physical and mental suffering are incurred later 
 on in life through negligence and ignorance, or, it may 
 be, in consequence of a deliberate transgression of known 
 laws. Declining health and the discomforts of old age 
 are in any case the lot of most men. So far as our 
 judgment goes, the individual is, in very many instances, 
 less responsible for this state of things than what we 
 term natural laws and “circumstances.” In some in- 
 
WHY ARE BEINGS CREATED THAT WILL REBEL? 77 
 
 stances there is manifestly no responsibility at all; but 
 the pain and the suffering exist, and, whatever our theo¬ 
 ries respecting their origin, the Author of life must have 
 foreseen it all, must have known that in calling man into 
 existence He exposed him to the possibility of extreme and 
 prolonged suffering. And yet He created man. His 
 fore-knowledge respecting a world of anguish and of 
 woe did not prevent His calling that world into being. A 
 moment’s reflection brings us face to face with the diffi¬ 
 culty and the profound mystery which underlies it. There 
 are few of us who have not given expression to our sense 
 of it when confronted by some painful incident in life. 
 We are often utterly unable to reconcile such an incident 
 with our instinctive notions of God’s goodness and jus¬ 
 tice. And yet we continue to believe in that goodness 
 and justice. There is an indescribable something within 
 us which tells us that there is a solution somewhere, and 
 that they can be reconciled. 
 
 The fact then remains that God, although He knew 
 that by creating man He exposed him to the possibility 
 of perpetual suffering, nevertheless created him. But 
 if God’s manifest action in the matter of our present 
 state is in the end reconcilable with our intuitive belief in 
 His goodness and love, why should it not be equally so 
 in matters pertaining to the future life? If, in passing 
 into conscious existence, terrible risks respecting the pres¬ 
 ent life are incurred by the creature, why not equal or 
 conceivably greater risks respecting the future life? 
 Bearing in mind the unity of nature and of nature’s laws, 
 is it not more than probable that the law pertains to both 
 states? The risks incurred may, for all w r e know, be 
 the necessary adjuncts to the gift of conscious life and of 
 free-will. 
 
 We do not fully understand now; but it is conceivable 
 that we shall have no difficulty in understanding with 
 widened perceptions, and when we know a little more of 
 the Creator’s purpose in the universe. “I can see noth- 
 
78 WHY ARE BEINGS CREATED THAT WILL REBEL? 
 
 ing,” writes Prof. Jevons, 1 “to forbid the notion that 
 in a higher state of intelligence much that is now ob¬ 
 scure may become clear. We perpetually find ourselves 
 in the position of finite minds attempting problems, and 
 can we be sure that where we see contradiction, an in¬ 
 finite intelligence might not discover perfect logical har¬ 
 mony V* 
 
 At any rate, it must be admitted that the moral 
 difficulty involved in the question here formulated is no 
 greater than that which is constantly facing us in the 
 known and undeniable facts of our present life. 
 
 And in the sphere of our finite human existence can 
 we, by our own foreknowledge, always save our fellow- 
 creatures from suffering and pain? We too, are, in a 
 lower sense, creators of life; it lies within the power of 
 our wills to be instrumental in calling other human be¬ 
 ings into existence. We are fully conscious that, with 
 the imparting of life, grave risks and perils are incur¬ 
 red. Our children may be born with healthy bodies and 
 minds, and may have every faculty for enjoying life—for 
 a time at least. But they may also be born with crip¬ 
 pled bodies and defective minds, and their course, from 
 the cradle to the grave, may be one long period of an¬ 
 guish. Indeed, in some instances, parents are absolutely 
 certain—they have the positive foreknowledge—that 
 their children will be born with the germs of incurable 
 disease in their bodies, and that, in giving them physical 
 life, they expose them to the risks of perpetual bodily or 
 mental suffering. Do they on that account abstain from 
 calling those children into being? Does their foreknowl¬ 
 edge abrogate that law of necessity which seems to under¬ 
 lie the world of phenomena and of conscious life? 
 
 Reflection, therefore, makes us recognize two facts:— 
 
 (1) The difficulty suggested involves a mystery 
 
 1 “Principles of Science,” vol. ii., p. 48 . 
 
WHY ARE BEINGS CREATED THAT WILL REBEL? 79 
 
 which, by the constitution of our nature, we cannot pos¬ 
 sibly hope to fathom. 
 
 (2) God’s revealed method of action, in the sphere of 
 the spiritual universe, is in perfect harmony with His 
 known method of action in the sphere of the physical 
 universe. 
 
 This again may not help us much; but it is clearly 
 as far as we can hope to get in an enquiry of this kind. 
 To show that the laws of Revelation, however difficult to 
 understand, are reflected in the laws of Nature which we 
 do understand in a measure, is something gained. 
 
 Two very important points deserve our consideration: 
 
 (1) For all practical purposes the difficulty sug¬ 
 gested does not exist. We can be absolutely certain 
 that God’s foreknowledge respecting our destiny does not 
 in any way affect or limit His action upon our moral 
 nature. The thought is not contained in the New Tes¬ 
 tament and it is contrary to all experience. 
 
 Hell and its punishments are constantly declared to 
 be of man’s, not of God’s making: the inevitable result of 
 our moral freedom. The Christian Revelation does not 
 justify us in conceiving of God as creating a world con¬ 
 taining a place of eternal torment for rebellious crea¬ 
 tures, and of then creating those creatures in order that 
 some of them may inhabit that place of torment; but of 
 creating man with every power and faculty for enjoy¬ 
 ing perfect happiness both here and hereafter. And it 
 is clearly God’s desire that all men should be eternally 
 happy. He expressly and repeatedly declares, both in 
 the Old Testament and in the New, that He has no pleas¬ 
 ure in the death of a wicked man, that He would infinitely 
 rather see him turn from his wickedness and live, and 
 that there is joy in the presence of the angels of God 
 over a repentant sinner. He has made exceptional and 
 marvelous provision for the effacement of sin, and for 
 enabling the most confirmed transgressor to become re- 
 
80 WHY ARE BEINGS CREATED THAT WILL REBEL? 
 
 stored to His favor. He is, by the mouth of His Christ, 
 and of His Church, incessantly making the most touching 
 appeals to the hearts of all men to choose the way of life 
 rather than the way of death. He had provided super¬ 
 natural means which are to aid the soul in gaining the 
 victory over its greatest and most dangerous weaknesses. 
 The doctrine of the Holy Spirit alone implies a constant 
 action on God’s part in the sphere of the soul’s life. 
 And it cannot be denied that these statements of the 
 New Testament respecting God’s continued action are 
 most fully and constantly borne out by the facts of our 
 own personal moral experience. 
 
 (2) We can, in the second place, be absolutely cer¬ 
 tain that God’s foreknowledge respecting our destiny does 
 not in any way affect or limit our moral freedom. 
 
 However great our intellectual difficulty in reconciling 
 the two may be we can be quite sure that our power of 
 making a free choice remains intact. We know that 
 we may, at any given moment, exercise that power, if we 
 will, in any given direction. There are influences at 
 work, no doubt, in determining our choice; there are cir¬ 
 cumstances and personal inclinations to be reckoned with, 
 a host of subtle forces inclining our will and affecting 
 our judgment, but it is certain that we may, by a power¬ 
 ful effort of the will, act directly contrary to them all, 
 and allojv a higher motive and impulse to set them aside. 
 
 The experiences of life constantly bear witness to the 
 truth of this assertion, which any person may test for 
 himself. We are certain that we can, at any particular 
 moment, deliberately choose a path of life, and enter up¬ 
 on a course of action wholly contrary to our former 
 habits of mind and judgment, and that solely for the 
 purpose of ascertaining the illimitability of our individ¬ 
 ual moral freedom. We can here safely dismiss all 
 philosophical and abstract reasonings. 
 
 Our sense, therefore, of the fact of God’s foreknowl¬ 
 edge clearly does not decrease our personal responsibility. 
 
WHY ARE BEINGS CREATED THAT WILL REBEL? 81 
 
 That responsibility must, of necessity, remain so long as 
 we know ourselves to be morally free. But this freedom 
 is a matter of constant experience. We are quite cer¬ 
 tain that, although God inclines and disposes our wills, 
 He does not coerce them. We are to desire our own hap¬ 
 piness, and to make a supreme effort towards its attain¬ 
 ment; we are not to be forced into it. As St. Augustine 
 says: “He who made us without ourselves will not save 
 us without ourselves.” And, as another writer adds: 
 “It is difficult to see how He could do so conformably 
 with the laws of the nature He has given us.” It must 
 be remembered then that, while the blessing is from God, 
 the curse is from man himself. The condemned sin¬ 
 ner has decided his own destiny. It is not as when the 
 first creative fiat of Almighty Charity was breathed over 
 the stillness of the dead eternities to call light and life 
 and harmony out of chaos. This time the fiat of eternal 
 death issues from the will, not of the Creator, but of the 
 creature, who has preferred darkness to light, and has 
 deliberately rejected the Love that wooed but failed to 
 win him. Most entirely would I repeat and make my 
 own the words with which a great spiritual writer closes 
 his discussion of the relative numbers of the saved: “As 
 to those who may be lost, I confidently believe that our 
 Heavenly Father threw His arms around each created 
 spirit, and looked it full in the face with bright eyes of 
 love in the darkness of its mortal life, and that of its own 
 deliberate will it would not have Him.” 1 Or, as 
 another writer puts it: “If there is one thing that is cer¬ 
 tain, it is this—that no one will ever be punished with 
 the positive punishment of the life to come who has not, 
 with full knowledge and complete consciousness and full 
 consent, turned his back upon Almighty God.” 2 
 
 1 Faber, “Creator and Creature,” p. 368 . 
 
 2 Dublin Review ( 1881 ). 
 
THE PERSONALITY OP THE DEVIL. 
 
 I F THE doctrine of Hell is indisputably part of the 
 Christian Revelation, it is certain that the doctrine of 
 the existence and personality of the devil is no less so. 
 “It is scarcely conceivable that any honest believer in 
 Revelation should question—certainly no disbeliever 
 would doubt—what is, in fact, the teaching of the Bible 
 on this subject, reiterated in a variety of forms, and with 
 unmistakable emphasis, in every book from Genesis to 
 the Apocalypse.” 
 
 What Christ clearly taught throughout the entire 
 course of His ministry is, that an individual malevolent 
 power, hostile to the Creator and to His aims respecting 
 man, and capable, under certain conditions, of influencing 
 the human will, and having for his aim the moral ruin 
 of mankind, is engaged in a fierce and persistent and 
 never-ceasing conflict with the world of which Christ the 
 Son of God and Redeemer is Lord and Master. This, in 
 simple language, is the orthodox doctrine of the devil, 
 which has been the belief of the Christian world for cen¬ 
 turies, and without which the teachings contained in the 
 Sacred Writings are simply unintelligible. 
 
 That this doctrine, too, should be assailed and denied 
 in the present day need not cause any astonishment to 
 thoughtful persons. An age which dissolves the per¬ 
 sonal God into a mere abstraction, and denies the su¬ 
 premacy of the human conscience, can scarcely be ex¬ 
 pected to believe in the personality of the evil one. 
 “Neither truth,” as a writer already quoted very forcibly 
 observes, “is compatible with a refusal to recognize the 
 Christian idea of sin.” And that idea has to be got 
 rid of at any cost. 
 
 82 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF THE DEVIL 
 
 83 
 
 There can be little doubt that modern liberal theology 
 is chiefly responsible for this attitude of mind. It has 
 invariably shown a remarkable readiness to adapt itself 
 to the downward religious tendencies of the age, and to 
 furnish the modern mind with good and apparently 
 sound reasons for getting rid of the less convenient, and 
 certainly unpalatable truths of the Christian Revelation. 
 And it is apt to do its work in a very subtle and cautious 
 way. The accuracy of the biblical statements respecting 
 the existence and action of a personal evil power is, for 
 the most part, freely admitted, but these statements are 
 interpreted in what is called “the light of modern sci¬ 
 ence," and of our fuller knowledge of ancient religious 
 beliefs and conceptions. 
 
 It is urged that belief in a second personal power in 
 the universe, opposing himself to the Supreme Creator, 
 and gaining, it would seem, in a thousand instances, a 
 complete victory over Him, involves philosophical difficul¬ 
 ties of an insuperable character. It seems so much more 
 probable that the Satan of the New Testament is the 
 creature of man’s own imagination,— a sort of personi¬ 
 fication of the principle of evil—and it is much easier to 
 believe that, born in the childhood of the human race, he 
 has fed and nourished himself on man’s natural fears 
 and ignorances, and that it is on utterly false pretences 
 that he has attained to his present unreasonable and ab¬ 
 normal dimensions. May we not assume, moreover, that 
 Christ, knowing the force and persistence of inherited 
 religious ideas and beliefs, and the impossibility of effac¬ 
 ing them during the few short years of His ministry, 
 accommodated His teaching to the age in which He lived, 
 and the people whom He taught, and that were He to ap¬ 
 pear in our own age, and witness our intellectual ex¬ 
 pansion, He would give a very different account of the 
 matter? 
 
 It is thus, that modern liberal theology traces for us 
 the natural history of the devil, from his very cradle 
 
84 
 
 THE PERSONALITY OF THE DEVIL 
 
 through the New Testament days, and the “dark ages” 
 of the Christian Church, right up to our own time, and 
 is at this present moment busily engaged in digging his 
 grave, and in burying him out of sight. 
 
 It is interesting to observe how rapidly a destructive 
 process of this kind advances on its course, and with 
 what eagerness the human mind seizes upon any theory, 
 however shallow and inconsistent, which is at all likely to 
 free it from the irksome restraints of an unwelcome and 
 inconvenient truth. The doctrine of Hell and of eternal 
 punishment abolished, it was but natural that the doc¬ 
 trine of the personal devil should follow suit, and after 
 that who will be foolish enough to believe what Christ 
 said about sin and individual moral responsibility before 
 God? 
 
 But, we may rightly ask, will this modern method of 
 explaining away the deeper mystic element in the Chris¬ 
 tian teaching permanently satisfy really careful and con¬ 
 sistent thinkers? Will it suffice to answer those deeper 
 questions which the inexplicable moral phenomena of life 
 are so apt to awaken in the mind? With the removal 
 of the devil from the sphere of Christian thought will 
 the shadow of the evil one, and of his evil world, also 
 be removed from the pathway of human life? 
 
 It is sometimes forgotten that there are truths which 
 the awakened spiritual nature of man discerns quite inde¬ 
 pendently of the dicta of any theologian, and that there 
 is a sphere in which even the devil does not leave himself 
 without a witness. 
 
 But is it really a fact that the modern intellect, ac¬ 
 customed to the scientific method of thought, experiences 
 an insuperable difficulty in accepting this doctrine and 
 that it has ceased to believe in the existence of the per¬ 
 sonal devil? Would it not be more correct to say that it 
 is that peculiar kind of modern intellect which hastily 
 jumps to conclusions and which is not in the habit of 
 thinking very accurately on any subject, which experi- 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF THE DEVIL 
 
 85 
 
 ences this difficulty? Is the scepticism spoken of not 
 due to that false religious liberalism which Cardinal New¬ 
 man defined as “the exercise of thought upon matters in 
 which, from the constitution of the human mind, thought 
 cannot be brought to any successful issue and is there¬ 
 fore out of place. ,, 1 
 
 I find as the result of my examination of this sub¬ 
 ject, that men of really great intellect, who are certainly 
 accustomed to the scientific method of thought, but who 
 show that greatness best perhaps in the acknowledgment 
 of its limitations, have no such difficulty. On the con¬ 
 trary, both accurate thought and careful observation, 
 lead them to the conclusion that the doctrine of the ex¬ 
 istence and action of a personal evil agency in the world 
 has a good and reasonable foundation. I will here only 
 quote two such men in support of my statement. 
 
 “I presume,” wrote Mr. W. E. Gladstone, “that most 
 Christians who watch with any care their own mental 
 and inward experience, are but too well convinced that 
 they have to do with ‘principalities and powers, the rulers 
 of the darkness of this world’; that they are beset by a 
 great 'personal scheme of evil agency , under which method 
 and vigilance, employing whatever bad means, or even 
 good, will serve their purpose, are raised in their work of 
 seduction and ruin to what seems a terrible perfection.” 
 
 The late Sir James Risdon Bennett, M. D., F. R. S., 
 ex-President of the Royal College of Physicians, wrote: 
 
 “It may be admitted that there is not a little in the 
 manifestations of many cases of lunacy that may well 
 give rise to the question whether Satanic agency has not 
 some part therein. Religious men of the most irre¬ 
 proachable character and women of unsullied purity of 
 thought and habit will use language, entertain ideas and 
 manifest conduct altogether opposed to their character 
 
 1 Apologia.” Edit: igoo, p. 228 . 
 
86 
 
 THE PERSONALITY OF THE DEVIL 
 
 in a sane state and which becomes the source of the ut¬ 
 most pain and distress of mind when restored to reason.” 
 
 Again must it not be admitted that the difficulty which 
 the doctrine is declared to present to intelligent minds is 
 due to a misrepresentation of it and to its familiar popu¬ 
 lar coloring rather than to the doctrine itself? Can it 
 be said to be contrary to right reason? 
 
 Reduced to their simple and fundamental principles 
 what are the truths which Historical Christianity pre¬ 
 sents for our acceptance and of which the doctrine of the 
 personal devil forms part? 
 
 Natural religion (expressed in the manifestations of 
 conscience and moral intuitions) teaches man that the 
 true end of life is a spiritual one. Nothing here on 
 earth wholly satisfies. Reason itself insists that, given 
 the existence of God, the daily eating and drinking and 
 the pursuit of the trivial interests of life cannot pos¬ 
 sibly be its ultimate aim and purpose. Supernatural 
 Religion, i. e., Christianity, authoritatively confirms and 
 emphasizes this, but at the same time declares that, by 
 reason of man’s peculiar constitution and composite na- 
 tue, the attainment of this supernatural end is necessar¬ 
 ily a difficult matter. There are forces and influences 
 at work which are calculated to prevent and hinder this 
 attainment. Failure to attain therefore is, from the very 
 nature of the case, possible. 
 
 Some of these hindering forces are natural. They 
 have their origin in our present bodily state. They oper¬ 
 ate in the form of love of ease and of physical delights, of 
 temporal desires and ambitions, of an innate aversion to 
 spiritual exercises such as prayer, self-denial and self- 
 discipline, mortification, etc. Some are clearly beyond 
 nature. They take the form of terrible temptations, of 
 an enticement to things which the better nature abhors 
 but respecting which the mind is misled and the judgment 
 is distorted. For composite beings, such as we are, the 
 present life and state necessarily constitute the sphere in 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF THE DEVIL 
 
 87 
 
 which the conflict between these opposing forces must be 
 carried on and in which some kind of terminus and de¬ 
 cisive attitude one way or the other must be reached. 
 
 Now is it really more reasonable to attribute these 
 latter forces, so fierce and persistent in their character, 
 to mechanical causes rather than to an intelligent one? 
 Do they not find their fullest and most adequate explan¬ 
 ation in assuming the existence and action of a mind and 
 will in opposition to the supreme good and ever seeking 
 to thwart the purposes of God in creation? 
 
 In any case must it not be admitted that, in most in¬ 
 stances, these assaults are cleverly and ingeniously di¬ 
 rected, sometimes wholly against our wills, with a cer¬ 
 tain end in view and in conformity with individual tem¬ 
 perament and character and disposition? Are we not 
 sometimes startled by the strangeness and suddenness of 
 the assaults and by the cunning craftiness which they dis¬ 
 close? 
 
 We speak with horror of the atrocities of wicked men 
 and of the records of vice and sin which disfigure human 
 history and disgrace human nature. We are willing to 
 admit that human nature is weak and altogether imper¬ 
 fect. But if all these crimes and vices are to be at¬ 
 tributed to that human nature, in its constitutional mani¬ 
 festations, without some external agency inciting and 
 stimulating it, what would our verdict have to be? 
 Would we not have to pronounce it as simply horrible 
 and diabolical in its essential tendencies and character¬ 
 istics? 
 
 This is a difficulty which does not seem to present it¬ 
 self to the minds of some of our modern philosophers who 
 certainly do not realize that their lofty dismissal of this 
 fundamental truth leads them into infinitely greater in¬ 
 tellectual and moral perplexities than those which they 
 are attempting to solve. 
 
 The primitive man never had a doubt about the mat¬ 
 ter. The modern civilized man would not doubt, if he 
 
88 
 
 THE PERSONALITY OF THE DEVIL 
 
 really thought seriously about it and if he obeyed the dic¬ 
 tates of his intuition. He would probably admit the 
 more than probability of an intelligence working behind 
 these manifestations of human nature. But, the exist¬ 
 ence of such an intelligence being a truth of Revelation, 
 and belief in Revelation being in some quarters held to 
 be an unscientific attitude of mind, he doubts and equivo¬ 
 cates and finds refuge in a meaningless but fashionable 
 phraseology. 
 
 This, it seems to me, is the modern difficulty in a nut¬ 
 shell. There is a scientific ring about it; when it is ex¬ 
 amined, however, it is found to be utterly unscientific and 
 irrational. Intelligent effects and modes of operation 
 must have an intelligent cause, and since that intelligent 
 cause can be neither God nor the human mind itself, it 
 must be some other mind. 
 
 This conclusion, I cannot help thinking, must be the 
 result of any consistent and accurate mode of reasoning, 
 and I for one fail to see where the flaw in the argument 
 lies. In the matter of the moral hindrances which op¬ 
 pose themselves to the soul's progress and development 
 we would surely have to recognize the action of an intel¬ 
 ligent mind, and of purpose and direction, had Christian¬ 
 ity never made any disclosure on the subject. 
 
 In recent years many ingenious theories have been 
 propounded, seeking, in various ways, to explain and ac¬ 
 count for the mystery of evil which is seen to be at work 
 in the world and in mankind. But can it be said that 
 any one of them has solved the perplexing problem and 
 has suggested an explanation which is really satisfactory 
 to our reason when it is freely exercised? Must we not 
 admit that, when all is said and done, and when all the 
 facts and circumstances of the case are fairly and fully 
 considered, the Christian explanation remains the most 
 reasonable one of them all? A very suggestive writer 
 has given expression to this thought in an interesting 
 work entitled “Evil and Evolution." The book is an at- 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF THE DEVIL 
 
 89 
 
 tempt to turn the light of modern science on the ancient 
 mystery of evil, and the conclusions arrived at by its au¬ 
 thor are wholly in favor of the personal devil as he is 
 presented in the Sacred Scriptures. The writer points 
 out that of the three possible theories respecting the ori¬ 
 gin of evil, the Biblical is the best and only reasonable 
 one. It is the one, we may safely add, most completely 
 in accord with the discoveries of recent psychical science. 
 
 “Assume,” he says, “that the Creator had an abso¬ 
 lutely perfect scheme, vast and intricate beyond all hu¬ 
 man thought, beautifully harmonized, delicately poised 
 and adjusted down to its most minute detail, and all for 
 the health and happiness of countless generations of life, 
 and assume that a malignant intelligence brings all the re¬ 
 sources of his malignity and intellect to the task of dis¬ 
 turbing that nicety of balance and adjustment, and in the 
 world around us you have exactly what might be ex¬ 
 pected.” * * * “What I am now trying to show is, 
 
 that we are surrounded by manifestaions of evil which 
 there is no possibility of reconciling with any Providen¬ 
 tial government that is at the same time absolute in wis¬ 
 dom and goodness and almighty in power, and that none 
 of the orthodox solutions of the riddle can be accepted, 
 except the most orthodox of them all, the actual existence 
 of satan.” 
 
 It is impossible to doubt that these sentiments will 
 be echoed by numbers of really thoughtful but distressed 
 minds, who have found themselves face to face with this 
 great problem, and who have not been able to escape the 
 dreadful alternative. 
 
 Those ardent would-be religious reformers oo whom 
 the old-world beliefs are merely reflections of human 
 weakness and ignorance, and who welcome in modern un¬ 
 belief and misbelief the liberation of reason and intellect, 
 are sometmies strangely illogical and inconsistent in their 
 assumptions and reasonings. They are ready enough to 
 proclaim the untenableness of ideas involving, in their 
 
90 
 
 THE PERSONALITY OF THE DEVIL 
 
 opinion, insuperable intellectual difficulties, but they seem 
 to be quite unconscious of the fact that the difficulties 
 which they are thus introducing are really infinitely 
 greater. They certainly do not follow their flimsy theo¬ 
 ries to their legitimate and logical conclusion. “In the 
 blindest of optimism,” says the same author, “they are 
 preaching a God of goodness and gentleness and love, 
 while the real God, that science seems to be more and 
 more revealing, is that horrid nightmare, the God of evo¬ 
 lution, whose schemes have been drawn in lines of blood 
 and tears, to whom nations are but dust beneath His feet, 
 whose trusty ministers are war and pestilence and famine, 
 whose laws are pitiless as death, and as irresistible as the 
 storm.” 1 
 
 And what are we to think of the words of Christ? 
 How are we to reconcile these modern views with the 
 character of Him in whose mouth there was no lie. If 
 the language of man can convey any truth at all, His 
 language surely conveyed the idea that there is a per¬ 
 sonal devil, that he is our strongest and most danger¬ 
 ous enemy, and that one of our greatest perils lies in 
 our natural disposition to ignore or disbelieve His exist¬ 
 ence. In any case, if Christ was God, surely He must 
 have known whether there is a devil or not. If He 
 knew there was not, how could He have used language 
 such as He did, seeing that He came, not to confirm man’s 
 ignorances and misbeliefs, but to remove and abolish 
 them, and to teach him the truth concerning his soul and 
 his soul’s life. Here, too, liberal theology surely en¬ 
 tangles us in a hopeless and bewildering maze out of 
 which there is no rational and honorable way of escape. 
 
 Really thoughtful men, therefore, will admit with the 
 author already quoted “that * * * to eliminate Satan is 
 to make the moral chaos around us more chaotic, the 
 darkness more impenetrable, the great riddle of the uni- 
 
 1 “Evil and Evolution,” p. 203 . 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF THE DEVIL 
 
 91 
 
 verse more hopelessly insoluble. So far from a belief in 
 a devil complicating matters, it is, * * * the only condi¬ 
 tion upon which it is possible to believe in a beneficent 
 God.” 
 
 But the widespread rejection of the doctrine of the 
 personal devil is probably far more due to that modern 
 mania for what is “scientific” and “liberal” in thought, 
 than to any inherent intellectual difficulty presented by 
 the doctrine itself. As a matter of fact, numbers of 
 persons do not think very deeply about the subject at all, 
 but are content to echo and, to adopt, the ideas and theo¬ 
 ries which happen to be the accepted and dominant ones 
 for the time being. To the majority of men it is prob¬ 
 ably an intense relief to get rid of the devil, and to get 
 rid of him on the authority of their own appointed and au¬ 
 thorized teachers. They certainly are not sufficiently in¬ 
 terested in the matter to think out and to face the greater 
 intellectual and moral difficulties which that denial in¬ 
 volves. 
 
 And so far as the most recent science is concerned un¬ 
 orthodox theology can scarcely hope for continued sup¬ 
 port from that quarter. Science, as all accurately in¬ 
 formed persons know, has in recent times performed one 
 of its familiar feats of mental gymnastics and has swung 
 round from a materialistic to a very definitely spiritual¬ 
 istic form of thought. The existence of an unseen spir¬ 
 itual world and of spiritual beings—in some instances of 
 an admittedly evil and malignant character—is prac¬ 
 tically demonstrated. And the step from this admis¬ 
 sion to the recognition of a superior mind, directing these 
 evil and hostile forces, is surely not a very big one. 
 I, for one, am profoundly convinced that true psychology 
 will, in the course of time, be found to be an aid to the 
 belief in Historical Christianity, in a sense and to a de¬ 
 gree, which few persons can imagine at the present mo¬ 
 ment. Indications of the direction in which true scientific 
 thought is traveling today are evident on every hand. 
 
92 
 
 THE PERSONALITY OF THE DEVIL 
 
 Fuller statements on this subject will be found in the 
 concluding chapter of this book. 
 
 In his review of Flournoy’s “Spiritism and Psychol¬ 
 ogy/' 1 the late Mr. Andrew Lang made the following sug¬ 
 gestive statement: 
 
 “In my opinion, if Mr. Myers is not at the bottom 
 of it [of the attempt to establish his survival and iden¬ 
 tity by means of ‘cross correspondence’], some one whom 
 our rude forefathers would have called ‘the devil’ is; or, 
 at least, something which is quite as unwelcome to sci¬ 
 ence.” (i. e., antiquated science). 
 
 The familiar question: Why, then, does not God exer¬ 
 cise His almighty power and destroy Satan? is a ques¬ 
 tion which we cannot hope and cannot be expected to an¬ 
 swer. It touches that fundamental secret of the uni¬ 
 verse which clearly lies beyond our ken. We might ask 
 the further question: Why does not God destroy us when 
 we sin? why does He tolerate evil at all? 
 
 It is conceivable that to destroy it and Satan would 
 be contrary to the fixed laws of the moral universe, and 
 would mean the destruction of man’s free will, in the in¬ 
 scrutable mystery of which evil originated. 
 
 For the same reason, belief in the existence of the 
 devil cannot be said to lay upon us the necessity of ac¬ 
 counting for the “how” of his existence. We believe 
 in God without being able, and without ever hoping to 
 be able, in any sense to fathom the mystery of His be¬ 
 ing. We believe in Him because we trace His action 
 both in the physical universe and in the hidden world of 
 our inner life. In the same way there is nothing against 
 reason in acknowledging the existence and action of a 
 personal evil power, even though we are unable scientifi¬ 
 cally to explain his origin and the “how” of his exist¬ 
 ence. The scriptural explanation is both a reasonable 
 and a sufficient one, and it is accepted where prejudice 
 
 1 “Morning Post,” Nov. 20, 1911. 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF THE DEVIL 
 
 93 
 
 and a false method of philosophy have not barred the 
 way. 
 
 “How Satan exists,” writes a well-known theolog¬ 
 ian, 1 “or where at the present time or how his power 
 avails, as we are told it does, to contrive to suggest temp¬ 
 tation to the mind of man, and to what extent he is aware 
 of what is passing in men’s minds, so as to adapt his 
 suggestions to their weakness, we are not told, and do 
 not therefore know. But our not being told the manner 
 in which his power is being exercised and brought to bear, 
 is no proof of the unreality of that fearful being who is 
 everywhere in the New Testament exhibited as the ad¬ 
 versary of God and goodness, whether in the individual 
 or in the development of the human race.” 
 
 But it is impossible to sum up the argument of this 
 chapter in clearer and more effective language than that 
 employed by the author of “Evil and Evolution.” “If 
 you admit,” he says, “the creative power and the benefi¬ 
 cence of God, I cannot for the life of me see why you 
 may not admit the possibility of the existence, the power, 
 and the malevolence of a devil, and I maintain that all 
 the probabilities are in favor of the assumption that the 
 maladjustments in the scheme of creation are due to the 
 agency of Satan, and are in no way to be ascribed either 
 to the indifference or the insufficiency, or, worse than all, 
 to the deliberate purpose of the Creator. That there is 
 a conflict between good and evil raging all around us 
 and within us is only too evident.” 
 
 1 Rev. C. Reichel, B. D. 
 
MANIFESTATIONS OF AN EVIL SPIRIT- 
 
 WORLD. 
 
 I T IS a very remarkable circumstance that, concur¬ 
 rently with the growth of the modern school of de¬ 
 structive theology, there has arisen a movement of 
 thought which is tending in a very different and, indeed, 
 opposite direction. This movement has now been going 
 on, for a considerable number of years; it is counting 
 amongst its adherents some of the most prominent men 
 in science and in literature, and it is arousing the in¬ 
 terest of thoughtful minds in all classes and conditions 
 of society. Its origin is due to the systematic study and 
 observation of certain abnormal psychical phenomena, the 
 occurrence of which orthodox science cannot explain, but 
 the reality of which it finds itself compelled to admit. 
 
 It is not here the place or the occasion to speak of 
 these phenomena in detail or to describe the conditions 
 under which they occur. 1 It is sufficient to point out 
 that they have been observed by men of prominent scien¬ 
 tific standing and of world-wide reputation and that the 
 testimony respecting them is practically unanimous. In¬ 
 deed so exceptionally strong is the evidence today that 
 the skeptical attitude of mind can no longer be regarded 
 as a sign of superior intelligence but of being very im¬ 
 perfectly informed. The skeptics are those who are 
 either ignorant of the facts which patient research has 
 ascertained, or whose judgment is based upon pre-suppo¬ 
 sition and a priori reasoning. 
 
 “I have never yet known or heard of any inquirer,” 
 writes a well-known student of psychical phenomena, 2 
 
 1 See : “Modern Spiritism.” 
 
 2 J. H. Hill of the Society for Psychical Research. 
 
 94 
 
AN EVIL SPIRIT-WORLD 
 
 95 
 
 “who has followed up the research with honest care and 
 vigor without becoming convinced that things do happen 
 which ‘common sense’ cannot explain.” 
 
 The conclusions of informed scientific thought may be 
 summed up in the words of two scientific men of note 
 who have devoted many years of patient study to the 
 subject. 
 
 “We see then,” writes Dr. J. Venzano, 1 “that for 
 the executions of these manifestations, a fresh personal¬ 
 ity and a fresh will must have intervened, independent 
 of our own and in manifest opposition to the will of the 
 medium; a will, the genesis of which is unknown to us, 
 and for which, as we do not wish to overstep the limits 
 of admitted scientific possibility, we abandon the search.” 
 
 “All that I am prepared to assert from my own ex¬ 
 perience,” says Sir W. F. Barrett, 2 “is, that neither 
 hallucination, imposture, mal-observation, mis-descrip- 
 tion, nor any other well-recognized cause can account for 
 the phenomena which I have witnessed, and that the sim¬ 
 plest explanation is the spirit-hypothesis.” 
 
 In other words, the existence of a spirit-wo rid and of 
 spirit-beings, capable of acting upon our present life and 
 of influencing human thought and character is an admit¬ 
 ted fact. No theory, seeking to account for some of the 
 phenomena observed on purely natural grounds, can any 
 longer be admitted. 
 
 Now it is quite certain, and indeed abundant evi¬ 
 dence exists for this statement, that any accurate sum¬ 
 mary of the facts ascertained and of the phenomena ob¬ 
 served would have to include the following admission: 
 
 BEINGS OF AN EVIL NATURE, AND OPERATING WITH A 
 MANIFESTLY EVIL INTENT, EXIST IN THE SPIRIT-WORLD. 
 
 1 An Italian physician of note. 
 
 2 Professor of Experimental Physics in the Royal College of 
 
 Science in Ireland. 
 
96 
 
 AN EVIL SPIRIT-WORLD 
 
 It has been found wholly impossible to deny or ig¬ 
 nore this transparent fact. And it is now admitted by 
 all honest scientific and unscientific enquirers. Indeed all 
 modern spiritistic literature is full of it. There are few 
 persons today, who do not know, or who have not heard 
 of enquirers who, after a period of great devotion to the 
 cause, and of earnest, painstaking investigation, have 
 abandoned it because of the evils and perils which have 
 been found to attend it. There are at this present mo¬ 
 ment numerous families in England who have tales to 
 tell of utter misery and sorrow brought on through the 
 spiritistic seance, and through intercourse with the mys¬ 
 terious agents who are drawn into the sphere of human 
 life by these means. Spiritism, as all accurately in¬ 
 formed persons know, is, in our time, working unspeak¬ 
 able mischief and moral evil in a thousand homes, both 
 here and in other countries. 
 
 It is utterly useless to deny all this. The evidence is 
 too clear and abundant to be resisted, and it is increas¬ 
 ing day by day. The evil element, as thousands know 
 to their cost, has a way of hiding itself at the outset; it 
 is, in some instances, even apt to remain concealed 
 throughout many years of enquiry, but an hour or a mo¬ 
 ment almost always comes when it discloses itself, either 
 by some subtle and pernicious influence exercised upon 
 the unsuspecting mind, or in some more direct and start¬ 
 ling and even objective manner. 
 
 The champions of spiritism and many psychical re¬ 
 searchers who are determined to see in Spiritism the 
 dawn of a new and “rational” religion, calculated to ef¬ 
 face or at least to modify the historic Christian Creed, 
 have suggested some plausible theories to account for this 
 evil element in these phenomena; but none can or do 
 deny it. 
 
 In most instances these spirits claim to be the sur¬ 
 viving souls of deceased human beings. They are famil¬ 
 iar with the conditions of our earth-life. They under- 
 
AN EVIL SPIRIT-WORLD 
 
 97 
 
 stand our language, our modes of thought and expres¬ 
 sion and exhibit many of those characteristics which we 
 are apt to associate with certain deceased personalities. 
 Sometimes they present even the physical forms and fea¬ 
 tures of the dead. 
 
 And they are apt to speak in high-flown language 
 of the wonderful life of the spirit-spheres, and of the 
 progressive development through which they themselves 
 are passing. When they are closly questioned, however, 
 and their statements and doings are systematically scrut¬ 
 inized and examined, they give little evidence of any such 
 progress. There are numerous instances on record in 
 which the same intelligences have communicated through 
 the same medium for a number of years, but their tone 
 and moral character have remained practically un¬ 
 changed. They are as absurd and frivolous and mis¬ 
 chievous as they were when they first gave evidence of 
 their presence. When hard-pressed, they almost always 
 admit that they are utterly unhappy and miserable, and 
 they invariably request that prayers should be offered on 
 their behalf, even though they appear to be quite ignor¬ 
 ant as to whether these prayers are likely to avail them 
 or not. 
 
 The communications received from these “familiar 
 spirits,” although sometimes very lofty in their tone, 
 are not such as we might reasonably expect from be¬ 
 ings who are imbued with a sense of the seriousness 
 of life, and whose moral condition is one of progressive 
 development. They have all the appearance of emanat¬ 
 ing from superior but fallen intelligences, who are not in 
 harmony with the Creator’s purposes in the universe and 
 whose ultimate aim is to defeat and thwart those pur¬ 
 poses. 
 
 “The contribution of these entities to religion includes 
 the practical abolition of the Ten Commandments, the in¬ 
 troduction of revolting heresies into Christianity, and 
 the propagation of heathenism and atheism. All that we 
 
98 
 
 AN EVIL SPIRIT-WORLD 
 
 know of disembodied intelligences is that they are intel¬ 
 lectually contemptible and that their influence makes for 
 the destruction of religion and morality.” 1 
 
 Another evidence of the evil character of these in¬ 
 telligences is their constant attempts at deception and 
 personation. This is probably one of the most familiar 
 and well-known characteristics of the phenomena of mod¬ 
 ern spiritism and psychical research. It can be traced 
 throughout its entire literature of both past and present 
 times, and no experienced spiritist denies it. The amaz¬ 
 ing thing is, that this peculiar characteristic too does not 
 disconcert them, but that, on the contrary, they make 
 every effort to ignore it or to explain it away. Many in¬ 
 stances of the most heartless and cruel deception of this 
 kind have, in the course of years, become known to the 
 present writer , 2 and if a record were made of such 
 cases, there is not a spiritist in the world who could not, 
 from his own experience, contribute liberally toward it. 
 
 In some instances deceased relatives are personated 
 in a manner exhibiting so much ingenuity, and such inti¬ 
 mate acquaintance with their past history and their mode 
 of thought, that the most careful and cautious enquirer 
 is apt to be deceived. Unhappily, in the majority of 
 cases, the deception is only discovered when it is too late, 
 and when unspeakable mischief has already been wrought. 
 Indeed, so well-known is this deliberate attempt of the 
 spirits to deceive, that a theory has been suggested which 
 seeks to explain the phenomenon by the action of a sub¬ 
 conscious faculty of the enquirer’s own mind, set to work 
 in some occult and mysterious way. And it is surely 
 highly instructive and suggestive to read what so great 
 an authority as the late Professor Alfred Russell Wallace 
 thought on this subject. Speaking of the theory of the sec¬ 
 ond self, he says: “The stupendous difficulty—that, if these 
 
 1 “Occultism in Psychical Research.” 
 
 2 See: “The Dangers of Spiritualism.” 
 
AN EVIL SPIRIT-WORLD 
 
 99 
 
 phenomena and these tests are to be all attributed to the 
 ‘second self' of living persons, then that second self is al¬ 
 most always a deceiving and a lying self, however moral 
 and truthful the visible and tangible first self may be— 
 has, so far as I know, never been rationally explained; 
 yet this cumbrous and unintelligible hypothesis finds 
 great favor with those who have always been accustomed 
 to regard the belief in a spirit-world, as unscientific, un- 
 philosophical and superstitious.” 1 
 
 The evil nature and disposition of these strange be¬ 
 ings is further evident from the subtle influence which 
 thy are apt to exercise upon the minds of enquirers. 
 
 It is not too much to say, that this influence is almost 
 always demoralizing in its tendency. Its peculiar danger 
 lies in the fact that it is so subtle in its operations that 
 it may continue for years, while the victim himself may 
 be quite unconscious of it. In some cases any sugges¬ 
 tion of such an influence being exercised is vehemently 
 denied by the persons concerned, even though the fact 
 may be fully apparent to any outside observer. Numer¬ 
 ous instances might be adduced to demonstrate the truth 
 of this assertion. 
 
 Sometimes this demoralizing influence is exhibited in 
 a general loss of moral tone, and of the sense of moral 
 responsibility, the victim’s mind becoming wholly dom¬ 
 inated by the thoughts and ideas of the particular intel¬ 
 ligence controlling it and obeying its every suggestion 
 and prompting. Sometimes the innate faculty of distin¬ 
 guishing between right and wrong is paralyzed or per¬ 
 verted, and a complete transformation of the tempera¬ 
 ment and moral character is effected. In other instances 
 an indescribable weariness of life, prompting to despond¬ 
 ency and self-destruction, are the characteristic symp¬ 
 toms. 
 
 1 From a Paper read before the Chicago Congress. 
 
100 
 
 AN EVIL SPIRIT-WORLD 
 
 I have had occasion to personally study and observe 
 many cases of this kind. 
 
 A well-known student of the psychical movement , 1 
 who devoted much time and thought to this aspect of the 
 subject, wrote as follows: 
 
 “Intercourse with the spirits is, in this respect in 
 the moral world, what eating opium is in the physical 
 world. Opium destroys the healthy action of the nat¬ 
 ural powers, and the attenuated frame and feeble gait 
 soon bear witness to the ruinous effect of the poisonous 
 drug which at first produced such delicious and sooth¬ 
 ing effects. So it is with spiritualism. At first the 
 eagerness of awakened curiosity, and the sweetness of 
 the forbidden fruit, then a sort of paralysis of the spir¬ 
 itual power, inability to make any advance, disgust and 
 depression which the miserable victim seeks in vain to 
 ayert by a still closer intercourse with the world of 
 spirits. * * * One other consequence follows occa¬ 
 
 sionally from this dealing with the spirits, and that is a 
 rush of abominable and wicked imaginations. One au¬ 
 thentic instance I have heard of, in which this was hap¬ 
 pily the means of inducing a young lady to give up the 
 practice of spiritualism. In another case it was not 
 merely evil thoughts that were suggested by the spirits; 
 they led on those who had intercourse with them to evil 
 actions also.” 
 
 But, as the force of statements emanating from the 
 orthodox religious quarter represented by this author is 
 apt to be diminished by the charge of bigotry and relig¬ 
 ious prejudice, it may be well to quote what a man of 
 physical science says on the subject: 
 
 “Of course,” writes Professor Sir Wm. Barrett, “it is 
 true now, as then, that these practices are dangerous in 
 proportion as they lead us to surrender our reason, or 
 our will, to the dictates of an invisible and oftentimes 
 
 1 The late Rev. R. F. Clarke, S. J. 
 
AN EVIL SPIRIT-WORLD 
 
 101 
 
 masquerading spirit, or as they absorb and engross us 
 to the neglect of our daily duties, or as they tempt us to 
 forsake the sure but arduous pathway of knowledge and 
 of progress for an enticing maze, which lures us round 
 and round .’' 1 
 
 It is surely impossible to overrate the significance of 
 these weighty words, coming as they do from so eminent 
 an authority, who has been a patient and painstaking 
 student of the subject for a number of years, and who 
 views it, not from the standpoint of a “narrow dogmat¬ 
 ism,” but from that of physical science, and who, we may 
 fairly suppose, started on his enquiry with no pre-con- 
 ceived idea or prejudice on the subject. They will be 
 echoed by all who have an accurate acquaintance with 
 the subject. 
 
 It has become the custom of modern thinkers to speak 
 and write contemptuously of the views expressed by the 
 older theologians respecting these phenomena. Belief in 
 the existence and action upon human nature of a demonic 
 world and of beings assuming the forms of the dead, has 
 come to be regarded as the sign of a fanatical tone of 
 mind and an out-of-date system of Christian thought. 
 Our higher culture and better scientific knowledge are 
 supposed to have permanently disposed of these old-world 
 beliefs. But few persons are aware how rapidly the 
 best and most recent scientific thought is undermining 
 this “liberal” religious mode of thinking, and how thor¬ 
 oughly it is establishing and confirming the accuracy of 
 the old-world belief. 
 
 Some of the best scientific students of our day are, on 
 the grounds of observed facts, bearing testimony to the 
 existence of a demonic race of beings and of the possi¬ 
 bility of the human personality becoming, temporarily or 
 permanently, obsessed or possessed by them. 
 
 In his preface to a recently published work by a for- 
 
 1 “Necromancy and Ancient Magic in its Relation to Spiritualism." 
 
102 
 
 AN EVIL SPIRIT-WORLD 
 
 eign savant, Mr. Hereward Carrington, of whom the late 
 Prof. James spoke as one of the best-informed and most 
 level-headed of psychical students, writes: 
 
 “Those who deny the reality of these facts (of cases 
 of delusion, insanity and all the horrors of obsession), 
 those who treat the whole problem as a “joke,” regard 
 planchette as a toy, and deny the reality of powers and 
 influences which work unseen, should observe the effects 
 of some of the spiritistic manifestations. They would 
 no longer, I imagine, scoff at this investigation and be 
 tempted to call all mediums simply frauds, but would be 
 inclined to admit that there it a true ‘terror of the 
 dark,’ and that there are ‘principalities and powers/ with 
 which we, in our ignorance, toy, without knowing and 
 realizing the frightful consequences which may result 
 from this tampering with the unseen world.” 
 
 “For my own part,” writes Prof. Barrett, “it seems 
 not improbable that the bulk, if not the whole, of the 
 physical manifestations witnessed in a spiritualistic 
 seance are the product of human-like, but not really hu¬ 
 man, intelligences—good or bad daimonia they may be— 
 which aggregate round the medium, as a rule drawn from 
 that particular plane of mental and moral development 
 in the unseen which corresponds to the mental and moral 
 plane of the medium, etc. 
 
 “Moreover, if there is any truth in the view suggested 
 (above) of a possible source of the purely physical mani¬ 
 festations, it seems to me that the Apostle Paul, in the 
 Epistle to the Ephesians, points to a race of spiritual 
 creatures, similar to those I have described, but of a ma¬ 
 lignant type, when he speaks of beings not made of flesh 
 and blood inhabiting the air around us and able injuri¬ 
 ously to affect mankind. Good as well as mischievous 
 agencies doubtless exist in the unseen; this, of course, is 
 equally true if the phenomena are due to those who have 
 once lived on the earth. In any case, granting the exist¬ 
 ence of a spiritual world, it is necessary to be on our 
 
AN EVIL SPIRIT-WORLD 
 
 103 
 
 guard against the invasion of our will by a lower order 
 of intelligence and morality. The danger lies, in my 
 opinion, not only in the loss of spiritual stamina, but in 
 the possible deprivation of that birthright we each are 
 given to cherish, our individuality, our true selfhood; just 
 as, in another way, this may be imperilled by sensuality, 
 opium or alcohol.” 
 
 An interesting letter on “Demoniac Control” by the 
 late Prof. William James of Harvard University, ap¬ 
 peared in an issue of the spiritistic journal, Light, of May 
 1, 1897. In this letter the Professor repeats some re¬ 
 marks which he had made in a lecture on this subject de¬ 
 livered some time before, and which had evidently been 
 misunderstood or misreported by the Press. “I stood 
 up,” he says, “for it [demoniacal possession] on historic 
 grounds as a definite type of affliction, very widespread 
 in place and time, and characterized by definite symp¬ 
 toms, the chief of which are these: The subject is at¬ 
 tacked at intervals for short periods, a few hours at 
 most, and between whiles is perfectly sane and well. 
 During the attack the character, voice, and conscious¬ 
 ness are changed, the subject assuming a new name, and 
 speaking of his natural self in the third person. The 
 new name may, in Christian countries, be that of a demon 
 or spirit, elsewhere it may be that of a god, and the 
 action and speech are frequently blasphemous or absurd. 
 When the attack passes off, the subject usually remem¬ 
 bers nothing of it. He may manifest during it a tend¬ 
 ency to foretell the future, to reveal facts at a distance, 
 profess to understand foreign languages, sometimes 
 speak them, and prescribe for diseases. The affection 
 may be developed by the example of others similarly 
 possessed. In all these respects it resembles the medium- 
 ship which is so common at the present day. If one is 
 genuine, the other is, and they must be tested by the 
 same rule * * * I contented myself with rehabili¬ 
 
 tating ‘demoniac possession’ as a genuine phenomenon in- 
 
104 
 
 AN EVIL SPIRIT-WORLD 
 
 stead of the imposture or delusion which at the present 
 day it is popularly supposed to be.” 
 
 In a more recent report on observed psychical phe¬ 
 nomena, reprinted from the Proceedings of the Society 
 for Psychical Research, Prof. James expressed himself 
 still more forcibly on this subject. He wrote as follows: 
 
 “The refusal of modern enlightenment to treat pos¬ 
 session as a hypothesis to be spoken of as even possible, 
 in spite of the massive human tradition based on con¬ 
 crete experience in its favor has always seemed to me a 
 curious example of the power of fashion in things scien¬ 
 tific. That the demon-theory (not necessarily a devil- 
 theory) will have its innings again is to my mind abso¬ 
 lutely certain. One has to be ‘scientific/ indeed, to be 
 blind and ignorant enough to suspect no such possibility.” 
 
 This is surely remarkable and striking testimony, con¬ 
 sidering the quarter from which it emanates, and it can 
 scarcely fail to awaken thoughtful reflection in the 
 minds of those who have accustomed themselves to treat 
 the matter lightly. 
 
 It is well known to persons, intimately acquainted 
 with the subject, that the influence exercised by these 
 possessing spirits is, in some instances, absolutely diabol¬ 
 ical in character. The aim seems to be the entire sub¬ 
 version of the moral faculty of the individual affected, 
 and this is brought about by means so subtle and crafty 
 that suspicions are scarcely ever aroused until the moral 
 nature is undermined and the will has lost the power of 
 resisting the promptings of the influence which is domin¬ 
 ating it. Several instances of this kind, passing in dia¬ 
 bolical cruelty all that the imagination can conceive, have 
 come under my personal observation. In one case it 
 meant the utter and irretrievable moral ruin and subse¬ 
 quent suicide, of the person affected. In others, the ef¬ 
 fects can still be traced in the victims’ shattered health 
 and broken constitution. 
 
 The “Lives of the Saints” surely furnish us with fur- 
 
AN EVIL SPIRIT-WORLD 
 
 105 
 
 ther striking and abundant evidence of the existence and 
 action of a hostile spirit-world. 
 
 It is impossible to doubt the reality and objectivity of 
 phenomena such as have, for instance, occurred in the life 
 of the Cure d’Ars. There are probably persons still 
 living today who have witnessed some of these manifesta¬ 
 tions, and there are in any case many living who have 
 heard an account of them from the lips of those who 
 had witnessed them. These happenings, which continued 
 for years, were a source of much annoyance to the saint¬ 
 ly Cure, who found them to occur whenever he was to be 
 the recipient of some special grace or favor. 
 
 And it would seem that every saintly life and every 
 effort after an exceptionally high degree of holiness is 
 apt to evoke these opposing and hostile influences, seek¬ 
 ing by every conceivable device to divert the striving soul 
 from the coveted goal, and thus clearly demonstrating 
 the reality of the conflict between good and evil which is 
 going on in the world. 
 
 Spiritual writers tell us of the signs or symptoms 
 which attend these invasions and I have been struck by 
 the agreement which exists in this respect between these 
 writers and those who treat of the matter from the mod¬ 
 ern spiritistic point of view. 
 
 Unhappily, we are living in times when any but the 
 right cause is apt to be assigned to these experiences 
 and when, consequently, it is but seldom that the proper 
 means are adopted for the cure of the trouble and the 
 relief of the sufferer. 
 
 All spiritual writers admit that amongst the effects 
 of demonic invasion or aggression must be reckoned: 
 
 1. An inability to pray. 
 
 2. Despair and doubt. 
 
 3. Passionate cravings. 
 
 4. Temptations to suicide. 
 
106 
 
 AN EVIL SPIRIT-WORLD 
 
 Compare this with the description of the symptoms of 
 obsession with which a prominent modern spiritist sup¬ 
 plies us: 
 
 “Weariness, physical and mental nevousness, sleep¬ 
 lessness, a feeling of being burdened by some invisible 
 weight making the light duties of life seem impossible. 
 All of life’s prospects begin to look more and more 
 gloomy. There is an impelling haste in what the suf¬ 
 ferer says, and a marked sensitiveness ultimating in 
 great irritability. Often the atmosphere appears dark 
 and dense, rendering it oppressive to breathe. Common 
 objects sometimes appear to vibrate, causing discordant 
 thoughts. The activity of the will, memory, reason and 
 purpose perceptibly commence to fail in the ratio that this 
 foreign external influence gains ascendency. There ex¬ 
 ists a state of fear, distress, jealousy, suspicion where¬ 
 with the least discordant word or stern look will cause 
 weeping or resentment or anger. 
 
 “Connected with this there is a weakening of the vi¬ 
 tality and frequently an abnormal strengthening of the 
 passionate nature.” 
 
 “All exceptional individual efforts at sanctity,” writes 
 a learned theologian, “provoke exceptional demonic activ¬ 
 ity. The cold and indifferent only are left alone.” The 
 probability, therefore, is that the less frequent occur¬ 
 rence of these manifestations in our time is not due, as 
 liberal theologians would have us believe, to our higher 
 culture and more scientific mode of thought, but to that 
 forgetfulness of the supernatural and that low tone of the 
 spiritual life which are admitted to be the characteristics 
 of these modern modes of thought. There is, in other 
 words, nothing in the modern man to evoke the activity 
 of the opposing forces. 
 
 But these demoniacal manifestations, systematically ob¬ 
 served and recorded in recent times, surely tend to throw 
 a strong light upon the phenomena which occurred in 
 Our Lord’s day and of which we have record in the New 
 
AN EVIL SPIRIT-WORLD 
 
 107 
 
 Testament. They show conclusively how accurate and 
 trustworthy these records are and how hopelessly modern 
 liberal theology has gone and is going astray in these 
 matters. It is surely a marvelous demonstration of the 
 action of God in the moral universe that that same sci¬ 
 ence which not so very long ago arrogantly denied the 
 preternatural, is now led, by the sure method of experi¬ 
 mental research, to discover that preternatural and, at 
 least indirectly, to avow its mistakes. It is unfortunately 
 not sufficiently well known that the age of liberal and de¬ 
 structive theology is also the age of scientific spiritism, of 
 the re-discovery of the spirit-world and of the existence 
 and action upon us of evil and deceiving spirits. 
 
 It is thus that, in this age too, God is not leaving 
 Himself without a witness. 
 
 A modern scientific writer, 1 who has made a very 
 searching investigation of the New Testament records 
 respecting demoniacal invasion, and who speaks from the 
 standpoint of a medical man, sums up his conclusions in 
 the following serious and weighty words: 
 
 “The Incarnation initiated the establishment of the 
 Kingdom of Heaven upon earth. That determined a 
 counter-movement among the powers of darkness. Genu¬ 
 ine demonic possession was one of its manifestations.” 
 
 But it is impossible to carry the argument further 
 without exceeding the fixed limits of this book. 
 
 Sufficient has been said and sufficient testimony has 
 been adduced to show that the position here defended is 
 both a reasonable and a scientific one and that, whatever 
 view some may choose to entertain respecting the Chris¬ 
 tian doctrine of Hell and of the devil and his angels, 
 some of the best modern thought and an honest interpre¬ 
 tation of observed phenomena go to show the entire ten¬ 
 ableness of this belief, if they do not actually demonstrate 
 its truth. 
 
 1 W. Menzies Alexander, M. A., M. D. 
 
108 
 
 AN EVIL SPIRIT-WORLD 
 
 And the reflecting mind can scarcely fail to see what 
 an amount of light the full recognition of these truths 
 throws upon the doctrine of the Incarnation and of the 
 work and mission of the Divine Redeemer, Who, as we 
 learn from the Sacred Scriptures, appeared “that He 
 might destroy the works of the devil,” 1 and “Who has 
 the keys of death and of Hell.” 2 
 
 1 1 . St. John iii., 8. 
 
 2 Apoc. I., 18. 
 
Extracts from Press Notices (Catholic and 
 Protestant) of the First Three 
 English Editions. 
 
 TRUTH— {England) 
 
 “We have rarely met with a clearer and more rea¬ 
 sonable exposition of the generally accepted doctrine of 
 Hell and kindred subjects. * * * The writer certain¬ 
 
 ly makes clear one point, whatever may be said of others, 
 and that is the necessity of recognizing Hell as an essen¬ 
 tial element in the whole Christian scheme and the con¬ 
 sequent lack of consistency on the part of those who think 
 themselves justified in rejecting the one whilst accepting 
 the other. * * * The style is equal to the matter— 
 
 clear, smooth, trenchant.” 
 
 EXPOSITORY TIMES— ( England) 
 
 “The author is no fossil, in theology, or in science. It 
 is what we have to believe about Hell, we, the heirs of the 
 ages, that he tell us. There seems no escape from his 
 logic or appeal.” 
 
 UNIVERSE— {England) 
 
 “A little book capable of doing immense good. * * * 
 It is a model of the manner in which the unchanging doc¬ 
 trine concerning Hell and Eternal Punishment ought to 
 be presented to the modern mind.” 
 
 AVE MARIA 
 
 “This is one of Mr. Raupert’s best books—the clear¬ 
 est and fullest exposition of the doctrines of Hell in our 
 language.” 
 
 TABLE T— ( England ) 
 
 “We gladly note the appearance of these thoughtful 
 studies on one of the most widely misunderstood of Chris- 
 
tian dogmas. They are orthodox in doctrine and are ex¬ 
 cellently reasoned out and they will no doubt do a great 
 deal of good in dispelling the popular and mostly shallow 
 objections commonly urged against the Catholic teaching 
 on this most important subject. 
 
 “The whole book is thoughtful and stimulating; we 
 give it a cordial welcome.” 
 
 CATHOLIC BOOK NOTES— {England) 
 
 “The author’s study is a very model of what is re¬ 
 quired. It is well written, concise, forcible, scientific 
 without being technical, happy in its quotations and per¬ 
 fectly adapted for popular use. The author goes straight 
 to the very kernel of the subject.” 
 
 CHRISTIAN AGE— {England) 
 
 “The author is a thinker and knows how to make an 
 advantageous use of his wide and intelligent reading rele¬ 
 vant to the subject under consideration.” 
 
 CATHOLIC TIMES— {England) 
 
 “The book deserves a wide welcome. * * * It is 
 
 singularly free from all exaggeration and is a model of 
 exposition.” 
 
 CATHOLIC HERALD— {England) 
 
 “As a philosophical and logical treatment of a diffi¬ 
 cult subject it would be hard to improve on Mr. Raupert’s 
 exposition.” 
 
 MONITOR— ( England) 
 
 “ * * * The most popular arguments against 
 
 Hell are met and answered in a masterly manner. * * * 
 This volume is bound to do good.” 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 Spiritistic Phenomena and Their Interpretation 
 
 Price, 20 cents. Postage, 2 cents. 
 
 Published by Catholic Union Store, 682 Main St., Buffalo. 
 
 Extracts from Press Notices. 
 
 AMERICAN ECCLESIASTICAL REVIEW 
 
 “The present brochure * * * cannot fail to 
 
 spread more widely a knowledge of the dangers to body 
 and soul besetting spiritistic practices * * * a warn¬ 
 
 ing never more needed and perhaps never less heeded 
 than today * * *” 
 
 OCCULT REVIEW 
 
 “Mr. Raupert is probably the best-informed and most 
 able opponent of Spiritism and his writings ought to re¬ 
 ceive the consideration of all investigators.” 
 
 THE CRUCIBLE 
 
 “Mr. Raupert is in England the most experienced 
 Catholic writer on spiritistic subjects and the one who 
 has made the study of them a specialty * * * We 
 
 ought to be glad that he has given us a short and prac¬ 
 tical booklet which enables every one to learn all he need 
 and ought to know about the subject.” 
 
 BROOKLYN TABLET 
 
 “It is a pleasure to announce this handy pamphlet * * 
 The treatment is succinct and clear and gives one first¬ 
 hand information from a sane authority on the horrible 
 practice of invoking the unknown spirits.” 
 
 TOLEDO BLADE 
 
 “The pamphlet certainly is timely and its perusal can¬ 
 not but force upon the reader the author’s conclusion that 
 spiritism is in violent and bitter antagonism to the re¬ 
 vealed, supernatural truths of Christianity.” 
 
The Echo Press, 
 Buffalo, N. Y.