Where No Fear Was | Page 7

must be his fear of ultimate punishment. His
was an attempt to draw away the curtain which hides this world from
the next, and to horrify men into living purely and kindly. But the mind
only revolts against the dastardly injustice of a God, who allows men to
be born into the world so corrupt, with so many incentives to sin, and
deliberately hides from them the ghastly sight of the eternal torments,
which might have saved them from recklessness of life. No one who
had trod the dark caverns of Hell or the flinty ridges of Purgatory, as
Dante represented himself doing, who had seen the awful sights and
heard the heart-broken words of the place, could have returned to the
world as a light-hearted sinner! Whatever we may believe of God, we
must not for an instant allow ourselves to believe that life can be so
brief and finite, so small and hampered an opportunity, and that
punishment could be so demoniacal and so infinite. A God who could
design such a scheme must be essentially evil and malignant. We may
menace wicked men with punishment for wanton misdeeds, but it must
be with just punishment. What could we say of a human father who
exposed a child to temptation without explaining the consequences, and
then condemned him to lifelong penalties for failing to make the right
choice? We must firmly believe that if offences are finite, punishment
must be finite too; that it must be remedial and not mechanical. We
must believe that if we deserve punishment, it will be because we can
hope for restoration. Hell is a monstrous and insupportable fiction, and
the idea of it is simply inconsistent with any belief in the goodness of
God. It is easy to quote texts to support it, but we must not allow any
text, any record in the world, however sacred, to shatter our belief in
the Love and Justice of God. And I say as frankly and directly as I can
that until we can get rid of this intolerable terror, we can make no
advance at all.
The old, fierce Saints, who went into the darkness exulting in the
thought of the eternal damnation of the wicked, had not spelt the first

letter of the Christian creed, and I doubt not have discovered their
mistake long ago! Yet there are pious people in the world who will
neither think nor speak frankly of the subject, for fear of weakening the
motives for human virtue. I will at least speak frankly, and though I
believe with all my heart in a life beyond the grave, in which suffering
enough may exist for the cure of those who by wilful sin have sunk into
sloth and hopelessness and despair, and even into cruelty and brutality,
I do not for an instant believe that the conduct of the vilest human
being who ever set foot on the earth can deserve more than a term of
punishment, or that such punishment will have anything that is
vindictive about it.
It may be said that I am here only combating an old-fashioned idea, and
that no one believes in the old theory of eternal punishment, or that if
they believe that the possibility exists, they do not believe that any
human being can incur it. But I feel little doubt that the belief does
exist, and that it is more widespread than one cares to believe. To
believe it is to yield to the darkest and basest temptation of fear, and
keeps all who hold it back from the truth of God.
What then are we to believe about the punishment of our sins? I look
back upon my own life, and I see numberless occasions--they rise up
before me, a long perspective of failures--when I have acted cruelly,
selfishly, self-indulgently, basely, knowing perfectly well that I was so
behaving. What was wrong with me? Why did I so behave? Because I
preferred the baser course, and thought at the time that it gave me
pleasure.
Well then, what do I wish about all that? I wish it had not happened so,
I wish I had been kinder, more just, more self- restrained, more strong.
I am ashamed, because I condemn myself, and because I know that
those whom I love and honour would condemn me, if they knew all.
But I do not, therefore, lose all hope of myself, nor do I think that God
will not show me how to be different. If it can only be done by
suffering, I dread the suffering, but I am ready to suffer if I can become
what I should wish to be. But I do not for a moment think that God will
cast me off or turn His face