Horrid Theory of Eternal Torment

But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies.... 2 Peter 2:1

 

"On the supposition that eternal torture is to be inflicted as the penalty for a life of sin in this world, were man asked if God’s conduct in this respect was just, his own innate sense of justice, not yet wholly obliterated by the fall, would prompt him to a universal and determined, No! 

 

The framers of different religious systems have felt this, and seem to have searched sharply for some avenue of escape from the fearful wrong of this horrid theory. 

So Plato had his Acherusian lake from which at least some of the

wretched sufferers in Tartarus, after a purgative process, might issue forth again to the upper air. 

Augustine, following Plato in his notion of an abode of unending pain for some, had also his purgatory, from whence others might find a road to heaven. Rome has only a purgatory, the fires of a finite period, for the millions within her communion. 

Origen conceived of a purgatory wider than Plato’s, Augustine’s, or Rome’s, from which all should at length be restored to the favor of God.

 
The churches of the Reformation have generally accepted of Augustine’s hell, but denied his purgatory. 

In the Protestant denominations, therefore, we have this doctrine in its most horrid aspects.  

 

Albert Barnes, the well-known preacher and commentator, speaks on the same point as follows:
“I confess, when I look upon a world of sinners and of sufferers, upon death-beds and graveyards, upon the world of woe filled with hosts to suffer forever. When I see my friends, my parents, my family, my people, my fellow citizens; when I look upon a whole race, all involved in this sin and danger. And when I see the great mass of them wholly unconcerned ; and when I feel that God only can save them, and yet he does not do it, I am struck dumb. It is all dark, dark, dark, to my soul, and I cannot disguise it.”

 
Such is the effect of the doctrine of eternal misery upon some, according to the confession of its own advocates.

 

The root and trunk of all this is the taken for granted

 position that the soul is immortal. 

But search through your Bible, and see if you find it so. 

 

See if you will not rather be prepared to exclaim with the eminent commentator, Olshausen, that, the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, and the name, are alike unknown to the entire Bible. 

--See if you can find the death that never dies, and never-dying soul. 

--If not, we ask you to reject the idea at once as a most dangerous and destructive error. 

 

Men are thus rejecting it. 

The leaven is working in the public mind. 

Men are growing suspicious of the truth of a declaration, 

--first uttered by a not over truthful character in Eden, 

--perpetuated thence through heathenism, 

--and at last, through the medium of the mother of harlots,

--disseminated through all the veins and channels of orthodoxy.  

 

The very better emotion of their nature revolts at the idea, and they will not accept it. They cannot believe that God is thus cruel, tyrannical, revengeful, implacable, the personification, in short, of every trait of character which, when seen in men here, we consider unmistakable marks of debasement and degradation. 

 

And believing the Bible and Christianity to be identified with such teaching as this, with equal promptness they too are rejected and cast away.

Can it, then, be wondered at that we should be solicitous to disabuse the minds of the people in this respect? 

Shall we not have a zeal for the Lord, and be untiring in our efforts to wipe off from the book and character of God the aspersions which are by this doctrine cast upon them?" 

Uriah Smith