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