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.
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