November 1927
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true? In proportion as the mother is holy and wise and taken up with Christ, she will be better satisfied with God’s admin istration though it is her son instead of some other Is F uture P u n is h m e n t R easonable ? Question: Will you admit that from the standpoint of reason, such a hell as you say the Bible teaches, is impossible ? Answer: We do not say what the exact nature of hell is. We know that the God of all the earth will do right, but it seems reasonable to us that if God provided no fu ture retribution, sin would build a hell and crowd it full. Reason, conscience and memory would furnish the flames.: Live for a while near the hells of sin on earth ; wit ness the sullen hatred among men and the degradation of evil; read of their crimes; hear them consigning one an- other to hell and damning one another in God’s name— and hell enters more readily into your belief. There are certainly training schools for hell all about us. It is not stretching reason far to see a future hell for those who have rejected God’s salvation' and prepared themselves to go there. Ingersoll in one of his meetings was saying that hell was unreasonable. A drunkard stood up and said) “Stick to it, Bob; we’re depending on you.” Many who are fighting the Bible statements concerning hell are, we fear, doing so for personal reasons. Universal Appeal of Jesus “In-one of our greater mid-Western cities, possessing a large foreign population, a group of broad-minded phi lanthropists resolved to build a mosque, in the belief that it would prove a source of help and happiness to the Mos lems who had come to make that place their future home. Only a handful ever came into that place of worship, and even they did not come very long. After a futile effort to encourage these people in the conservation of their native religion, the promoters abandoned the experiment. What ever Mohammedanism may have meant to these people back in Turkey, it lacked either the reach or the grip to hold them in Michigan. It would be as difficult to put a newly hatched chicken back into its shell as to’ reconstruct for the Moslem on American soil the religious environ ment and the spiritual values of his symbols and sacra ments, apparently so deeply venerated by him previous to his migration. “Without meaning to minify the service any other re ligion than Christianity has rendered to its disciples, .it is obvious that the teachings of Jesus stand alone in the uni versal capacity of their appeal; and however respectful the broad-minded student may be in his attitude toward the founders of other faiths, it is apparent that the world at large never considered the advent of any one of them as of sufficient importance to require the opening of a new calendar, saying: ‘We will begin again. This shall be known as Day First, of Year One!’ ”—Lloyd C. Douglas in “These Sayings of Mine.” son who is suffering.
The Question o f Retribu tion Question: Do you consider that future punishment is absolutely without e n d ? Answer: We know that future retribution w ill. be administered by a just God in degrees, according to the- works of sinners, but we do not see any reason to believe that the unsaved will ever enter heaven. The same word used of the eternity of being shut out of heaven, is used of the. endlessness of heaven and of God Himself. On the other hand, we may find that not all whom we considered lost will fail to gain entrance to heaven. God looks on the heart ; we look on the outward appearance. Furthermore, we know that the preaching of the idea of universal salvation has always had a tendency to encourage sin. (( Montesquieu, in his ,“Spirit of Laws,” says that the idea of a place of future rewards necessarily imports that of a place or state of future punishments; and where the people hope for the one without fearing the other, civil laws have no force.” Lord Bolingbroke, though no professing Christian, savs that “the doctrine of rewards and punishments in a future state has so great a tendency to enforce the civil laws, and to restrain the vices of men, that the^ doctrine should be taught on the ground of good policy.” A chaplain in the Ohio Penitentiary; who is in better condition to judge of these matters than are men in most other occupations):; makes this statement: I consider Universalism the worst form of infidelity. Nearly all our prisoners have been infected with it while in their career of vice. Nothing else, they say, could have held them up in crime, at the risk of life at every step they took, but the thought which they tried hard to entertain, that after death they would go to heaven. Says a distinguished judge: “Were all ministers to preach the doctrine of universal salvation, there would soon be a hell in this world, if not in the next.” Theodore Parker was a Universalist, but when asked what he believed the Scripture taught as to the duration of hell, he said: “As a Greek scholar and not as a the ologian, I will say there is no doubt that Jesus ¡Christ taught the endlessness of outer darkness; but I do not accept the doctrine on His authority.” All who teach universalism, annihilation or any other theory are in the same boat. They set themselves up as higher authorities than the Son of God. How C ould S a in ts B e H appy ? Question: H ow could God or man be happy in heaven if a human being was suffering in hell, especially if that suffering, as you say the Bible teaches, is endless? Answer: We might ask in turn how God or man could be happy in heaven if brutish and, vile men were not confined somewhere outside of heaven? In human society, so far as possible,- we segregate the evil from the good. Not many Christians are cfying their hearts out because jails and prisons exist. Happiness in society is more dependent upon the execu tion of just penalties than upon the setting free of crim inals. There could be no happiness if all were pardoned. But suppose it was the case of a mother and son. How cmdd she be hanny in heaven? May. not this be
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