t back to the
body in order to rise again and receive a solemn public condemnation?
Better leave it in the Inferno and save trouble, especially as the
solemn trial is meaningless, seeing that a part of the sentence has
already been undergone, and that there is no hope that any portion of
it will ever be remitted. Truly the tender mercies with which
theologians have credited the Almighty are cruel indeed! It is
difficult to speak with patience of the solemn, non-committal way in
which many present-day theological writers discuss everlasting
punishment. Many of them have an "open mind" on the subject, whatever
that may be, and warn the rest of us not to dogmatise on the great
mystery. It does not seem to occur to them that the Christian
fundamental of the love of God renders the dogma of everlasting
punishment impossible, for it implies that God will do the most for the
being that needs the most, and surely that must be the most unhappy
sinner. Others speak of a "larger hope," a second opportunity for
accepting divine grace, and so on. But these theories do not meet the
case at all. While sin remains in the universe, God is defeated;
everlasting punishment involves His everlasting failure. How often we
bear preachers speaking about the obdurate human will, which to all
eternity may go on resisting good. There are not a few who defend the
abstract possibility of everlasting punishment by insisting that it is
impossible to coerce the will, and therefore that to endless ages a
soul may go on choosing evil and rejecting good. But this is an
entirely new argument; it implies that a sinner _might_ choose the good
on the other side of death, and that if he does not he continues
eternally to pass sentence upon himself, God being helpless in the
matter. This is not the way in which advocates of everlasting
punishment used to talk. It is a little more hopeful than the
conventional dogma, for it makes the sinner to some extent his own
judge and executioner, and places stress on the undoubted truth that if
a man keeps on doing wrong things he becomes hardened. I have heard
this view defended in private by a bishop, who apparently never saw
that in adopting it he had given up entirely the orthodox Protestant
view that there is no chance for a man after death, and that the thing
which determines our post-mortem destiny is not our conduct, but our
belief. Repentance at the eleventh hour, however bad the previous life
may h