And another writer says, "All in God is turned into fury: in hell
he draws out into the field all his forces, all his attributes,
whereof wrath is the leader and general."20 Such representations
may be left without a comment. Every enlightened mind will
instantly reject with horror the doctrine which necessitates a
conception of God like that here pictured forth. God is a being of
infinite forgiveness and magnanimity. To the wandering sinner,
even while a great way off, his arms are open, and his inviting
voice, penetrating the farthest abysses, says, "Return." His sun
shines and his rain falls on the fields of the unjust and
unthankful. What is it, the instant mortals pass the line of
death, that shall transform this Divinity of yearning pity and
beneficence into a devil of relentless hate and cruelty? It cannot
be. We shall find him dealing towards us in eternity as he does
here. An eminent theologian says, "If mortal men kill the body
temporally in their anger, it is like the immortal God to damn the
soul eternally in his." "God holds sinners in his hands over the
mouth of hell as so many spiders; and he is dreadfully provoked,
and he not only hates them, but holds them in utmost contempt, and
he will trample them beneath his feet with inexpressible
fierceness, he will crush their blood out, and will make it fly so
that it will sprinkle his garments and stain all his raiment."21
Oh, ravings and blasphemies of theological bigotry, blinded with
old creeds, inflamed with sectarian hate, soaked in the gall of
bitterness, encompassed by absurd delusions, you know not what you
say!

A daring writer of modern times observes that God can never say
from the last tribunal, in any other than a limited and
metaphorical sense, "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting
fire," because that would not be doing as he would be done by.
Saving the appearance of irreverence, we maintain his assertion to
be just, based on impregnable morality. A recent religious poet
describes Jesus, on descending into hell after his crucifixion,

20 For these and several other quotations we are indebted to the
Rev. T. J. Sawyer's work, entitled "Endless Punishment: its Origin
and Grounds Examined."

21 Edwards's works, vol. vii. p. 499.

meeting Judas, and when he saw his pangs and heard his stifled
sobs, "Pitying, Messiah gazed, and had forgiven, But Justice her
eternal bar opposed." 22

The instinctive sentiment is worthy of Jesus, but the